You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
'Stylish, deft...an absolutely fascinating novel' Guardian 'Haunting, mesmerising, and so deeply intelligent' Kamila Shamsie, author of Women's Prize for Fiction winning Home Fire 'Powerful...compelling and profoundly moving' Irish Times 'Heartbreaking, sweetly logical and tentatively hopeful' Spectator Heartbroken after a long, painful love affair, a man drives a haulage lorry from England to France. Travelling with him is a secret passenger - his daughter. Twenty-something, unkempt, off the rails. With a week on the road together, father and daughter must restore themselves and each other, and repair a relationship that is at once fiercely loving and deeply scarred. As they journey south, ...
The critically acclaimed psychological chiller from a powerful new voice in Irish literary fiction. SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2017 'As fine as it is frightening' JOHN BANVILLE 'This one will stay with you like your shadow' Guardian 'Extraordinary . . . pitch-perfect' Irish Times 'Strange, beautiful and quietly terrifying' DONAL RYAN, author of The Spinning Heart 'Like many great works, it could so easily have all gone wrong if it hadn’t been done exactly right' Sunday Independent It is the hottest August in living memory. A frightened girl bangs on a door. A man answers. From the moment he invites her in, his world will never be the same again. She will tell him about her family, and their strange life in the show home of an abandoned housing estate. The long, blistering days spent sunbathing; the airless nights filled with inexplicable noises; the words that appear on the windows, written in dust. Why are members of her family disappearing, one by one? Is she telling the truth? Is he? In a world where reality is beginning to blur, how can we know what to believe?
Conor O'Callaghan's Live Streaming is a volume of many styles and themes, whether it is the life of a caravan park, an ode to marriage, or a schoolboy empathizing with Petrarch's love for Laura and idolizing a heavyweight boxer. O'Callaghan's typical flair for the contemporary, for the live stream of the virtual, is also abundantly apparent. The centerpiece is the long multi-genre "His Last Legs," which dramatizes the troubled inheritance from his father and finely balances other more condensed and lyrical poems. This volume is an unflinching display of an impressively skillful poet.
Conor O'Callaghan's first collection in eight years includes an elegy for the 'boom', an office building's 'server room', and a string of couplets from Twitter.
Interest in the ancient, the occult, and the "wyrd" is on the rise. The furrows of Robin Hardy (The Wicker Man), Piers Haggard (Blood on Satan's Claw), and Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General) have arisen again, most notably in the films of Ben Wheatley (Kill List), as has the Spirit of Dark of Lonely Water, Juganets, cursed Saxon crowns, spaceships hidden under ancient barrows, owls and flowers, time-warping stone circles, wicker men, the goat of Mendes, and malicious stone tapes. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful And Things Strange charts the summoning of these esoteric arts within the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, using theories of psychogeography, hauntology, and topography to delve into the genre's output in film, television, and multimedia as its "sacred demon of ungovernableness" rises yet again in the twenty-first century.
This extremely well-researched history of a County Cork sept traces its origins from Cellachan of Cashel, the tenth-century king of Munster, down to modern times. As the English extended their rule over Ireland in the 16th century, more abundant historical data presents a detailed picture of the territory occupied by the sept and the activities of its chieftains. Steady encroachment by English adventurers and speculators, however, imposed severe pressure on the Gaelic way of life. As a consequence of the rebellion of 1641 and the subsequent conquest by Oliver Cromwell, O Callaghan lands were confiscated and the chieftain and his family were transplanted to County Clare. The Confiscated lands...
From Gaelic annals and medieval poetry to contemporary Irish literature, A History of Irish Literature and the Environment examines the connections between the Irish environment and Irish literary culture. Themes such as Ireland's island ecology, the ecological history of colonial-era plantation and deforestation, the Great Famine, cultural attitudes towards animals and towards the land, the postcolonial politics of food and energy generation, and the Covid-19 pandemic - this book shows how these factors determine not only a history of the Irish environment but also provide fresh perspectives from which to understand and analyze Irish literature. An international team of contributors provides a comprehensive analysis of Irish literature to show how the literary has always been deeply engaged with environmental questions in Ireland, a crucial new perspective in an age of climate crisis. A History of Irish Literature and the Environment reveals the socio-cultural, racial, and gendered aspects embedded in questions of the Irish environment.
In 1988 IRA terrorist Sean O'Callaghan walked into a Tunbridge Wells police station and gave himself up. Two years later, in a Belfast courtroom, he pleaded guilty to all charges of which he was accused and received a sentence of 539 years. Since being a teenager he had been an active member of the IRA and had risen to be the head of their Southern Command. He was responsible for two murders and many terrorist attacks. He was a linchpin of the organization. But in 1996, he was released from prison by royal prerogative. For fourteen years he had been the most highly placed informer within the IRA and had fed the Irish Garda with countless pieces of invaluable information. He prevented the ass...
'A poignant, piercing meditation on middle age and the passing of time... will linger with you long after the book is closed' Guardian *SHORTLISTED FOR THE ENCORE AWARD 2020* On a bitterly cold winter’s afternoon, Michael and Caitlin escape their unhappy marriages to keep an illicit rendezvous. Once a month, for the past quarter of a century, Coney Island has been their haven; these precious, hidden hours their only nourishment. But now, amid the howling of an angry snowstorm, the shut-down, out-of-season resort feels like the edge of the world. And their lives, suddenly, are on the brink – with news of serious illness on one side, and a move to the Midwest on the other.
The U-Turn is a book about being happier. Taking the simple premise that increased self-esteem is the key to a more contented existence, the author draws from his background as a psychiatrist and his own life experience to present a way of tackling the everyday negative emotions that can interfere with enjoying life. The U-Turn: Provides readers with an understanding of the most common mild psychological issues, such as anxiety and depression, and aims to increase insight into the role of low self-esteem in these. Looks at ways for readers to fight back and discover that life can have joy and purpose.Contains "Think, Feel, Act" psychological exercises at the end of the chapters, which help the reader to apply what the book suggests to their own lives.Is written in a personal, anecdotal style. About the Author Conor Farren is a consultant psychiatrist at St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin. In his work as a psychiatrist he has seen the importance of self-esteem in counseling and therapy, and has discovered how raising self-esteem is fundamental to living a happier and more contented life. He is the author of Overcoming Alcohol Misuse (Orpen Press, 2011).