Within hours of his death at 88 in 2016, tributes from Irish writers poured in to the Irish Times describing how much William Trevor’s work meant to them. Described by many as the “greatest living English language writer,” Trevor’s books are considered very English, yet he considered himself an “Irish writer” belonging to the “Irish tradition.” His stated goal was to take Irish provincialism and make it universal. The picture that emerges is that of a […] Read More

“Foster,” a novella by Irish writer Claire Keegan, set in rural Ireland, was the inspiration for the award-winning  movie  “The Quiet Girl”—in Irish, “An Cailín Ciúin,”  a 2022 Irish  coming of age drama written  and directed by Colm Bairead in his feature film debut.  Keegan’s  novella  is narrated  through the eyes of a 9-year-old girl. She is one of many siblings in a household with few amenities and another baby on the way, with an  overwhelmed mother and a somewhat disinterested father.  […] Read More

The Letters of Scott Fitzgerald, Edited by Andrew Turnbull, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963   Reading the letters of F Scott Fitzgerald is like eavesdropping on a private conversation as the unseen listener, where nothing is censored except a reference here and there to an individual that might offend.  Fitzgerald’s letters offer a highly intimate unguarded glimpse into his personal life and relationships and reveal his deep bond with his only child his daughter “Scottie,” whom he sometimes addresses […] Read More

This book, winner of one of the literary world’s most prestigious awards—the 2023 Booker Prize for the “best piece of English language fiction published in the United Kingdom and Ireland in a given year” —is my first introduction to the Irish writer Paul Lynch. For some readers, Lynch’s depiction of a society unravelling under a totalitarian government in the Republic of Ireland—is a figment of a wild imagination; for others tuned in to our changing […] Read More