| Book Reviews By Tom
Deignan
 Fiction
F.X. Toole found literary success at the age of 70, and his first collection
of stories Rope Burns was the basis for Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winning
film Million Dollar Baby. Sadly, Toole (whose dad was an Irish immigrant)
died before the film hit the screen. But we do have one more work from
this late-blooming artist, a boxing novel called Pound for Pound. As Toole
was, Dan Cooney is an aging, Irish-American cut man. He guides a young,
hungry boxer through adversity to a shot at the big time. With an introduction
by James Ellroy, Toole’s final work is rich and rewarding.
($25.95 / 384 pages / Ecco)
Anita Notaro’s latest novel of ladies in Dublin is called The WWW
Club, though it’s got nothing to do with the Internet.
Sick of faddish diets, four women in search of the bodies they had in
their 20s form the Women Watching Weight Club.
Generally, however, the club meetings revolve around wine, beer and food,
followed by promises to really begin losing weight next week.
But The WWW Club is also about all the stresses of middle age, from weight
gains to career and romantic stress. Notaro’s fans know what to
expect – outrageous comedy, melodrama, and more than a few vivid
insights into the difficulties of life.
($24.95 / 368 pages / William Morrow)
Irish-born novelist Gerard Donovan opened a lot of eyes with his acclaimed
novel Schopenhauer’s Telescope, which was nominated for the Booker
Prize. Donovan (who teaches English at Suffolk Community College) has
returned with another dazzling, though quiet, novel called Julius Winsome.
The title character lives alone with his dog in a remote cabin in the
woods, having lost family members to death and other mysterious circumstances.
So, when his dog is killed by hunters, Winsome’s fragile mental
state breaks, setting up a confrontation that has deep philosophical implications,
and also makes for a fine read.
($23.95 / 224 pages / Overlook)
Actress Emer McCourt (seen in films such as Ken Loach’s Riff Raff)
has switched gears and become a novelist. Her first effort, Elvis, Jesus
and Me mingles serious themes with a light tone which nabbed numerous
prizes, including the Pendleton May First Book Award.
The novel follows young Ger, a girl who loves Elvis and asks Jesus for
a miracle: she wants to be turned into a boy. Amidst this kind of fun,
McCourt creates a poignant story of confused youth, giving Ger an unforgettable
voice.
($12.50 / 212 pages / Trafalgar Square)
The young students at St. Edna’s (where a lad named Padraic Pearse
is headmaster) have become inspired to fight for Ireland’s freedom.
But the two boys at the center of Morgan Llywelyn’s new historical
novel The Young Rebels are too young to take part in the Easter Rising.
This doesn’t stop them and soon enough they are swept up in the
tumultuous events of 1916.
This is another compelling mix of history and fiction from Llywelyn,
perhaps best known for The Lion of Ireland. ($12.95 / 224 pages / Irish
Books and Media)
Also out by the same author is The Greener Shore: A Novel of the Druids
of Hibernia ($24.95 / 320 pages / Del Rey)
Fact and fiction also mingle in Thomas Keneally’s new novel A Commonwealth
of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia.
The author of Schindler’s List, the Irish-Australian Keneally
has also written several Irish books, including The Great Shame: The Triumph
of the Irish in the English-Speaking World.
At the center of Keneally’s latest novel is Arthur Phillip, the
ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, who is charged with establishing
a penal colony in Australiav in the 1780s.
Brilliantly using personal journals and documents, Keneally brings the
deadly journey across the sea back to life. Aside from illuminating the
brutal lives of these convicts and military men, Keneally also fulfills
the promise of his subtitle, allowing the reader to grasp how Australia
came to exist.
($26.95 / 384 pages / Nan A. Talese)
Sports
Ireland and the Ryder Cup by Paul Kelly comes out just as the 36th Ryder
Cup takes place at the K Club, Co. Kildare, this September 2006. This
lavishly illustrated book looks at the nearly 20 Irishmen who have competed
in this event, from Fred Daly in 1947 up to today’s greats such
as Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley.
($35 / 256 pages / Irish Books and Media)
 Jerrold Casway,
a professor of history at Maryland’s Howard Community College, puts
his two areas of interest – Irish history and nineteenth-century
baseball – to good use in his new book Ed Delahanty in the Emerald
Age of Baseball.
Delahanty “personified the flamboyant, exciting spectator-favorite,
the Casey-at-the-bat, Irish slugger,” writes Casway.
