I first noticed Eggshells when it arrived at work, with those hints about changelings and fairy tale echoes. But I didn’t pick it up at the time. It was only more recently when the author was named as winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature 2018 that I decided I’d give it a go. […]
Mollie Carberry ; book 2 I quite enjoyed the first book in this series, The Making of Mollie, and this second book picks up pretty much where that one left off. Mollie is learning more about the suffragette movement and getting more involved, she also learns more about the dangers involved. If you enjoyed the […]
Mollie Carberry ; book 1 Mollie Carberry’s life seems pretty dull until she discovers her older sister Phyllis is a suffragette! When she and her friend Nora get involved they must face the question of how far a girl should go for her beliefs. Anna Carey’s Rebecca series of books are popular ones in the […]
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly started life in The Sunday Times and currently stars in The Irish Times, he is a fictional wealthy southside Dubliner. It is a satire of a certain aspect of the Celtic Tiger population. Those who speak in “Dortspeak”. But I’m guessing that means very little to any non-Irish blog readers, so I’ll keep […]
The unnamed central character of this short story finds himself suddenly craving blood. He can’t understand it, he is a normal person, a normal man, why on earth is this happening to him. He tries to rationalise it, maybe he has an iron deficiency? Or maybe it is a totally misdirected sex-drive? And yet, he continues to find himself being drawn towards blood. Bloody raw steaks, the next-door neighbour’s chickens…
From the new glass bridge which spanned the inscrutable waters of the Grand Canal, the tram purred downhill and glided gently into the heart of the city.
It was the opening of this book that persuaded me to buy it. The way Ní Duibhne pokes fun at that certain class of Dublin people. It made me smile, but because I knew that there really are people who think that way. Or at least there used to be, now with the demise of the Celtic Tiger maybe there are less of them than there once were.
Travelling by tram, at least on the Green Line, had a bit of cachet. Being seen on it was not necessarily a bad thing, whereas being seen on a Dublin bus, even a most respectable bus like the 7 or the 11, was an abject admission of social and economic failure. Only the young, the old and the poor used the bus. But any successful citizen in the prime of life could travel on the Luas, confident that neither their reputation nor self-esteem would be tarnished: doctors and architects, solicitors and designers, all used it, at least at weekends.
ISBN: 0571218016
See also: Three Monkey’s Interview ; Dublin’s One Book One City ;
He was born in the dying days.
It was the withering end of 1896. He was called William after the long-dead Orange King, because his father took an interest in such distant matters.
A busker and a Bis Issue seller meet on the streets of Dublin. He also repairs hoovers, which is handy, as she has a problem with hers.[1] He fixes it. She asks him to sing. They talk and chat and sing and write songs. Eventually they even record a song. Not much of a storyline […]
A great film. Found it really funny, and despite the fact that it is a very Irish film there is not a bit of Oirishness to it.
The plot revolves around two lads who work in the local warehouse type shop. One has no love life at all, the other has recently broken up with his girlfriend, and she is now dating a bank manager. Read more about Intermission …
This is an Irish film, with some of the same characters as the spoof documentary Paths to Freedom. I didn’t catch a lot of that series, but thought I’d pop along to the film; after all how could I avoid a film with the tagline “I’m still Rats from the flats. Used to have a little, now I’ve fuck all.” Read more about Spin the Bottle …