Books

Extract from Rossport Five book

Extract from Rossport Five book: In June 2005 the Rossport 5 were jailed for refusing to obey a court order instructing them not to interfere with the Corrib gas pipeline. Below is an extract from their book, published last week, in which Vincent McGrath, one of the five, recalls the 94 days he spent in Cloverhill jail

Strangers in the family

Colm Tóibín's beautiful collection of short stories tells nine tales of uneasy, elusive relationships between mothers and sons. Review by Pico Iyer

Books: In praise of pickled gods

Simon Barnes's The Meaning of Sport may not find an answer to its inherent question, but it certainly is entertaining. Refuting the theory that sport is for morons, the writer argues that it is in fact an essential part of our animal nature. Review by Ken Early

Criticism for beginners

John Sutherland, former Man Booker Prize judge and well-known critic, spurns the idea that the novel is dead in his new book, which examines how and why we read. Review by Tom Shone.

The poetry of old Dublin

KinsellaThomas Kinsella: A Dublin Documentary is a collection of poems and memories of an Ireland long past, where the church and the grandparent ruled; a retrospective journey through the difficult life of one of Ireland's most challenging poets. By Gerald Dawe.

God and Me: an essay by John McGahern

I grew up in what was a theocracy in all but name. Hell and heaven and purgatory were places real and certain we would go to after death, dependent on the Judgement. Churches in my part of Ireland were so crowded that children and old people who were fasting to receive Communion would regularly pass out in the bad air and have to be carried outside. Not to attend Sunday Mass was to court social ostracism, to be seen as mad or consorting with the devil, or, at best, to be seriously eccentric.

The husband

The detail of Victoria Glendinning's eminently readable biography of Leonard Woolf gives the reader the measure of the man – accomplished, passionate, reserved, stoical. By Claire Messud

 

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