The Paperboy, by Pete Dexter (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Two reporters working as a team investigate the brutal killing of a policeman whose own methods were less than commendableSat Apr 20 1996 - 01:00
THE LEAVETAKINGIN Christ Church Cathedral on Easter Sunday, Dr Donald Caird delivered his final sermon as Archbishop of Dublin, Bishop of Glendalough…Thu Apr 18 1996 - 01:00
Out of CanadaCAUGHT between the old world and the new, Britain and the United States Canadian fiction had a difficult time asserting itself…Tue Apr 16 1996 - 01:00
The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber, £6.99 in UK)In this Alice in Wonderland meets Kafka farce. Ryder, a world famous pianist, arrives at a hotel somewhere in Central EuropeSat Apr 13 1996 - 01:00
So I Am Glad, by A.L. Kennedy (Vintage, £5.99 in UK)Jennifer, the sharp, intelligent, vulnerable and self protecting narrator, announces I hate secretsSat Apr 13 1996 - 01:00
The tomes they are a-changingCUIRT 96, which Macnas co founder Paraic Breathnach formally launches in Galway next Tuesday, opens with a reading by the Canadian…Sat Apr 13 1996 - 01:00
THE BRENDAN VOYAGEBRENDAN Kennelly has often cited Odysseus as his favourite character from HomerThu Apr 11 1996 - 01:00
The travails of the lovelornTHERE is no weapon more brutal than love, particularly is no more than an expression of ego and self interestSat Apr 06 1996 - 01:00
LORD OF THE KINGDOMCRITICAL recognition was slow in coming to playwright, essayist and novelist John B. KeaneThu Apr 04 1996 - 01:00
Southern GothicIN The Violent Bear It Away (1960), the second novel by the Georgia writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964), Tarwater, the disturbed…Sat Mar 30 1996 - 00:00
A HEART FOR BUSINESSTINY, almost ballerina like in appearance, she lives across the road from her officeThu Mar 28 1996 - 00:00
Story writer Mary Lavin dies at 83THE celebrated writer Mary Lavin, who died yesterday aged 83, was one of modern Irish fiction's most subversive voicesTue Mar 26 1996 - 00:00
DYING OF THE GREEN LIGHTGERTRUDE STEIN's famous Lost Generation were a tribe of American writers and artists living in Paris in the 1920s, all deliberately…Sat Mar 23 1996 - 00:00
CALM CAMPAIGNERLESS than 30 per cent of the rape victims attending the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre actually make their ordeals known to the police…Thu Mar 21 1996 - 00:00
Perec: a user's manualIn the spring of 1981, Georges Perec, the inventive French novelist and author of the cult hit Life: A User's Manual announced…Sat Mar 16 1996 - 00:00
Moo, by Jane Smiley (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)Only a very good novel could survive a title this bad, and although Smiley is an intelligent, perceptive writer of several fine…Sat Mar 16 1996 - 00:00
Imprisonments of the imaginationHORRIFIC consequences can develop out of the most ordinary incidents, and Kevin Canty pursues the relationship between the banal…Sat Mar 16 1996 - 00:00
THE NOVEL TDNOVEMBER 1994 and the breakup of the Fianna Fail Labour coalition Government marked the beginning of the most distressing period…Thu Mar 14 1996 - 00:00
Still going onLANGUAGE is the lifeline for the battered yet not quite beaten characters inhabiting the blackly hilarious world of Samuel Beckett…Wed Mar 13 1996 - 00:00
A recipe for disastersONE man's obsessive interest in superb cuisine might not seem the most promising of themes for a novel, but John Lanchester's…Sat Mar 09 1996 - 00:00
More Die Of Heartbreak, by Saul Bellow (Penguin, £7 99 in UK)If there is a central thesis to the fiction of Saul Bellow, one of 20th-century literature's masters, it is that the cleverest…Sat Mar 09 1996 - 00:00
REARING TO GOIT is a grey March morning; grey and surprisingly cold but dry. Danoli stands in his loose box and is friendly if detachedThu Mar 07 1996 - 00:00
Heart Songs by E. Annie Proulx (4th Estate, £6.99 in UK)These are tough, clear-eyed stories by an American original whose vision is stark, stern, philosophical and offbeatSat Mar 02 1996 - 00:00
A face in the crowdDURING the shooting of his stark and powerful new film Nothing Personal set during a previous IRA ceasefire - the one in 1975…Sat Mar 02 1996 - 00:00
