Irish Hunger and Migration: Myth, Memory and Memorialization Edited by Patrick Fitzgerald, Christine Kinealy, and Gerard Moran The biennial Ulster-American Heritage Symposium, which explores Ulster’s connections with the United States, celebrated its 20th anniversary at two venues in 2014: Quinnipiac University in Connecticut and the University of Georgia in Athens. Since … [Read more...] about Review of Books
review of books
Review of Books
FICTION The Dunning Man By Kevin Fortuna The characters in The Dunning Man are your friends, your wives and husbands, your acquaintances you see too seldom and when you see them again you remember why you hadn’t seen them in a while. They are both better and worse versions of the people we could be and the people we know. This duality is possible because Kevin Fortuna has an … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Review of Books
Miss Emily By Nuala O’Connor The Irish put great store in spinning a narrative around every small thing,” quips Emily Dickinson in Nuala O’Connor’s revelatory American debut novel Miss Emily. O’Connor’s narrative is no small feat, bringing together the life of Dickinson the poet and her fictional Irish maid Ada Concannon. What follows is a moving and often engrossing tale of … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Review of Books
Recently-published books of Irish-American interest. NON-FICTION Poets and the Peacock Dinner By Lucy McDiarmid Virginia Woolf wrote, “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” a message that permeates Lucy McDiarmid’s sumptuous new book Poets and the Peacock Dinner. McDiarmid, a professor of English at Montclair State University in New … [Read more...] about Review of Books
Review of Books
Young Skins By Colin Barrett Glanbeigh, the fictional Everytown of Mayo native Colin Barrett’s Young Skins, is “nowhere you have been, but you know its ilk,” asserts the narrator of the collection’s opening short story. Barrett borrows from the techniques of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, immediately setting his debut book in the tradition of literary giants – … [Read more...] about Review of Books