Peter Costello
The selected choices of our reviewers
Joe Carroll
My choice is tripartite: Patrick Kavanagh: Collected Poems, Tarry Flynn and the biography of the poet by Antoinette Quinn, none of them new, but still to be found in the shops.
On a visit to the Patrick Kavanagh Centre in Inniskeen I picked up a new issue of Tarry Flynn and re-read it after, it must be 50 years.
That led me back to the Collected Poems and Antoinette Quinn’s superb biography. Her research was extraordinary as she hunted down every written and available living source. These included former British prime minister, Harold Macmillan and his son Maurice whose firm published an early collection of his poetry in the 1930s, a great boost for the peasant-poet at the time.
Quinn traces the evolution of Kavanagh’s Catholicism from First Communion, through the mysticism of early poems, and the criticism of Church dominance over rural Ireland evidenced in The Great Hunger and Lough Derg. He did not allow Lough Derg to be published during his lifetime with its reference to a case where a monk seduced a schoolgirl.
Quinn surmises that he could not risk antagonising the clerical support he solicited at that time to survive in wartime Dublin. He used to pester Archbishop John Charles McQuaid for financial aid and to secure him employment. The Archbishop frequently obliged and secured him a job with the Catholic newspaper, the Standard where he was film critic for a time, although he savaged most of the films he viewed.
The late Fr Tom Stack wrote a short book about “God and Patrick Kavanagh” which includes an anthology. Of Kavanagh’s 253 published poems, Fr Stack pointed out, no fewer than 138 “include explicitly religious themes, images or allusions.”
But he observes cautiously: “the exact status of Patrick Kavanagh’s mystical moments, whether we place them in inverted comments or not, is hardly for any of us to judge.”
Mary Kenny
The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray, which came out in a Macmillan paperback this year, was such a compelling read that I’m planning to read it again, despite its 656 pages. It’s been described as an entertainment and a family saga, and it is all that, but it is also a “state of the nation” Irish novel for me. It depicts the shifting and crossover values of Ireland in 2008 and before; Catholic practice mixes with Celtic Tiger business opportunities (and failures), and concern over the environment is a key focus for a most sympathetic character, 12-year-old PJ. A superb, meaningful, funny and sad book.
Peter Costello
One of the most impressive books to my way this year was the recently published Newman and His Critics by the American Newman scholar Edward Short.
This comprises both an overview of the development of Newman belief and opinion, both religious and secular, though at all times they are hard to separate, as reflected in his dialogues with a series of friends and one or two opponents. Newman in Ireland seems to have become a matter of specialised interest these days to many of Newman’s admirers. This is a pity. Everything he wrote, his diaries, letters and larger works, is filled with interest not only for the nature of religion, the state of faith in his times, and the natures of Victorian life and society. It is a pity that his Irish experiences were no dealt with by Edward Short, but perhaps one cannot have everything at once, even from Newman.
Gabriel Fitzmaurice
John Moriarty, poet, philosopher, mystic, mythologian, was enormous in his heart, in his soul and in his mind. So enormous sometimes that it is difficult to read him.
Amanda Carmody, his niece, and Mary McGillicuddy, author of John Moriarty, Not the Whole Story (Lilliput Press, 2018), an introduction to his life and vision, have lovingly given us John Moriarty: Grounded in Story (Lilliput Press, €25), a selection of his writings, taken from his many books, about the influence on him of his native place, Moyvane in north Kerry.
An enlightened teacher who shows us how to walk beautifully on the earth, he draws us here into his vision of a Moyvane of big characters, big talk, big stories, big dreamings.
In a world where, he has said, we are rapidly becoming an AIDS virus to the earth, Grounded in Story is an invitation to the world and wisdom of an extraordinary man who reminds us of the Godliness, sacredness and inter-dependness of all creation. Sensitively illustrated by Amanda Carmody, it is a fascinating, important and very readable book.
Desmond Egan’s latest book of poems, Laptop (Goldsmith Press €20), like Rothko’s paintings to which he frequently refers, is miraculous.
In an age of “lazy atheism” as Egan describes it, it is good to find a poet who sees God in a battered teapot. Egan’s world is one where “in spite of wars and horror and ruin/there are always wonders” for “wonder is the beginning of belief” and life “is full of God’s excitement” “cutting through the waste”.
We are free but not abandoned, “God is always thereabouts always/nearer than the church door”. Egan’s poetry is timeless, it belongs “somewhere others have not been”. A true poet, he goes on “trying to try [his] best/not able not to”, his otherness “complete as a sonnet”.
These poems, like Rothko’s paintings, try to “address/life and love and it all/with music playing” because he reminds us “life without music is unlife”. I read and re-read Laptop with profit and pleasure. It is a lón anama, food for the soul, whose true music is “more nourishing than milk”.
Thomas McCarthy
There were many wonderful books to read in 2024, including Victoria Kennefick’s marvellous Egg / Shell (Carcanet Press), John FitzGerald’s superb collection Longdistance (The Gallery Press) and Kerryman Paddy Bushe’s masterpiece The Amergin Step (Dingle Publishing), but the most life-changing read of the year for me was Evelyn Conlon’s Reading Rites (The Blackstaff Press).
Novelist, short-story writer and cultural commentator, Conlon has written a uniquely frank, individualistic critiquing of her own life and the politics of the women’s movement in Ireland. “I loved every day of my St Louis adventure, a fondness nailed down when I learned how to skip classes that didn’t interest me,’ she writes of her lovely St Louis Secondary School in Monaghan.