Ordinary livesCHARLES DICKENS is alive and well and presiding over the pen of the Indian writer Rohinton MistrySat Mar 02 1996 - 00:00
Acton manIN Waiting For Godot, Beckett's hapless tramps Vladimir and Estragon, faced with endless nothingness, exchange insultsThu Feb 29 1996 - 00:00
A hostage to politicsAndre Brink is a South African, an Afrikaner. Apartheid meant nothing to him until he went to Paris as a student in 1959Wed Feb 28 1996 - 00:00
Some laughs with the angel of deathVIOLENT dreams, friendships and blood hatreds angels of death, surreal fantasies, terror, various frustrations, a veritable arsenal…Sat Feb 24 1996 - 00:00
You Can't Do Both, by Kingsley Amis (Flamingo £5.99 in UK)Hyped by Flamingo as "a precursor to Lucky Jim" (obviously they don't know the meaning of the word precursor), this is a typically…Sat Feb 24 1996 - 00:00
THE LIVES OF MIKEIT is ironic. Arts Show presenter Mike Murphy, one of Ireland's most accessible and personable "personality" broadcasters during…Thu Feb 22 1996 - 00:00
Sermons in stonesLANDSCAPES are culture before they are nature constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock,"argues Simon…Wed Feb 21 1996 - 00:00
An existence on the edge of oblivionINNI WINTROP, "one of those people who drag the time they have spent on earth behind them like an amorphous mass", lives a life…Sat Feb 17 1996 - 00:00
Real Life, by Marsha Hunt (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)Here's a showbiz memoir with several differencesSat Feb 17 1996 - 00:00
In search of a forgotten womanTHE story Marsha Hunt tells is both shocking and movingWed Feb 14 1996 - 00:00
Sunrise with Sea Monster, by Neil Jordan (Vintage, £5.99 in UK).War, the past, a man's embattled relationship with his widower father these are stock fiction devices and Jordan does nothing…Sat Feb 10 1996 - 00:00
The Blue Jay's Dance, by Louise Erdrich (Flamingo, £5.99)Personalised books about childbirth, babies and children can make for difficult readingSat Feb 10 1996 - 00:00
No luck, little joySOMETIMES charm alone and an even semi likable narrator can steer a weak, undemanding narrative safely through a credibility …Sat Feb 10 1996 - 00:00
Limerick laurels for Seamus HeaneyTHE Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Limerick University yesterdayFri Feb 09 1996 - 00:00
THE GOOD GRANDDAUGHTERIMAGINE being phoned by a cousin you barely know, someone who lives more than 4,000 miles awayThu Feb 08 1996 - 00:00
Party Going, by Green (Harvill, £8.99 in UK)It was said of Henry (1905-73) that he pursued trivial to the point where his subject-matter disappeared and he stopped writing…Sat Feb 03 1996 - 00:00
Back to the pastTHERE are several novels some good, others weak lurking inside South African Andre Brink's complex, narratively ambitious and…Sat Feb 03 1996 - 00:00
Eclipse, by J. Bern let (Faber, £8.99 in UK)Seconds before his car drops into a canal, Kees Zomer is conscious that "the left-hand side of the world has disappeared, suddenly…Sat Feb 03 1996 - 00:00
BELOVED JOURNEYMANTRADITION has given Ireland much to be proud of, but the burden of tradition has also been responsible, both indirectly and otherwise…Thu Feb 01 1996 - 00:00
A long history of timeMAGIC realism, the critic's generic label for an imaginative style of fiction writing which merges fact and fancy, has a playfulness…Wed Jan 31 1996 - 00:00
Heroic prince, hungry fighterONCE described by Seamus Heaney as "half heroic prince, half hungry fighter", the Russian poet and 1987 Nobel Laureate, Joseph…Tue Jan 30 1996 - 00:00
Tableau of childhood innocenceA schoolboy learns about the ugliness of life the hard way in Zsigmond Moricz's lively tenth novel, Be Faithful Unto Death (Central…Sat Jan 20 1996 - 00:00
A Lazy Eye, by Mary Morrissy (Vintage, £5.99 in UK)Assured and deliberate, these 15 sharp, crafted stories explore the painful inner world of the hurt and the vulnerableSat Jan 20 1996 - 00:00
THE GATEKEEPERSJuly 29th, the Gate Theatre's Beckett Festival will open in New York as part of the Lincoln FestivalThu Jan 18 1996 - 00:00
The poetry of everyday languageWHEN London butcher Jack Dodds dies three of his old pals, in the company of his abrasive adopted son Vince, set off to satisfy…Sat Jan 13 1996 - 00:00
