| Bookshelf The
Blueshirts
Maurice Manning
 The Blueshirts
were a quasi-fascist organisation founded in 1932 following de Valera’s
first election victory.
They adopted the style and some of the substance of European fascist movements.
Although relatively short-lived, they were one of the founding strands
in what became the Fine Gael Party.
Maurice Manning’s definitive history chronicles the rise and fall
of the Blueshirts against the social and political background of Ireland
in the late 1920s and 1930s.
The reviews said: “In many ways this book is a model. Manning’s
account is clear, detailed and fully documented, his analysis of the conflicting
interests and emotions dispassionate and perceptive, his conclusions balanced
and sound. This is the way Irish history should be written.”
Maurice Manning was born in Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow in 1943. He has been
a Fine Gael Senator and TD and for many years lectured in the Department
of Politics in University College, Dublin. He is President of the Irish
Human Rights Commision.
The Blueshirts by Maurice Manning is published by Gill & Macmillan.
Festive Cooking
Biddy White Lennon
 Festive Cooking
shows the best of traditional Irish foods cooked with modern flair. The
Irish calendar provides many days for feasting and traditional celebration:
St. Brigid’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Shrove Tuesday, Bealtaine,
Bloomsday, Lughnasa, Hallowe’en, Women’s Christmas.
Then there are the newer festivals that celebrate the rich harvest of
our seas and fields — the Galway Oyster Festival, the Wexford Strawberry
Festival. Over 50 recipes offer a tempting selection of foods for all
these occasions as well as for christenings, weddings and wakes.
Details of customs, folklore and Irish regional food traditions provide
a fascinating background to the recipes.
Biddy White Lennon has written several cookery books, is a regular cookery
demonstrator and contributes features on cooking and travel to magazines
such as Food and Wine, Woman’s Way and to various newspapers. An
actress, she is well-known in Ireland for her portrayal of Maggie in the
hugely popular TV series The Riordans.
Gael
Judith Mok
 A young violinist from a
Jewish background falls hopelessly in love with an Irish painter called
Gael. She leaves her aristocratic husband, marries Gael and they eventually
move to Ireland with their son.
But she is unprepared for a life of poverty and stuggles with the anti-Semitic
sentiments she encounters.
As Gael grows increasingly delusional and violent she desperately attempts
to maintain a semblance of normal family life while still pursuing her
career.
Gael is at once a moving love story and a brutal, sardonic portrayal of
a destructive marriage that comes to a devastating end.
Dermot Bolger said of it: “Gael is a superbly-crafted account of
a fatal and fatalistic voyage into the dark, obsessive heart of a particular
type of Irish male psyche and the story of a romance across conflicting
cultures which can never hope to understand each other, where true love
and true danger constantly stalk hand in hand.”
Judith Mok was born in the artists’ colony of Bergen in the Netherlands
and is an internationally-acclaimed soprano. She has published three collections
of poetry and two novels in Dutch most recently The Executioner.
She has been living in Dublin for many years, where she is a regular contributor
to newspapers and radio. This is her first novel written in English.
The Free And Easy
Anne Haverty
 New
Yorker Tom Blessman arrives in Dublin with a purpose — to spend
money.
His mega-rich great-uncle Gast is suffering a recurrent dream in which
the old country — a place he would much rather forget — is
beseeching him for help.
Tom must put a stop to it by giving the Irish whatever it is they want.
But the young American finds an Ireland abuzz with glossy, happening people
who apparently want for nothing. As he attempts to make sense of his mission
— and resolve his own personal problems — he falls in with
a lively crowd all exploiting to the full this opportunistic new world.
Central to the scene is the sprawling Kinane family especially Eileen
— a lost soul whose waif-like beauty Tom pursues through the city’s
bars, art galleries and gatherings finding himself in exciting but increasingly
perilous territory.
Full of brilliant characters, clamorous with the life of Dublin’s
streets, bars and cafés, The Free And Easy is a subtle, funny and
mordant take on Ireland’s past and present from one of the country’s
most stylish contemporary writers.
Anne Haverty has published two previous novels: One Day As A Tiger —
winner of the Rooney Prize and shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread First
Novel Award — and The Far Side Of A Kiss. Chatto and Windus also
publish Anne Haverty’s poetry. Born in Tipperary she now lives in
Dublin.
Tenderwire
Claire Kilroy
 Tenderwire is a brilliant,
rare, and unsettling literary thriller — the story of a reckless
young violinist and her obsessive quest for a priceless Stradivarius violin.
Eva Tyne, an Irish violinist living and working in New York, collapses
after her solo debut and is rushed to hospital. Still dazed after the
incident she finds herself embarked on a chaotic and dangerous odyssey.
Leaving her steady partner she quickly falls in love with a mysterious
man and shortly thereafter comes across a rare violin of dubious provenance
for which she must raise the required payment in cash in less than a week.
But haunted by the ghost of her father, racked with jealously and unsure
whom she can trust around her Eva soon finds herself playing a desperate
psychological game as her desires threaten to destroy her.
Narrated by Eva’s voice — at once passionate and unreliable
— Tenderwire is a novel of immense pace and skill, a guessing game
and a whodunnit that surprises at every turn.
Claire Kilroy is the author of All Summer which won the 2004 Rooney Prize.
Educated at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin.
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