tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post2833854965223279802..comments2023-09-12T09:09:08.656-07:00Comments on Well-Read Donkey: Harriet Chessman's Guest Post: I Love All Things IrishAggiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00745258157624796110noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-41664040342531701692012-11-24T18:06:58.019-08:002012-11-24T18:06:58.019-08:00I especially like Diedre Madden, who is from North...I especially like Diedre Madden, who is from Northern Ireland and Jennifer Johnston. Harriet, I was just at Regina Laudis and I purchased Someone not Really her Mother. I loved the Cassatt book. Most of my favorite writers are women. Try Frank O'Connor, another great Irish writer.<br />JimAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-57549108812977373592009-08-17T13:25:04.527-07:002009-08-17T13:25:04.527-07:00Oh, thank you, KO! No, I've never read this b...Oh, thank you, KO! No, I've never read this book. I'm writing it down.<br /><br />The Sea is a strange book, a bit like a dream, and uncomfortable; maybe you have to be in the right mood for it. I found it absorbing and enchanting, especially once I was really well into it.Harriet Chessmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09297836260475212525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-326767018869465742009-08-17T12:54:12.790-07:002009-08-17T12:54:12.790-07:00Have you read At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Nei...Have you read At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill? It is startlingly beautiful, marrying the fight for Ireland's freedom with the fight for Irish people to live freely. Great-hearted, as you said. <br /><br />I keep picking up The Sea but not buying it. I'll have to pick it up.KOhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11773713406023165663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-18143836028523950972009-08-08T09:53:29.376-07:002009-08-08T09:53:29.376-07:00Scott, I know just what you mean about THE SEA ---...Scott, I know just what you mean about THE SEA --- there IS a certain odd coldness to the work. I feel in the hands of a master storyteller, and I feel also as if I've been caught up into a cruel, rich world.Harriet Chessmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09297836260475212525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-82113071235846061272009-08-08T06:41:21.265-07:002009-08-08T06:41:21.265-07:00Another great post, Harriet, though I'm not Ir...Another great post, Harriet, though I'm not Irish at all! You make me want to read all these books (some, again). Dubliners is one of my favorite short-story collections; I admired The Sea a great deal, although it left me a bit cold in the end. Nevertheless, I thing he's a marvelous writer--as are you!<br /><br />ScootAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-53267919023161168042009-07-29T18:06:58.790-07:002009-07-29T18:06:58.790-07:00Thank you, all. Kate, oh, Angela's Ashes is t...Thank you, all. Kate, oh, Angela's Ashes is truly gorgeous; I'm so moved by it. I guess it can be bleak in parts, but I think it's the beautiful, real voice McCourt creates that holds me so close, plus the perfectly realized scenes. If you try it again, let me know how it goes!!<br /><br />And Aggie, thanks for the Paris Review interview suggestion. Banville's THE SEA actually opens with a line that knocks me out: "They departed, the gods, on the day of the strange tide." When I first read this, I said, "Keep this up, John Banville, and I am yours forever!" He does keep it up, although he weaves in this mystical strangeness with a more ordinary account of a summer by the sea . . . until the extraordinary starts to emerge again, and the reader sees how it's lasted right into the novel's present, years later.<br /><br />The opening of THE GATHERING is equally compelling, and gives a good taste of Enright's narrator's honest, worried, questioning voice:<br /><br />"I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. I feel it roaring inside me -- this thing that may not have taken place. I don't even know what name to put on it. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones."Harriet Chessmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09297836260475212525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-63597747775776219252009-07-29T14:25:28.774-07:002009-07-29T14:25:28.774-07:00Harriet, I just read an amazing interview with Joh...Harriet, I just read an amazing interview with John Banville in The Paris Review. Banville said that many readers of The Sea cite to him this line, "The past beats inside me like a second heart." A beautiful, haunting sentence indeed. I wonder, what would be some of your favorite lines from the books you love?Aggiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00745258157624796110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-58654506441479373692009-07-29T10:38:00.351-07:002009-07-29T10:38:00.351-07:00Harriet, it's great to see you here! I, too, a...Harriet, it's great to see you here! I, too, am a lover of Yeats and Joyce, have read The Sea and The Gathering but now am noticing a rumbling in my brain, telling me I'm hungry for the others you mention and should probably, in addition, give Angela's Ashes another try. I started it at a bleak time in my life and couldn't tolerate the deeper bleakness of McCourt's memoir. I might still have it, somewhere.Kate Maloyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12338350828357415976noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8434699491181348092.post-12998585546337771532009-07-29T10:14:54.420-07:002009-07-29T10:14:54.420-07:00This sure makes me want to run to my nearest book ...This sure makes me want to run to my nearest book store and pick up some Irish literature (and I'm only 1/4 Irish)! The musical language, and yes, even the sadness, is captivating.<br />Thank you for this post!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com