Late Learner by Ciara Geraghty (HarperCollins, \u00a314.99)<\/p>\n
\u201cLearning to drive did as much good for my mental health as four years of therapy\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s this admission, made by a close friend, that springs to mind when I read the blurb of Geraghty\u2019s latest novel. Ronda, a 44-year-oldd risk-averse daydreamer must learn to drive or face eviction from her hypochondriac mother\u2019s home. Her driving instructor? Her sister, of course. She\u2019s the perfect one who, at six years Ronda\u2019s junior, has life mastered. Geraghty has laid out all the ingredients for a charming novel where hope and growth star at middle age. The execution, however, is lacklustre. Narrative implausibilities distract in a novel that is otherwise frustratingly predictable. Brigid O\u2019Dea<\/b><\/p>\n
The Living and the Dead, Tales of Loss and Rebirth from Irish Nature by Conor W O\u2019Brien (Merrion Press, \u20ac18.99)<\/p>\n
\u201c … the path and its parallel ditch are fringed with muddy green heather, that plant almost as omnipresent as the sphagnum moss that spawned the bog\u201d. The natural world and its luscious lexical landscape form a generous terrain for writers. However, conveying the immensity of this world to the page is no small challenge. O\u2019Brien nails the brief. From the great auk, to the right whale and natterjack toad, the acclaimed Irish wildlife writer explores the species lost, nearly lost, and recovered in Ireland over the past 500 years. O\u2019Brien\u2019s knowledge is vast. The text is laced with some truly awesome facts. Most remarkable, however, is the author\u2019s ability to transmute this knowledge with prose that befits the beauty of its subject. Brigid O\u2019Dea<\/b><\/p>\n
[\u00a0Conor W O’Brien: You can\u2019t choose the times you live in. And sadly we live in an age of extinctionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Fieldnotes from Celtic Palestine by Diarmait Mac Giolla Chr\u00edost (University of Wales Press, $88)<\/p>\n This is an uncategorisable work of creativity and activism. Part lyrical memoir, it recounts Mac Giolla Chr\u00edost\u2019s experiences in Palestine and in Derry<\/a>, where his Irish-speaking Protestant family resettled after being threatened out of Belfast in the 1970s. It is also a poetic analysis of the work of four other Celts \u2013 Brian Keenan<\/a>, Dervla Murphy<\/a>, Colum McCann<\/a> and Osi Rhys Osmond \u2013 who approached Palestine through autobiography, travel writing, fiction and visual art. The book creates an intertextual conversation that shifts between theory and the sensory realities of cherries, sage tea, checkpoints and nightmares. Bearing witness to colonialism and conflict, it asks how identity shapes testimony. This is a complex and compelling book that underlines how art can illuminate the \u201cmoral heart of things\u201d. Claire Mitchell<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late Learner by Ciara Geraghty (HarperCollins, \u00a314.99) \u201cLearning to drive did as much good for my mental health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[1879,359,18,117,2215,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-129281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-book-reviews","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-for-you","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}