A historically interesting look at a time when Erin was anything but a Celtic Tiger.
A story of harsh economic realities in postwar Ireland and the mixed blessing of England’s reconstruction.
Mac Amlaigh (1926-1989) was born in Galway, Ireland, grew up in Kilkenny, and in 1960 published his first book, An Irish Navvy: The Diary of an Exile (1960). It was a nonfiction account of his life as a laborer in 1950s England, part of a postwar Irish diaspora. This novel, published in 1986, was his last book and echoes the first with autobiographical elements, depicting in alternating chapters three Irish characters in the early 1950s linked mainly by how Ireland’s lack of work and England’s abundance of jobs define their lives. Niall leaves military service and returns to Kilkenny to learn that a friend in the town to whom he sent 30 pounds (about $1,390 today) for a business partnership has absconded to England. Niall struggles with life on the dole and the ever tempting balm of drunkenness. Nano works as a nurse’s assistant in a British hospital because her boyfriend in Ireland is tethered to a possessive mother. She enjoys a bit of freedom, thanks to her saucy roommate, while coping with the allure of a handsome gardener. Trevor likes work as a navvy in England, digging trenches and avoiding the ties of his wife and children in Ireland. But when a brutish Dubliner beats up his brother-in-law, Trevor must uphold family honor and his reputation as a top bare-knuckle fighter. Mac Amlaigh wrote in Irish, and his translator renders the prose as plainspoken as his working-class characters, with hopeful, even romantic moments for Niall and Nano and touches of the heroic for Trevor and his mighty foe. While he isn’t much of a stylist, Mac Amlaigh knows these lives and conveys them well.
A historically interesting look at a time when Erin was anything but a Celtic Tiger.Pub Date: March 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-912681-31-0
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Parthian Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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