{"id":8917,"date":"2021-03-17T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8917"},"modified":"2021-03-16T17:56:28","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T21:56:28","slug":"leapin-leprechauns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8917","title":{"rendered":"Leapin Leprechauns!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When it comes to a painful history, Irish authors know whereof they speak, and they know how to tell a story laced with humor. Fiction is one way to process lingering cultural traumas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I\u2019ve read quite a few books by Irish authors in paper, they are wonderful books to listen to, as the narrators\u2019 accents are transporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crime Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up for me is A Galway Epiphany<\/em> by the award-winning Ken Bruen, called \u201cthe Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel,\u201d being released April 1. It features his character Jack Taylor, an ex-cop turned private eye who becomes the center of his own mystery, when he is hit by a truck and left comatose but unscratched (narrated by Gerry O\u2019Brien).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Cold, Cold Ground<\/em> – Adrian McKinty\u2019s first book featuring police detective Sean Duffy\u2013a rare Catholic in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. In the bleak Belfast spring of 1981, hunger strikers in HM Prison Maze are dying. Paramilitaries are setting off bombs, gunfire rakes the streets, and Duffy is investigating a possible serial killer who targets homosexuals. The violent backdrop is tangible, especially with the forceful narration of the award-winning Gerard Doyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuart Neville wrote a series of excellent novels also set in Belfast, including the one I listened to, The Ghosts of Belfast<\/em>. Fellow author John Connolly called it \u201cnot only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times.\u201d \u00a0Also narrated by Gerard Doyle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview<\/a>, Doyle says that when he was a child, his parents would often take him with them to the pub. “I’d sit on the bench late into the evening listening to the stories and the lies. And the music! I even sang sometimes. They’d put me up on a table. One of my best was Ronnie Donegan’s ‘My Old Man’s a Dustbin.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gathering<\/em> by Booker prize-winner Anne Enright \u201chas more layers to it\u2014of grief, love, lightness, tragedy, absurdity, and trauma\u2014than an onion, and may cause as much weeping,\u201d said the editors of The American Scholar<\/em><\/a>. I felt privileged to hear her reading a few years ago under the auspices of Princeton\u2019s Fund for Irish Studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glenn Patterson is another writer who gave a memorable reading in Princeton, and his The International<\/em><\/a> is the story of a single night in the bar of the International Hotel, while upstairs a consequential meeting forming the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association takes place. It\u2019s not about militants at all but about state-of-mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may think there\u2019s not much new literary territory to explore in male-female sexual relations, yet award-winning author Eimear McBride\u2019s The Lesser Bohemians<\/em><\/a> finds it and mines it. Innovative, immersive, dazzling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to a painful history, Irish authors know whereof they speak, and they know how to tell a story laced with humor. Fiction is one way to process lingering cultural traumas. While I\u2019ve read quite a few books … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Leapin Leprechauns! - some of my favorite books set in Ireland and Northern Ireland in recent years.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[77,52,54,40,185,632,126,60],"tags":[315,1847,377,660,1848,331,1845,1844,1846],"class_list":["post-8917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-language","category-police","category-reading-2","category-storytelling","tag-adrian-mckinty","tag-anne-enright","tag-belfast","tag-eimear-mcbride","tag-glenn-patterson","tag-ireland","tag-ken-bruen","tag-northern-ireland","tag-stuart-neville"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2jP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8919,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8917\/revisions\/8919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}