The White Bear
My review of The White Bear by Henrik Pontoppidan, translated by Paul Larkin, was published in today's Irish Examiner (21 June, 2025). Here is the review: The novels and short stories of Pontoppidan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917, reflect Danish...
What is ‘Say Nothing’ for?
The Irish-American writer Tim O’Grady recently wrote a review for the website of the current affairs magazine, Byline, which was also published by the Belfast Media Group and the Andersonstown News. His review was a forensic analysis of the television series, Say...
‘A Spiritual Act, A Holy Deed’
I wrote this tribute to Native American Indian Leonard Peltier in 2003 as he entered his twenty-eighth year of imprisonment. I included the feature in my 2004 book, Rebel Columns, and sent Leonard a signed copy with a personalised dedication but the prison authorities...
A man of immense peace and ease
Martin Neary’s book, Madogue Memories, about his life in east Mayo, the perennial toil of maintaining the land, his having to seek work in England to support his small holding, is told with great humility and charm but with a certain melancholia. In his evocative...
O’Casey Revisited
An abbreviated version of this feature has already appeared online but this is a much fuller piece by the Galway-based lecturer and writer, Jenny Farrell, who is also an Associate Editor of Culture Matters. The sixtieth anniversary of Seán O’Casey’s death fell on 18...
Powerful Collection
Just read More Tales About Life, Love & Death by Paul Marauder, a collection of poems and flash fiction dedicated to the struggle of the Palestinian people and their suffering in Gaza. The writing is potent, visceral and personal, often in the first-person, and...
‘A Little Gem’
Jake Mac Siacais* reviews Greenisland Press’s recently-published novel, McCoubrey, set in Portadown just before and after the introduction of internment in 1971. WHEN asked by my good friend Danny Morrison to review Mark B McCaffery’s debut novel, McCoubrey, I...
Gritty and Realistic
Longlines, the new novel by Galway author Caoilte Breathnach, is a book which straddles several genres, telling a story which is at times gritty, realistic, and at other times speculative. Layered through it all is a shrewd eye for detail and a finely-tuned ear for...
‘McCoubrey’ published this week
McCoubrey is a novel by Mark B. McCaffery and is being launched in Portadown tonight, 2 May. Below is a description of the novel and its author and here is the audio of an interview with the author on BBC's Good Morning Ulster which can be found at 2 hours and 20...
Karl & Groucho, et al
Writer and poet Eoghan ‘Gino’ Mac Cormaic* reviews a new book of poetry by north Belfast man Scott McKendry which is published today. -oo0oo- By way of introduction to Scott McKendry’s first full poetry collection Gub, the author offers a dictionary-style definition...