Northern Exposure

Short Story Week: A Run in the Park by David Park #readingirelandmonth23

No 331 Hidden Symptoms by Deirdre Madden #readingirelandmonth23

Classic Novellas Week: Proxopera by Benedict Kiely #NovNov22

No 382 The Dark Hole Days by Una Woods

I read The Dark Hole Days by Una Woods as part of Reading Ireland Month, but have only just got round to reviewing it. A slim novella, The Dark Hole Days presents the parallel lives of Joe and Colette, two young people living in Belfast from either side of the sectarian divide, who don’t know…

No 407 The Temptation of Eileen Hughes by Brian Moore Book 19 of #20booksofsummer

Brian Moore’s 100th birthday was this week and I’m continuing my centenary read-along with his 1981 novel The Temptation of Eileen Hughes. The Temptation of Eileen Hughes is another of Moore’s lean character studies, with a tight focus on a few characters and a moment of crisis which upends several lives. It lacks some of…

The Doctor’s Wife by Brian Moore for #BrianMoore100

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore for #BrianMoore100

Fergus by Brian Moore for #brianmoore100

No 430 Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood #readingirelandmonth21

Caroline Blackwood is probably not best known for her writing. Heiress to the Guinness fortune, Blackwood was celebrated as a great beauty and dazzling ‘muse’ courtesy of her high-profile marriages first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell. Born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family from Ulster, she was presented as a debutante…