bookshelf

TIPPERARY

Name: TIPPERARY
Author: Frank Delaney
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6523-3

by Frank Delaney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2007

A sort of Irish Gone With the Wind, marked by sly humor, historical awareness and plenty of staying power.

bookshelf

When shamrock green meets black and tan, things sometimes go mauve.

Irish expat novelist Delaney (Ireland, 2005) likes his history with a leavening of fiction, or perhaps his fiction with a leavening of history. In previous work, this history has been sometimes incidental, but here, in a tale of Ireland in a time of dispossession and civil war in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Delaney brings real events to the fore. The story-within-a-story concerns a manuscript that recounts the love between an Irish amateur historian and the young daughter of a landed Anglo-Irish family. Charles O’Brien, the historian, “lived in a culture of narrative,” writes our descendant narrator; April Burke, on the other hand, kept her counsel and lived a life that “brought danger and actual harm to those who loved her,” which makes for a very promising tale indeed. Charles’s long pursuit is fraught, but it affords the narrator—read Delaney—the opportunity to reflect at many points on the twists and turns of the Irish past, which has always been more complex than it appears. (“If you’re not confused,” says one adage on the matter, “then you don’t understand the situation.”) Delaney acknowledges, wisely, that Irish history has always been written with loving ornamentation and staggering heaps of blarney, as well as no end of romanticism; for him to have put a historical tale into the terms of a real romance is a nice twist. The prose sometimes turns purplish and didactic (“Nineteenth-century men had many curbs on the ways in which they could express themselves. Despite some unexpectedly swift mail services, communication was generally limited, so a romance had few escape valves.”), but for the most part Delaney writes with no undue sentimentality, and the narrative moves swiftly and surely.

A sort of Irish Gone With the Wind, marked by sly humor, historical awareness and plenty of staying power.

Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6523-3

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAST STORYTELLER
by Frank Delaney

- BOOK REVIEW
THE MATCHMAKER OF KENMARE
by Frank Delaney

- BOOK REVIEW
VENETIA KELLY’S TRAVELING SHOW
by Frank Delaney

bookshelf

SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

bookshelf

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.