At the turn of the 20th century, Delahanty was one of baseball’s
best hitters, on his way to compiling the fourth best batting average
in history. But a serious gambling problem led to an even more serious
drinking problem. Delahanty was eventually found dead at the bottom of
Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls.
Perhaps most interesting in Casway’s book is his look at how the
Irish dominated baseball during this era.
He says Irish-American players made up 30–50 percent of all players,
managers, and team captains. For these children and grandchildren of the
Famine, baseball in America was a ticket out of poverty.
($15 / 400 pages / Notre Dame)
A final fascinating sports book out recently is Paddy on the Hardwood:
A Journey in Irish Hoops by Rus Bradburd. A former NCAA coach, Bradburd
went to Ireland to write and play music, but ended up turning around the
struggling Tralee Tigers.
($24.95 / 200 pages / University of New Mexico)
NON-Fiction
Irish America contributor Joseph McBride offers up yet another excellent
biography of a cinematic legend with his latest book What Ever Happened
to Orson Welles? As he has in past biographies (most notably his authoritative
Searching for John Ford, about the acclaimed Irish-American director of
The Quiet Man), McBride takes what is thought to be a well-known subject
and offers up fascinating new insights.
($29.95 / 384 pages / University of Kentucky Press)
Two more books worth checking out about the birth of modern Ireland are
Myths and Memories of the Easter Rising ($30 / 238 pages / Irish Academic
Press) and Easter 1916 by Charles Townshend.
($28.95 / 480 pages / Ivan R. Dee)
To mark their 50th anniversary, Conor Murray has written The Clancy Brothers
with Tommy Makem & Robbie O’Connell: The Men Behind the Sweaters.
This is the first full-length biography on the famed Irish folkies. They
formed in March of 1956 and hit the big time in 1961 following an appearance
on The Ed Sullivan Show.
There have, of course, been lineup changes and other ups and down, all
chronicled here by Murray, who says he was brought up on the music of
the Clancy Brothers from the time he was an infant. That wasn’t
all that long ago. Murray, a writer, actor, musician, librarian and full-time
college student from Massachusetts, is just 21. This book includes 300
photographs.
($29.95 / 256 pages / Irish Books and Media)
Poetry
Lón Anama, edited by Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, is described
as “Poems for Prayer from the Irish Tradition.” Most interesting
in this book are the brief but fascinating backgrounds Murchaidh offers
for all 77 sacred poems, some of which are over 10 centuries old.
Themes such as penance, life, and faith (as well as doubt) seem to dominate
this highly original anthology, whether the poem is 1,000 or 10 years
old.
($29.95 / 374 pages / Irish Books and Media)
Two more poetry books worth a look are Donegal Suite: Poems of Ireland
by Father John McNamee, a priest from inner city Philadelphia ($13.95
/ 62 pages / Dufour) and The Midnight Court by Ciaran Carson. The latter
is a translation of Brian Merriman’s 18th century Irish language
classic Cuirt an Mhean Oiche.
($12.95 / 63 pages / Wake Forest)
 Recommended
Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming Up from Under Michael
Patrick McDonald
In a publishing climate literally teeming with Irish and Irish American
memoirs Michael Patrick McDonald’s All Souls was far and away one
of the best. Subtitled A Family Story from Southie, McDonald’s memoir
described a broken community which, in one way or another, claimed the
lives of four of his siblings. McDonald’s book stood out because
it was revealing in its depiction of an environment too often romanticized
or dismissed.
McDonald (who is working on a big screen version of All Souls with director
Ron Shelton) has now written a follow-up entitled Easter Rising: An Irish
American Coming Up from Under. The book picks up where All Souls left
off, as McDonald finally leaves the impoverished projects of the old Irish
ghetto behind.
He makes an emotional connection in the music clubs of downtown Boston
and later the Lower East Side of New York City.
But the most wrenching scenes unfold when McDonald tries to go home again.
Mentally and physically, his attempts to connect with the South Boston
places of his youth pain him. There is even a meeting with the father
he never knew. Sadly, it is right after his father has died.
The emotional high point of Easter Rising is McDonald’s second trip
to Ireland, with his mother, who was in many ways the star of All Souls.
McDonald’s mother is a wounded yet vibrant soul who has survived
all of the obstacles in her life.
This final section might sound a bit hokey, especially since McDonald
claims that Ireland made “everything look different from now on.”
But McDonald makes all of this believable in what is another insightful,
unflinching memoir.
($24 / 241 pages / Houghton Mifflin)
|
