Some well-known faces pick their favourites reads
Saturday December 19 2009
Wise, elegant and entertaining, James Downey's In My Own Time: Inside Irish Politics and Society (Gill & Macmillan, €24.99) is an insider's guide to the political wildlife in our ravaged little State over the past four or five decades. The tone of the book may sound of another time, but Downey's is exactly the kind of voice we need to start listening to again as the tiger's carcass is hauled off into the jungle to be buried.
Another stylish voice is that of the late JG Farrell, whose In His Own Words: Selected Letters and Diaries (Cork University Press, €39), edited by Lavinia Greacen, is a marvellous collection of writings from a novelist -- Troubles is his masterpiece -- whose early death when he was swept off rocks in Co Cork by a freak wave in 1979 was a tragic loss to literature. But these letters and diary extracts are a boundless joy.
As a former political correspondent, books on Irish current affairs remain a guilty pleasure for me. After several lean years, we've now been overrun with accounts of the events of the last decade. Pat Leahy with Showtime: The Inside Story of Fianna Fail in Power (Penguin, €14.99) stole a march on others by publishing early, and elbowing his way to the centre of what rapidly became a very crowded space.
I await the arrival of Santa Claus for the receipt of Matt, Fintan, Shane, Michael, Bertie, Albert et al, but for sheer readability, Leahy's tome is a worthwhile purchase. He's a slick writer, with some very useful political contacts who clearly had no objection to the author's forensic debriefing on their time in Fianna Fail.
It's easy to spot a lazy book that does little more than cut and paste or regurgitate what even the barely literate know already. Showtime's appeal is the excavation of new material as it trawls through the innards of the last decade. Some of it is for anoraks -- the party's occasional Machiavellian manipulation of selection conventions, for example, but his tracking of other events, such as Charlie McCreevy's appointment as EU Commissioner has more global appeal.
All of these books are pretty much instant history, crafted in the white heat of the immediate aftermath of the events they detail. They also rely on the credibility of their sources, many of whom remain players with agendas.
It'll take a few more decades before we can be sure that all the dust has settled and been accounted for.
The Irish Sweep: A History of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake, 1930-87, by Marie Coleman, (UCD Press, €28), is a comprehensive warts-and-all history of the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes, which focuses on its economic and social importance. Marie Coleman is one of Ireland's finest up-and-coming historians. The Sweepstakes emerged in the 1930s because our newly emerging state did not have the financial capacity to sufficiently invest in hospitals and our healthcare system. The Sweepstakes was a means to bridge that gap. It was an Irish solution to an Irish problem. It became a feature of public health funding for over half a century in modern Ireland.
At a time when Ireland was pursuing policies of economic self-sufficiency, the Sweepstake brought millions of punts in foreign currency into the country. Its success abroad was such that during the Economic War the British government introduced legislation to curb the vast amount of money leaving Britain for Ireland and the Sweepstake.
The Irish Sweep brilliantly analyses the controversies and the contribution of the Sweepstakes to the development of our health services. It is both a serious work of history and an immensely readable account of an iconic Irish institution.
Cantona: The Rebel who would be King, by Philippe Auclair (MacMillan €17.50), is a must-read account for all Manchester United fans. Eric Cantona is one of the most gifted and admired footballers to grace the turf of Old Trafford. This book details his life and times, and is extensively researched and based on over 200 interviews with people who have helped and, in some cases, clashed with Cantona during a great but controversial career. Auclair is a leading French sports journalist and the book is particularly strong on the forces that moulded Cantona and his early career in France.
Cantona enjoyed his greatest successes in English football. He helped Leeds United to a league title but it was at Manchester United that he defined himself as a legend. Under Alex Ferguson's guidance, Cantona was a sublime player in arguably Manchester United's greatest ever side.
