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THE IRISH TERRORIST

Name: THE IRISH TERRORIST
Author: T.J. Mack
ISBN: 978-1483424613

by T.J. Mack ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2015

Ireland’s history is well incorporated, but it’s the characters’ firsthand accounts that resonate the loudest.

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Mack’s debut historical thriller centers on the O’Hare family in Ireland in the mid-19th century and Irishman Jack Danaher, who’s made his home in America in the 1980s.

Sean O’Hare and his wife and children, like others in their homeland, are dying from starvation and disease. Sean’s son, Paddy, decides whether joining the rebellion against the ruling English will help his country’s people. Later, Jack himself lives through much of “the Troubles” and endures Bloody Sunday, where his sister May is one of the protestors killed by British soldiers. The rebellion grows increasingly violent as the years pass. The Irish Republican Army buys arms in the U.S., and both sides, English and Irish, commit outright murder. The O’Hare plot is the more engrossing of the two storylines, centering on Sean’s family as they’re faced with a failing potato crop and harsh winters. It’s an ardent story that shows the family’s personal trials against the backdrop of a country in upheaval. The other half of the novel introduces numerous characters involved in the fight against England, including IRA members, but is a little less focused. Jack is just one of many men in the novel who may be killing loyalists. But he shares so much of the stage with other characters—including cousin Sean Curran and powerful, godfather-esque Jimmy O’Hare—that he isn’t a bona fide protagonist. He even reconnects with lost love Joanie, but the reunion is too short and pales compared with Paddy’s traditional romance—Paddy first asks permission from the father of his love interest before courting her. Still, there are unforgettable scenes, particularly Sean Curran and others in an Irish prison; deeming themselves political prisoners, they stage a hunger strike. The uncompromising ending, too, is both open and rather unnerving.

Ireland’s history is well incorporated, but it’s the characters’ firsthand accounts that resonate the loudest.

Pub Date: March 6, 2015

ISBN: 978-1483424613

Page Count: 238

Publisher: Lulu

Review Posted Online: May 7, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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...

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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

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.