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If we were to ask you what comes to mind when you think of Ireland, we hope you are conjuring up more than four-leaf clovers, leprechauns, and a St. Patrick’s Day you can’t remember. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that, of course.
But Irish heritage is so much more. In fact, the United States has dedicated the month of March to the appreciation of Irish Heritage. So we invite you to celebrate the Irish spirit with us, with one of their great traditions: literature.
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{buybutton id=6341/}The Love Objectby Edna O’Brien
One of the most prolific authors, not just in Ireland, but the world, Edna O’Brien writes lyrically and passionately about women’s lives. In each story, the objects of each woman’s affections vary, but all are masterfully bound together by their love and longing. At once heartrending and captivating, The Love Object is an unforgettable exploration of isolation and romantic obsession.
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Over the course of his long and distinguished career, Frank O’Connor wrote many stories about priests. Some of his most iconic characters are men of the cloth, and few writers have portrayed the unique demands of the priesthood with as much empathy, honesty, and wit. This collection, edited and introduced by his widow, Harriet O’Donovan Sheehy, brings together the best of O’Connor’s short fiction on the subject.
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{buybutton id=15045/}The Railway Station Manby Jennifer Johnston
Newly widowed, she spends her days painting in her glass-walled studio atop a hillside on Ireland’s northwest coast. From her perch she can study the rocks and dunes of the land sloping into the sea, the fishing boats rocking in the tide, and the railway station, abandoned for forty years, now being refurbished by Roger, an Englishman and veteran of the Second World War. Her friendship with Roger develops slowly, but in tandem with her growing affection for him is an intractable suspicion over his past. As the Troubles continue to settle over Ireland, Helen experiences sparks of happiness with Roger. Meanwhile, her son Jack, a radical living in Dublin, is increasing his involvement with an impassioned group of Irish guerillas, unwittingly setting in motion a series of events that lead to a shocking conclusion for both him and his mother.
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{buybutton id=846/}The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell
What the pig did—in Joseph Caldwell’s charmingly romantic tale of an American in contemporary Ireland—is create a ruckus, a rumpus, a disturbance . . . utter pandemonium. What the pig eventually does is root up in Aunt Kitty’s vegetable garden evidence of a possible transgression that each of the novel’s three Irish characters is convinced the other probably benefited from.
How this hilarious mystery is resolved in The Pig Did It—the first entry in Mr. Caldwell’s forthcoming Pig Trilogy—inspires both comic eloquence and a theatrically colorful canvas depicting the brooding Irish land and seascape.
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Ruth calls herself a malevolent creature, ruled since childhood by hatred and envy for her adopted sister, Elizabeth. She grew up in Elizabeth’s shadow, always falling short of her goodness and generosity, constantly resenting her very presence in the family. As they grow old, Ruth sets out to destroy her without guilt or hesitation. Ruth will strike Elizabeth where she’s most vulnerable—she will steal her husband and send her collapsing into ruin. Written in Hart’s concise, striking prose, Sin is a powerful and compulsively readable exploration of hate—and the destruction and tragedy it begets.
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{buybutton id=16843/}In 1778 Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby left County Kilkenny for Wales to live together as a married couple. Both well born, highly educated Irish women, the Ladies of Llangollen, as they came to be known, defied all eighteenth-century social convention and spent half a century together in a loving relationship.
Removed from the intrusive gaze of the world, the fictional Eleanor and Sarah retreat to their shared home to study literature and language and enjoy their solitude. In an imagined account, Doris Grumbach brings this gripping chronicle to new audiences.
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{buybutton id=11338/}Good Boys and Dead Girls by Mary Gordon
Much acclaimed for her novels, Mary Gordon is also a brilliant and wide-ranging essayist. Gathering together twenty-eight of her forays into nonfiction, Good Boys and Dead Girlsprovides a richly autobiographical context for the themes that mark her fiction, such as Irish-American life, Catholicism, embattled families, and the redeeming power of art. Many of the pieces offer insights into artists and other writers: There are admiring accounts of Edith Wharton, Stevie Smith, and Ford Madox Ford, and a piquant critique of the depiction of women by certain celebrated male novelists.
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{buybutton id=11122/}An Act of Worshipby Kate Thompson
For eco-warrior and journalist Sarah O’Malley, a temporary stint managing her sister’s holistic food store is the perfect escape. But her baggage is unavoidable: Haunted by the spirit of her dead lover, Duncan—who dispenses advice whether she wants it or not—Sarah becomes enmeshed in the mystery of a dying calf. Her search for answers brings her into contact with Malachy Glynn, the town butcher. The philosophical Malachy is the antithesis of everything Sarah believes in. But as their community descends into a quagmire of deceit and violence, Sarah and Malachy become unlikely allies in a quest for the truth.
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Ishky is Jewish; Marie and Shomake are Irish; Ollie is Italian. All children of immigrants, they are confronted daily by the prejudice that rules in one of the world’s greatest urban centers: New York City. Living in slums, they must rely on each other to overcome hunger, disease, violence, and the bigotry of those who arrived before them. Fighting for a better life against the tide of poverty, the children must overcome their own city’s barbarism, or be consumed by it.
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It took nine years for James Joyce to find a publisher for this vivid, uncompromising, and altogether brilliant portrait of Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century. Now regarded as one of the finest story collections in the English language, it contains such masterpieces as “Araby,” “Grace,” and “The Dead,” and serves as a valuable and accessible introduction to the themes that define Joyce’s later work, including the monumental Ulysses.