This biography is not just a retelling of football tales; it seeks to get to the heart of the enigma of the man the fans have dubbed 'King Cantona'. At the peak of his football career, Cantona simply walked away to pursue other interests in cinema and acting. His departure was deeply felt across football but his brilliance will never be forgotten. The late George Best summed up Cantona's enduring footballing appeal when he famously said: "I'd give all the champagne I've ever drunk to be playing alongside Cantona in a big European match at Old Trafford!"
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (HarperCollins, €11.10), the winner of this year's Man Booker prize, is sexy, gripping, dark and oh, so good. Set in Tudor times, it tells the story of Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell. And what an incredible character Mantel has created -- a ruthless, charming, clever, machinator. I believe she's working on a sequel. I can't wait.
One Day by David Nicholls (Hodder & Stoughton, €16.89) is brilliant. I'm still quite wobbly and affected by it. It's about two people, a boy and a girl who had a one-night stand 20 years ago and then they were friends and it's obvious they should be together and the book follows them through their lives, their separate paths and you think, ah yeah, I know where this is going. But YOU DON'T. There is an almighty twist. I did not see it coming. And the dialogue. I could have wept with jealousy at how good it is. And the characterisation! Again, the jealousy nearly made me puke. I wish I'd written this book.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography, edited by James McGuire and James Quinn, is published in nine fat, heavy, beautiful volumes with more than 9,000 entries compiled by 700 expert contributors. In its range, its seriousness, its clarity, its comprehensive nature, it will change the face of Irish scholarship. It is an indispensable resource, a piece of sterling public service and it is a real reason to feel proud to be Irish this year. So too The Letters of Samuel Beckett. Volume I: 1929-1940, edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Lois More Overbeck, Dan Gunn and George Craig (Cambridge University Press, €35) is a remarkable piece of scholarship.
The letters themselves are funny and fascinating, but the footnotes, which are copious and detailed, represent a biography of Beckett and a picture of his world in these years.
I like memoir wedded to motive and three from the genre did it this year for me. Joe Queenan's Closing Time (Picador, €19.49) is written with such ill-concealed fury that this searing account of growing up in Philadelphia under the gloomy skies of drunken violence and abject poverty almost bounces off the page so intent is he to engage. Think Frank McCourt on speed and without the sense of forgiveness. Totally absorbing and with breadth enough to take you beyond his own immediate circumstances and into a fine critique of child poverty per se, this utterly vivid memoir, brilliantly achieved despite his many critics, is probably what the caustic cultural commentator has been working towards all his writing life.
On a far gentler tack, For Richer, For Poorer (Canongate, €21) concerns a nice middle-class Jewish girl motivated by her totally requited love affair with poker. I say requited because Victoria Coren (daughter of Alan and posh Sunday columnist in her own right) has already won more than a million dollars from what she still has the nerve to call a "hobby", lucky cow.
Muscling in on her brother's game as a recalcitrant kid reluctant to go to school, she goes on to become part of a seriously motley crew (all men) who ride the gambling roller coaster from North London to Vegas. Smoky rooms full of quirky oddballs playing cards for money is where our Vicky (despite those winnings) swears she still feels most at home.
Superbly observed and with a real will-she-won't-she factor, this is a terrific read, especially for girls with no interest in shopping or shoes. Amazing where a misspent youth can sometimes lead.
Most extraordinary memoir of the year has to be Allegra Huston's Love Child (Bloomsbury, €11.10). Motivated by her own adult curiosity into the extraordinary circumstances of her supposedly idyllic childhood, partly in Co Galway and partly being parcelled about in LA, she starts investigating -- tentatively at first, but always from the perspective of the artist lost in a state of wonder -- where on earth she actually comes from, and where if anywhere, she truly belongs. Highly satisfying as she discovers her birth father to be exactly the kind of man any girl would be delighted to own up to.
