Irish secrets: Trespasses and Truth Be Told

February 16, 2023 at 11:36 pm | Posted in Irish Troubles, Northern Ireland, value of the arts, YA Irish fiction | Leave a comment
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The intensity of the forbidden

Sleeping with the enemy. The intensity of the forbidden. Always a topic to set the mind questioning and the heart racing. The protagonist of Louise Kennedy’s Belfast novel Trespasses, Cushla Lavery (whose given name derives from the Irish phrase A chuisle mo chroi – the pulse of my heart) is 24 and in love with Michael Agnew. Cushla is a Catholic primary school teacher who helps out in the family pub some nights.

Not only is the age gap there with the middle-aged Michael, he’s Protestant, and married as well. The novel’s gritty detail and nuanced portrayal of Cushla’s feelings transport the reader to Belfast in 1975 where Michael is a barrister who defends young Catholic men who have been wrongly arrested. The stakes couldn’t be higher. 

Kennedy’s unshowy writing conjures a vivid world with details so sensuous we can smell and hear them. Cushla’s first time away with Michael sees them in a posh Dublin restaurant: 

Her gut burned with want. That she might get away from her family, her mother, and be with this man.

Continue Reading Irish secrets: Trespasses and Truth Be Told…

Drinking the days: biographies and oysters

January 28, 2020 at 10:36 am | Posted in Australian memoir, Christina Stead, Democracy, Dennis Glover, Kay Schubach, Living creatively, mental illness, optimism, value of the arts | Leave a comment
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‘Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.’ American writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote that. I love it and would often think of it after opening the curtains first thing.

But her words took on a tragic tone in the mornings after the bushfires began. We could no longer open windows. Canberra’s air quality suddenly became literally the worst city in the world.

Actually it wasn’t as sudden as it seemed. Canberra’s air quality has been gradually worsening in the past few years, along with the rest of the country’s, thanks to our Government doing less than nothing about vehicle and other emissions responsible for raising CO2 levels.[1]

But I was aiming at an uplifting, positive post, damn it! I normally slant towards the upbeat, the whacky, the whimsical, but before veering in that direction, a serious point needs to be acknowledged. Continue Reading Drinking the days: biographies and oysters…

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