BOOKPATHS

County Derry, Ireland

Christopher Someville tours Seamus Heaney country.

Joining Eugene Kielt on one of the guided tours he conducts round Seamus Heaney country, we found the building blocks of Heaney's young life and his art coming at us round every corner, shining a light on poems that we seemed to have known for ever. – from “A Field Day for Seamus Heaney Fanatics,” by Christopher Somerville, The Guardian

Patrick Kavanagh Rural and Literary Resource Centre, Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland

The Patrick Kavanagh Rural and Literary Resource Centre honors the life and work of Ireland's celebrated poet.  It’s open from early June to late September and for special events, or by arrangement, during the rest of the year.  See the Centre’s website for visitor information.

The Centre houses exhibitions on local history and on Kavanagh, a sixty-seat Audio- Visual Theatre, and a Research Library. Also on view are twelve specially commissioned   paintings illustrating Kavanagh's epic poem ‘The Great Hunger’, a miniature model depicting Kavanagh's classic, ‘A Christmas Childhood"’ Kavanagh's Death Mask and other memorabilia associated with the poet.

The special feature of the Patrick Kavanagh Centre is the unique performance tour of Kavanagh Country, which takes in many local sites immortalised by Inniskeen's most famous son, with anecdotes, historical facts, wild rumours and even the odd poem along the way. – from The Patrick Kavanagh Centre Website

(Photograph from Discover Ireland website.)

Ireland

Download The Yeats Trail brochure at www.discoverireland.ie.

The Sligo landscape in all its variety flooded their minds.  The Table-topped mountain Ben Bulben evoked grandeur of epic proportions; horse races on the beach at Rosses Point  were heart thumping moments; the legends were alive and the people they met contained a savage mix of utter self-containment and open heartedness. – from discoverireland website

Dalkey, Ireland

Liza Foreman visits novelist Maeve Binchy and her husband, children’s book writer Gordon Snell at their “brick cottage” in Dalkey.

Mrs. Binchy, 68, and her husband, the children’s book writer Gordon Snell, 76, live in a brick cottage built in 1847, on a winding road near the train station, several trendy restaurants and a traditional Irish pub that is often more convenient for meals than their diminutive kitchen. 'If we are in the hallway next to the front door, I will often say to Gordon, ‘Come on, let’s go to the pub. It’s closer,’ Mrs. Binchy said. – from “Iriah Cottage Becomes Authors’ Home,” by Liza Foreman, The New York Times

Ireland; France

R. L. Stine tells us why we “must read” A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry.

The story of the Irish during World War I was not a subject I had ever been interested in. But I was completely gripped by Willie's story, that of his fellow soldiers, his family and all the turmoil back home. I knew I was reading something exceptional. Every page of the book manages to portray savage ugliness next to shimmering beauty, in language that made me stop and blink again and again. – from “You Must Read This,” by R. L. Stine, NPR Website

James Joyce Museum, Joyce Tower, Sandycove, County Dublin, Ireland

The James Joyce Museum is housed in “one of a series of Martello towers,” described in the opening of Ulysses, “built to withstand an invasion by Napoleon.” The museum’s collection “includes letters, photographs, first and rare editions and personal possessions of Joyce, as well as items associated with the Dublin of Ulysses.”  Special events are held during the year, including on Bloomsday.  The James Joyce Museum is open April through September, Monday – Saturday, 10 a.m.-1p.m., 2 p.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday and Public Holidays, 2 p.m.-6 p.m.  Additional information is available on the Visit Dublin website.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. -- from Ulysses, by James Joyce

Dublin, Ireland

Dubliners, by James Joyce (various editions; first published in 1914)

Begun by James Joyce in 1904, finished in 1907, and finally published in 1914, these sad, wise, beautiful stories, set in the streets, homes, and workplaces of Dublin, transport readers into time and place, while also encompassing contemporary longings and revelations

We came the near the river.  We spent a long time walking about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the drivers of groaning carts.  It was noon when we reached the quays and, as all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two big currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside the river.  We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s commerce – the barges signaled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay.  Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes.  School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane. – from “An Encounter,” Dubliners, by James Joyce

Ireland

Ireland: a Novel, by Frank Delaney (New York: Harper, 2005)

This charming novel follows Ronan O’Mara, beginning at age nine, as he searches for the mysterious old storyteller who spent three magical evenings at his home.  Through O’Mara’s lengthy pursuit, readers come to know the storyteller and, through his stories, the history and landscape of Ireland.  A must read for all who love Ireland, whether residents, travelers, or armchair visitors.

...But when I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill in the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man.

Or when I sit by the weir on a river and watch small birds fly, busy, busy, in and out of the hawthorn bushes, or a peaceful man in the distance flicking a line onto the water, or touch a horse's velvet muzzle over a fence in county Limerick -- then I know that I love this land down to its limestone bones. -- from Ireland: a Novel, by Frank Delaney

Related Websites

Frank Delaney’s Website

Publisher’s Website

Limerick, Ireland

Angela’s Ashes: a Memoir, by Frank McCourt (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999; first published 1996)

With anger, honesty, wit, and compassion, Frank McCourt tells his story of “growing up dirt poor” in Limerick, Ireland.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." -- from Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt

Related Websites

Publisher’s Website

1997 Pulitzer Prize Winner – Biography or Autobiography

Online Tour of “The Limerick of Angela’s Ashes”

Ireland

Novelist Deirdre Madden chooses The Barracks, by John McGahern, as her “book of a lifetime.”

“The Barracks is a tragic book. It is completely unsentimental, a novel of great compassion and integrity. Although much of its subject matter is quintessentially Irish, the ways in which it dealswith topics such as loneliness, illness and death gives it a timeless, universal quality.” – from “Book of a Lifetime,” by Deirdre Madden, The Independent