In a strong year for Irish fiction, I particularly enjoyed Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury, €24.69) and the absolutely wonderful Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (Penguin, €9.85). It might overburden the Booker Prize-nominated Love and Summer (Viking, €13.99) to characterise it as William Trevor's finest novel to date, but the book is so persuasive and beautifully achieved that one is tempted to reach for superlatives. All the hallmarks of Trevor's scrupulous style are here deployed: the crafted sparseness of description, the photographically vivid sense of place, the extraordinarily profound insight into the business of being human. His awe-inspiring ability to express the most complex of realities in sentences of clarity and shimmering plainness has never been more admirable than it is here.
Philip O'Ceallaigh is a writer of extraordinary gifts, and his collection The Pleasant Light of Day (Penguin, €11.10) was a triumph. He is assiduous with words, an artist of real craft and vision, and refreshingly so sparing with metaphors and similes that to read him is to be reminded of the power of plain prose. When he does use an image, it bursts off the page.
Of the dozen stories here, perhaps nine are masterpieces, so perfectly achieved and exhilaratingly confident that you feel O'Ceallaigh is developing a genre all of his own.
Dennis Sewell's The Political Gene: How Darwin's Ideas Changed Politics (Picador, €14.99) is a truly important work about the distortions of Darwinian science: the British Medical Journal once recommended that all blind people should be forcibly sterilised. And I was profoundly touched by The Literature of the Irish in Britain: autobiography and memoir 1725-2001, edited by Liam Harte (Palgrave Macmillan, £55) -- an expensive academic book, but a rich pot-pourri of the Irish diaspora experience, from merry nurses to swashbuckling pickpockets, lonely poets to passionate Home Rule parliamentarians. A gem.
There can be no question about the book of the year. Even before the National Book Award, Colum McCann's luminous Let the Whole World Spin was a winner. This is the ultimate novel of urban life, probing the gut of a crapulous and decaying metropolis, with a cast of hopeless, yet at-times heroic, characters whose paths cross in a sort of predestined randomness in the grotty collisions of trains and traffic, drugs and depression, police and people.
Starting with a tightrope-walker edging his way between the Twin Towers while the city holds its breath in disbelief, it is full of premonition for today's reader who knows that the towers themselves will vaporise on 9/11, that the disillusionment with Vietnam as a senseless sacrifice of young men will be followed by Afghanistan and that depression will come again. And yet there is enough of humour, of goodness, of courage in the face of adversity, of love and compassion, to make this ultimately a hopeful and compelling read.
Two other books treat one of the great events of the 20th Century from different historical aspects and from different ends of the literary scale. In D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (Viking, €28), Antony Beevor confirms his standing as a master of military history in a magisterial review of the Normandy landings and after. Shorn of the flag-waving and the glory, this is the grime and the gore, the botched landings, the soldiers who died in the water and on the beach, those who perished in "friendly fire", the killing of prisoners, the inadequate equipment, the crassness of generals, especially Montgomery, and above all, unnoticed by previous British authors, the sufferings of the French people and the destruction of towns and villages. And yet, this is how wars are won.
At the other end of the scale, Thomas McCarthy in The Last Geraldine Officer (Anvil, £10.95) -- a quirky, but enchanting, mix of prose, poetry, prose-poetry and recipes -- has his Fitzgerald tank-commander writing poetry in Deise Irish on the eve of the World War II battle in the Falaise Pocket. It is not primarily a war diary, but a close examination of the Anglo-Irish gentry and the class structure in west Waterford, and of a hidden Ireland which combines a deep love of Irish language and culture with a tradition of service in the British Army. As such it is just as revealing of a hidden world with its own beauty and complexity as McCann's urban jungle.
The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips (Virago, €14.75) -- this stunning debut by an American author is part mystery, part story of a community in Depression-era Alabama and centres around the story of a nine-year-old girl who sees a strange woman emerge from the darkness and silently throw a baby into the family well. The writing shines through the darkness of the crippling poverty of the story. It's an ultimately uplifting read.
Once again, Marian Keyes shows what a truly talented writer and storyteller she is with The Brightest Star in the Sky Michael Joseph, €15.99), the tale of the inhabitants of 66 Star Street and the mysterious presence shimmying between their flats. Riotously funny and full of exquisite social observation, The Brightest Star shines the light of redemption on even the darkest human experience.