She was soon skipping away from UCD with its smell of drying concrete to travel the wild Seventies world. Then “In October 1976, I arrived in Maynooth with a five-month-old baby to study for a BA.”
The adventure of her adulthood began that day. It was an adventure of fiction writing and advocacy, of home-making and critiquing the world that male editors had created. This is a treasure of a memoir, written by a Monaghan intellectual of lively, no-nonsense genius.
Thomas O’Loughlin
The most fascinating book I read this year was A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse. The public bathhouse was the social institution of the cities of the Roman world. They were the mark of civilization and were a linchpin of society and gossip – but also of nakedness and the cults of the cities’ deities. Not the place to expect a Jew (or a Christian)! And, that was the opinion of most historians. Then this book – a mix of archaeology, legal history, and a detective story – showed how Jews adapted to their surroundings and took full advantage of the bathhouse. This is a study of one historical period, but also a tale of how living religions adapt and thrive. It may not be the easiest of reads, but it is an enlightening one.
A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean, by Yaron Z. Eliav is published by Princeton University Press.
Felix M Larkin
John Bruton, who died on February 6 last, was one of the most significant figures in Irish public life for more than fifty years. He was Taoiseach from December 1994 to June 1997, and notably successful in that role in holding together a coalition government comprising three very different parties – the so-called Rainbow Coalition.
Kenny’s book is a classic “first rough draft of history” and a great read for all political junkies”
In his recently-published book, Under the Rainbow, Shane Kenny has given us an insider’s account of that government. He was Bruton’s press secretary for the duration of the government. He chronicles its vicissitudes of fortune, but rightly emphasises its many achievements – especially in relation to the Northern Ireland peace process.
Its achievements are overshadowed in public memory by the fact that the government was not returned to power in the general election of June 1997. What is forgotten, however, is that the government lost the election because of a collapse in support for the Labour Party. Fine Gael increased its representation in the Dáil from 45 to 54 seats, a strong vote of confidence in Bruton as Taoiseach – but cold comfort to him.
Kenny’s book is a classic “first rough draft of history” and a great read for all political junkies.
Anthony Redmond
I am sending you a mention of Up From The Ashes, an amazing story which I read a couple of years ago and reread again recently, which I found then and now deeply moving and uplifting
This is an inspiring story of a Syrian Christian doctor who decided to stay in his country and help as many people as he could after the horrific war broke out there in 2011. That was the year that monstrous changes took place in Syria with huge numbers of Jihadists flooding into the country with the intention to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad and impose an Islamic regime.
Anyone who opposed these violent Jihadists in Syria became a target. ISIS became shorthand for horror and sadism. The West supported many of these Jihadist rebels. Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, the Syrian Catholic Archbishop, said that if Assad were forced to go, Syria would become another Libya.
We now have the cruel situation where the US has imposed the most terrible sanctions on Syria resulting in dire poverty and hardship for the Syrian people. They have virtually no electricity and heating and find it very difficult to feed their children.
Now we have the fluid situation where the varied rebel groups have not only seized Homs and Damascus, but have forced the repugnant President al-Bashar Assad to flee abroad . North and south the people are celebrating, but in such a rapidly developing situation the future is very uncertain. Will there be social regeneration or a renewal of inter-faction fighting?
Dr A (he has to remain anonymous for the sake of his family) has decided to stay and help his people in their hour of need. His deeply moving story is one of heroism and love for his country and his people.
Up From the Ashes: A Syrian Doctor’s Story of Sacrifice and Hope, by ‘Dr A’ with Samara Levy is published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Frank Litton
Contemplating the degradation of United States’ politics, I scanned my shelves looking for consolation. I had read good analyses of democracy’s travails published this year. James Davison Hunter’s Democracy and solidarity : on the cultural roots of America’s political crisis ( Yale University Press) stands out with its account of how the cultural resources to sustain solidarity rapidly diminish. Hunter does not tell us how they might be replenished.
Politics of Nature is a key text in body of work that educates us in a new way of seeing ourselves and our place in the world”
Then, I recovered Bruno Latour’s Politics of Nature (Harvard University Press). Unfortunately we live in interesting times. Political institutions fail as the problems they confront deepen. The devastations of climate change top the list.
In the 17th century Hobbes and Locke transformed our understanding of our interdependencies and the institutions that managed them. They laid the foundations of the modern political order. These foundations weaken and crack.
We need a new reframing of our politics of a similar scope and scale. Latour, philosopher, anthropologist, sociologist, catholic, who died in 2022, is the ‘Hobbes’ of our time. Politics of Nature is a key text in body of work that educates us in a new way of seeing ourselves and our place in the world. There is a better way.
Aubrey Malone
I don’t normally pay $70 for a book, but made an exception for Abel Debritto’s A Catalogue of Ordinary Madness (Chatwin), an incredible 854 page bio-bibliography of Charles Bukowski, a man who brought poetry to the masses.
Neil Jordan is as great a writer as a film director. His memoir Amnesiac (Apollo, £17.96) was my book of the year – prose poetry at its finest.
Philip Gefter’s Cocktails With George and Martha (Ithaka, £19.03) is a fascinating study of the main characters of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. They bled into their actual lives. Gefter tells us how.
Elvis Presley’s daughter Lisa-Marie died last year. His grand-daughter Riley Keough has compiled what she says were notes toward an intended memoir by her mother, From Here to the Great Unknown (Macmillan, £12.50), adding her own life story as a subtext. A tragic catalogue of an ill-fated dynasty.