Reviews Archives

Reviews

MIDWINTER BREAK – BERNARD MacLAVERTY (JONATHAN CAPE)

October 5, 2017
KNOWN MAINLY for his skillfully crafted short stories, Bernard MacLaverty’s first novel since 2001 takes place over four days of sightseeing in a wet... Read more »

GERRY ADAMS: AN UNAUTHORISED LIFE – MALACHI O’DOHERTY (FABER AND FABER)

September 21, 2017
LIKE him or loath him – as Malachi O’Doherty repeatedly intones – Gerry Adams is a colossus in modern Irish politics. He steered the... Read more »

THIS FAMILY OF THINGS – ALISON JAMESON (DOUBLEDAY IRELAND)

September 21, 2017
SET IN Ireland and America, the story revolves around the Keegan family, a brother and two sisters who are landowners in a remote part... Read more »

MOON DOGS – DIRECTED BY PHILLIP JOHN

September 21, 2017
MUCH-HYPED as a possible breakthrough for hotly tipped young Irish actress Tara Lee, Phillip John’s Scottish-set, comic drama Moon Dogs is unfortunately something of... Read more »

THE DRUMMER AND THE KEEPER – Directed by Nick Kelly

September 21, 2017
As a sensitive and nuanced depiction of mental health problems and developmental disorders, Nick Kelly’s debut feature, The Drummer And The Keeper, does an... Read more »

SCHEDULES WAR – RTÉ v TV3

September 7, 2017
OUTDATED IDEAS, over-familiar faces and second-hand formats dominate the autumn schedules recently unveiled by RTÉ television and TV3. A shortage of fresh thinking is... Read more »

MARRIED QUARTERS – SHANE CONNAUGHTON (DOUBLEDAY IRELAND)

September 7, 2017
SET IN the fictional border town of Butlershill, this sequel to Connaughton’s 1989 short story collection, A Border Station, offers a revealing portrait of... Read more »

The Mooney Show

August 24, 2017
DEREK MOONEY and Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh are natural born fillers. All broadcasting involves a degree of waffle but both of these second-string RTÉ stalwarts... Read more »

Love in Row 27

August 24, 2017
Eithne Shorthall – (Corvus) THIS DEBUT novel by the arts correspondent with the Sunday Times centres around Cora Hendricks, a Heathrow check-in attendant who... Read more »

GAA Coverage

August 24, 2017
RTÉ v SKY SPORTS FOLLOWING Waterford’s epic win over Kilkenny in the hurling championship in July, RTÉ pundit Michael Duignan indulged in a vintage... Read more »

CRESTFALL – PEACOCK THEATRE

August 10, 2017
Siobhan Cullen YOU CAN’T accuse the Abbey’s new directors of being cautious. It takes nerve to stage the most vulgar, violent and crudely poetic... Read more »

KEN EARLY POLITICAL PODCAST – SECOND CAPTAINS WORLD SERVICE

August 10, 2017
Ken Early WHEN THE Second Captains sports team left The Irish Times stable of podcasts to strike out with their own Second Captains World... Read more »

SOLAR BONES – MIKE McCORMACK (CANONGATE)

August 10, 2017
LONGLISTED LAST month for the 2017 Man Booker Prize (along with Sebastian Barry’s Days Without End), Mike McCormack’s experimental novel tells the story of... Read more »

THE BLOOD MIRACLES – LISA McINERNEY (JOHN MURRAY)

July 27, 2017
THE FOLLOW-UP to Lisa McInerney’s award-winning 2015 debut, The Glorious Heresies, returns to the adventurous life of Ryan Cusack. The 20-year-old “mid-ladder dealer” is... Read more »

PILGRIMAGE – DIRECTED BY BRENDAN MULDOWNEY

July 27, 2017
THE MEDIEVAL thriller Pilgrimageí opens with a scene that could be read as a metaphor for the cinemagoer who frequents Irish films, as a... Read more »

All sizzle, no steak at the Gate

July 27, 2017
FEW SHOWS in Irish theatre have prompted as much anticipation as Gatsby at the Gate. The story of the 1920s millionaire playboy in New... Read more »

ROOM – ABBEY THEATRE

July 13, 2017
NEARLY a decade on, Emma O’Donoghue’s breakthrough story keeps on giving. It was only a matter of time before Jack and Ma, and the... Read more »

HALAL DADDY – DIRECTOR CONOR McDERMOTTROE

July 13, 2017
FORGET JOHN Carpenter, George A Romero and other masters of horror, there are few more disturbing sights in cinema than the phrase “Bord Scannán... Read more »

CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS – SALLY ROONEY (FABER & FABER)

July 13, 2017
DEBUT NOVELIST Sally Rooney creates a portrait of modern young women in this slow-moving tale centring around two university students, Frances and Bobbi, inseparable... Read more »

RIVIERA – SKY ATLANTIC

June 29, 2017
THE NEW Sky Atlantic 10-part crime drama comes with impressive credentials. Created by Oscar winner Neil Jordan (who co-writes the first two episodes with... Read more »

THE INHERITANCE – ALLY BUNBURY (POOLBEG)

June 29, 2017
OVER RECENT weeks months, the first-time author (and wife of historian-about-town Turtle Bunbury) has been receiving no shortage of publicity for her romantic novel.... Read more »

HOUSE OF NAMES – COLM TÓIBÍN (VIKING)

June 15, 2017
IN HIS successful 2012 novel, The Testament of Mary, Colm Tóibín imagined the mother of Jesus struggling to accept her son’s divinity. The Enniscorthy... Read more »

MINDING FRANKIE – GAIETY THEATRE

June 15, 2017
THEATRE IMPRESARIO Breda Cashe knows, better than most, how to tap into Irish punters’ desire for cheap, feel-good stories. With this saccharine version of... Read more »

PAULA – RTÉ ONE

June 15, 2017
ONE OF the better series delivered to RTÉ viewers ended its run last week and many of those who enjoyed the three chilling episodes... Read more »

SKINTOWN – CIARÁN McMENAMIN (DOUBLEDAY)

June 2, 2017
THIS DEBUT novel touches on well-trodden aspects of yoof culture, with themes of male friendship and the prospect of redemption running the length of... Read more »

ITHACA – ALAN McMONAGLE (PICADOR)

June 2, 2017
THE DEBUT novel from Galway-based Alan McMonagle is set in the summer of 2019 in an unnamed Irish Midlands town “miles from anywhere, and... Read more »

IN VIEW – DIRECTED BY CIARAN CREAGH

June 2, 2017
WHEN IT comes to film pitches, a story about a suicidal Garda officer is not exactly Pirates Of The Caribbean. It is much to... Read more »

THE JOURNEY – DIRECTED BY NICK HAMM

May 17, 2017
IRISH AND BRITISH critics have been relatively united in their dismissive attitude to The Journey, Belfast director Nick Hamm’s film about an imagined car... Read more »

ASSASSINS – TV3

May 17, 2017
GANGLAND CRIME and manufactured celebrity are TV3’s central obsessions. Before 9pm most evenings, it’s all X Factor and Xposé but, after the watershed, the... Read more »

THE FRACTURED LIFE OF JIMMY DICE – RONAN RYAN (TINDER PRESS)

May 17, 2017
CLONMEL-BORN Ronan Ryan’s debut novel joins the already saturated field of coming-of-age fiction published over recent years. Ryan’s story begins in 1980 and traces... Read more »

NOTORIOUS – JACK SLACK (JOHN BLAKE)

May 3, 2017
WE CAN’T seem to get enough of Conor McGregor. Books, newspaper articles, TV documentaries, merchandise, and billions in pay-per-view dollars. The Crumlin mixed martial... Read more »

MAZ & BRICKS – PROJECT ARTS CENTRE

May 3, 2017
SET as a home for counter-cultural voices 50 years ago, Project Arts Centre made its mark when tones of dissent and difference were very... Read more »

A LINE MADE BY WALKING – SARA BAUME (HEINEMANN)

May 3, 2017
SINCE HER widely acclaimed 2015 debut, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, expectations have been high for Sara Baume’s second novel. In her follow-up, the Cork-based... Read more »

THE PONZI MAN – DECLAN LYNCH (HACHETTE)

April 19, 2017
DURING THE latter stages of the delirium known as the Celtic Tiger, Irish high society became the land of the pyramids – or at... Read more »

PRIVATE LIVES – GATE THEATRE

April 19, 2017
TRANSITIONS are a curious business. Former director Michael Colgan may have left the Gate Theatre at the start of April and his successor Selina... Read more »

CARNIVALESQUE – NEIL JORDAN (BLOOMSBURY CIRCUS)

April 5, 2017
IN BOTH his fiction and films, Neil Jordan has frequently been drawn into dream worlds of ghosts and tangled fairytale horror. This latest novel... Read more »