‘The City and the Pillar’ by Gore Vidal

TW: Sexual Assault The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal is a novel with a complicated history filled with controversy and change. There are two version of the novel, I read the second version in which the end of the novel was altered (not for the better, in my opinion). On the surface it …

In Appreciation of Patrick Kavanagh

So once again I am back with a general appreciation post (not my fault they were born so close together). Today I am celebrating the Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh, the Monaghan born writer famously caught between two worlds, that of the urban in Dublin and his rural background in Monaghan. Patrick Kavanagh was …

‘Galápagos’ by Kurt Vonnegut

Galápagos like many of Vonnegut's novels manages both to be endlessly humourous and thoughtful at the same time. This novel was sent to me by a friend (a big fan of Vonnegut) and as soon as I started finally reading it, having been sitting by my bed for weeks, I was instantly reminded why Kurt …

‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge is a book that could not have emerged at a more perfect time. It is not often non-fiction that isn't biography or somehow world war II manages to make its way to the front windows of bookshops but while Eddo-Lodge's book specifically …

‘The Green Fool’ by Patrick Kavanagh

Once again I return to Irish writing in the middle of the twentieth century with Patrick Kavanagh's first novel The Green Fool. Now it is no secret that I am a fan of Kavanagh's poetry but having read both of his novels I think it's safe to say I am now also a fan of …

‘The Spinning Heart’ by Donal Ryan

My thoughts on 'The Spinning Heart' by Donal Ryan

‘Tarry Flynn’ by Patrick Kavanagh

Primarily I knew Patrick Kavanagh and I would guess to many other people as first and foremost a poet. I was already a fan of his wonderful poetic works which captures the heart of man caught between urban and rural, history and modernity in mid century Ireland. I had always been vaguely aware that he …

‘Crome Yellow’ by Aldous Huxley

It must be said that if you know Huxley it's probably for his groundbreaking dystopian novel Brave New World, well this is not that. Crome Yellow is Huxley's first novel and couldn't be more different to what many people might expect out of him, but that's not to say it's worse... just different. Crome Yellow …

‘Brendan Behan’ by Ulick O’Connor

I will go on record as saying right here that I am generally not a fan of biography, or so I thought. I'm coming around to the idea that perhaps I am a fan of biography but only when I care about who it is (which I admit should have been self-evident). Ulick O'Connor's work …

‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker

            This is the latest installment in ‘being surprised that a book that everyone agrees is good, is good’. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a novel not unlike Frankenstein wherein the myth surrounding it and the dozens of adaptations of it tends to muddy the water as to what the work itself is. I’m sure the …