No 494 All The Beggars Riding by Lucy Caldwell #readingirelandmonth20
Lucy Caldwell’s third novel All the Beggars Riding takes its title from the saying ‘if wishes were horses, beggars would ride’. Lara Moorhouse is almost forty and is struggling to come to terms with the break-up of her relationship and the recent death of her mother. Lara has spent her whole life wishing that…
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The Good Son by Paul McVeigh #readingirelandmonth20
Northern Exposure: No 498 Ratman’s Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert
Mother says there are rats in the rockery. ‘You’ll have to do something about them,’ she says, ‘or they’ll over-run the whole place.’ Ratman’s Notebooks was published in 1968 and was one of only four books that Stephen Gilbert wrote before he stopped writing altogether. The fact that it is still in print is probably…
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Ciaran Carson, 1948 – 2019
Last Sunday, the inimitable poet and musician Ciaran Carson died after an illness. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, into an Irish-speaking family, poet Ciaran Carson attended Queen’s University, Belfast. He held the position of traditional arts officer of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1998 and was appointed director of the Seamus…
The Jewel by Neil Hegarty
Northern Exposure: The International by Glenn Patterson (book 13 of #20booksofsummer)
Novels about the city of Belfast have a tendency to be set during the Troubles. It is too ingrained in the very fabric of life here to be otherwise. Glenn Patterson’s novel The International does something different. In January 1967, the inaugural meeting of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association too place in The International…
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Northern Exposure: Belfast Stories edited by Lisa Frank & Paul McVeigh
No 522 Truth or Fiction by Jennifer Johnston (Book 6 of #20booksofsummer)
Truth or Fiction by Jennifer Johnston continues my Northern Exposure series which highlight literature from Northern Ireland and is also, helpfully, one of my 20 Books of Summer! Jennifer Johnston’s fiction regularly deals with themes of memory, loss and an inability to come to terms with the past and Truth or Fiction is no different.…
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No 525 Secrets and Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty (Book 3 of #20booksofsummer)
Northern Exposure is my monthly series where I look at literature from Northern Ireland. I have three books by Northern Irish writers in my 20 Books of Summer stack and the first one up is Secrets and Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty. Secrets and Other Stories is Bernard MacLaverty’s first short story collection, originally published…
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