Tag Archives: irish

September 6, 2026 · 12:54 pm

Land: Bor-ing (tell me I’m wrong)

You have seen Maggie O’Farrell’s Land. It is front and center on display tables and people are talking about it. Her first book, Hamnet, was a big deal and so this next book was bound to generate attention. Only problem is, at least in my opinion (and isn’t that why you’re reading this) Land is overhyped boring.

Oh the book starts out with promise. The writing is – really – extraordinarily beautiful. Subtle, specific and aching. I am for sure recommending you do not read this book the whole way through but you should read the first 50 pages for the pure enjoyment of the prose. And the plot from the opening is similarly promising: we’re in 19th century Ireland and a boy and his father are out making a map, strange circumstances in the forest and the father goes mad. All kinds of questions surface: what caused the madness? what will happen to the family given the precarity of their existence without the father’s income?

If only these were questions that could sustain 500 pages OR if only these questions were further complicated. Alas. What then follows is a sort of generational history of the plot of land and the people who had lived there. Which I regret to inform you does not constitute an interesting plot. Yes, of course, each family or person who lived on the land has unique stories and yes, of course, the book aims to remind the reader of the richness in history and longevity of the natural world that we so boldly claim to own or occupy. And in the case of Land the history of the land holds those of great acts of cruelty and suffering – including a lot about the Great Famine that I didn’t know and legit found interesting/haunting. However. You may be eager to read a genealogy of a place and if that’s the case you might well enjoy Land. If you are expecting something where characters develop or Things Happen you best look elsewhere. This is a novel that took the idea of ‘setting’ and ‘literary devices’ just… didn’t bother to sketch out how the rest of the elements of fiction might need to come into play.

I’m sure I’m wrong – I have to be because everyone else seems to love this book – so tell me why and how.

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February 24, 2025 · 3:02 am

Long Island: Bets on the ending

Put Colm Tóibín’s Long Island in your library cart and you won’t be disappointed when it (eventually) makes it to you (I say eventually because inevitably it will have a wait list as everyone wants to read this one).

*many spoilers ahead*

It’s probably because I’d just finished the Elizabeth Strout, but the style of this one read as similar. Direct, descriptive of character’s thoughts, weighted moments that are not Literary – just excellent, and the interweaving of characters from previous works. Pressed I’d say I liked Strout better, but it would be hard pressed.

Long Island opens with a knock at the door. Eilis opens it to learn that her husband, Tony, has been having an affair. The woman he’s been sleeping with is pregnant, and her husband is at the door to explain that when the baby is born he will be dropping it off with Tony. And for some reason Tony thinks Eilis should go along with this plan. All of Tony’s family seems to think the same. Eilis is not so keen.

So off she goes (home?) to Ireland, bringing her grown children with her. With the unanswered question of whether she’ll return, and if she does return, if she’ll stay with Tony. She makes it seem like it’s his choice – like if he takes in the baby she won’t, and if he doesn’t, she will – but the reader knows (even if Eilis doesn’t) that this will always be her choice. Tony is not a choice maker.

Complications abound when she returns to Ireland. Her mother’s ailing health. Her former flame, Jim Farrel – now engaged to her best friend (but secretly!). Her adult children and what they want and expect from her.

How she can make a choice when so many people Expect So Much of her. What choices are hers, in the end. Well, that is the ending, and it’s a cliff hanger, so buckle up your book club and let everyone have their say.

For me? I want Eilis and Jim together on Long Island. And I want it to be a world where what Eilis wants she can choose. Want, we know, isn’t always get.

Delightful, great writing, absorbing (make it past the first 30 pages) and heart-full. Romance? I don’t know I’d call it that – stop slinging around genre words like you need them. Just read it, ok?

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March 17, 2024 · 8:22 pm

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is lovely. A short – novella? – novel that follows Furlong, the small town coal-delivery man as he discovers truths both of his own past and of the horrors of the Catholic “mother and baby homes.” When Furlong discovers a young woman being held captive in a coal shed the nuns who have kept her there implicitly threaten to deny Furlong’s own daughters access to the Church-run school. Furlong must then decide between preserving the goodwill of the Church for his own family and rescuing – at least one – of these trapped women. Complicating his choice is Furlong’s status as a bastard himself, raised to ‘goodness’ through the mercy of a wealthy woman who allowed his own mother to stay with her despite her ‘fallen’ status.

What, the book asks, should we be willing to give up for a just cause? What personal sacrifice do we owe when institutional harm and state violence is being wreaked upon the innocent? How can we imagine ourselves inherently good or worthy or kind when so much of what we are and what we have owes to chance and circumstance? And so, with the privilege we do hold, what moral obligation do we have to use this privilege well?

For Furlong this is a question pondered by the fire with a decision that he recognizes as implicating those he loves best and. For the reader these are the questions that are not – as historical fiction always reminds us – of the past, but urgently present.

It is an excellent read and one offered on St. Patrick’s day for its very certain setting. Oh and to let you know it was adapted for TV with Cillian Murphy starring, so you know, that’s also a good reason to read it.

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