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 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 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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Real Life, by Marsha Hunt (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)Here's a showbiz memoir with several differencesSat Feb 17 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
In search of a forgotten womanTHE story Marsha Hunt tells is both shocking and movingWed Feb 14 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Looking at Giacometti, by David Sylvester (Pimlico, £12.50 in UK)"Memory is short, very short," Giacometti said in an interviewSat Jan 13 1996 - 00:00