The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (paperback this year, Penguin, €13.15) was my first Gladwell and turned me into an addict. I read this in two days, then rushed off to buy his previous books, Tipping Point and Blink. Hailed as one of the world's great thinkers, in Outliers, Gladwell looks at what makes some human beings so successful, using people like Bill Gates and The Beatles as examples. If you've ever wanted to do something well, read what he says about the 10,000-hour rule. He makes you look at the world in an entirely different way and the only problem is that he doesn't write fast enough. I want another Gladwell now.
My first choice is A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes by Jonathan Barden (Gill and Macmillan, €29.99).
This is a wonderful book which gives us the whole rich history of Ireland from the time before the human population arrived until the modern period.
In these difficult times it is a treat to have something which makes us feel proud of Ireland. This is not a self-congratulatory nationalist pamphlet but one can feel proud of the resourcefulness, talent, political skills and artistry of the various peoples who have inhabited this small plot of land over the millennia.
There is a lyrical treatment of the richness of ornamentation from the very early period, in particular the various hoards of beautifully worked precious metal. We travel through the Vikings, the Normans, the English and also the tremendous turmoil that beset the Irish Church at different times. We get glimpses of the city as it must have been experienced by the inhabitants as we witness the first performance of Handel's Messiah. The fact that the chapters are short and self-contained makes it an ideal book to dip into at Christmas.
My second choice is The Angel's Game (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, €15.99) the second volume of a trilogy by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafon). I embarked on the first volume because I was enchanted by its title, The Shadow of the Wind. That book lived up to its name with its evocation of Barcelona early in the last century, beautiful architecture, the desolation of the Civil War and an absorbing cast of idiosyncratic characters. Entwined with the sometime gothic narrative there is a profoundly moving mediation on the human condition.
The foundation laid by the first novel is continued in The Angel's Game, the pleasure merely deepening. How I wish that this Christmas I was once again reading it for the first time.
Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann is one of the most profound, moving and exquisitely written novels I have come across in a long time. From the first page it grips the reader as the book opens on the day that Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist, walks repeatedly across a tight rope between the Twin Towers, fearless and driven, and with an innate sense of the power of the human spirit. This tightrope (high-wire) act is pivotal to all 10 stories in the book as 10 different people connect and collide dramatically with it. The novel is an emotional tour de force but it is also an ode to creativity and to courage as it reminds us that in the face of adversity, especially in these challenging times, the human spirit can rise above everything. Perhaps we should all be looking up. There is always something bigger unfolding. I will read this book again and again and again.
The other book I strongly recommend is non-fiction -- When Art Worked: The New Deal, Art and Democracy by Roger G Kennedy (Rizzoli, €61.50). This is a stunningly produced book about the artists, writers, architects, painters, photographers, designers and landscapers put to work during the Great Depression thanks to Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal initiative. Art, in all its forms, played a vital role to lift the country out of one of the bleakest times in US history as it "coaxed the soul of the people back" by giving them hope and a real sense of worth -- I recommend this book because it reminds us what great work can come out of the darkest times and also that creativity can take us anywhere and maybe in this recession we should focus more on that.
Marianne Gunn O'Connor is a literary agent
The reputation of Winston Churchill still stands unduly high. Carlo D'Este in Warlord: A Life of Churchill at War, 1874-1945 (Allen Lane, £30) goes some way to put it in proportion. Lt Colonel D'Este -- a US professional soldier -- systematically dismantles the legend of Churchill as a visionary military leader.
However, he fails to grasp Churchill's failure as a naval leader, and does not even mention his pivotal role in the Anglo-Irish war. Soldiers of Folly by Barry Flynn (Collins Press, €24.95) contemplates the IRA Border Campaign (1956-61) with invigorating clarity. Its title says it all.
Irish Independent
