Beidh Tú Alright - former politician writes about the joys of learning Irish
FIRST CHAPTER BOOK REVIEWS: This week there’s a book that recalls the joys of learning Irish, post schooldays. There’s also a novel set in Victorian London where society figures are being murdered, one by one. There’s a novel about a wedding and about how the divorced parents handle themselves! There’s a murder mystery where the killings bear the hallmarks of Grimm brothers’ fairy tales. And ghosts abound in another mystery, where a medium can hear the dead speak.
The Naming of the Birds, Paraic O’Donnell, W&N, €19.99
The story opens in February of 1872 with a fire in a London orphanage. A small group of children who survive but are badly burnt are taken away to a school of sorts, run by rabid tyrants, miscreants and perverts. The children’s names are changed and they are abused beyond measure. Moving on to March of 1894 and we again meet Inspector Henry Cutter and his sergeant, Gideon Bliss. We last met them in O’Donnell’s brilliant The House on Vesper Sands. The murders here begin with Sir Aneurin Considine, retired high-ranking civil servant. And his killing is rather macabre. Others quickly follow, all of them bloody and lurid, all of the victims significant members of London’s elite. It’s up to Cutter and Bliss, with the assistance of cool-headed journalist Octavia Hillingdon to catch the killer. This is a very dark novel but it’s also very funny. And O’Donnell is so skilled at catching the language and mores of the time, it’s truly evocative. One of the blurbs says: “…his style can be likened to Charles Dickens on steroids…” and I can’t better that. Stylishly crafted and great fun, it’s hugely entertaining.
Beidh Tú Alright, Joe McHugh, Red Stripe Press, €19.99
If, like this reader, you wasted twelve years of your life learning a language you cannot speak, you might be interested in this book. Joe McHugh is a former Fine Gael TD who, in 2014, was given the position of Minister for Natural Resources, the Gaeltacht and the Islands. Obviously this meant, among other things, promoting the Irish language. A language he couldn’t speak. The 'Gaeltachers' were out for blood, outraged that someone who couldn’t speak Irish was given such responsibility. McHugh decided he’d learn the language. And he did, he’s now a fluent Irish speaker. This book is the story of his journey from barely having a focal ar bith to being fully confident with a language that’s far from easy. He called Liam Ó Cuinneagáin, who ran an immersive Irish Language centre in Donegal. Ó Cuinneagáin reassured him from the get-go, saying ‘Beidh tú alright’. He would be alright. And off he headed for a two-week crash course in Irish. Each chapter of his book starts with a passage in italics where it seems the language itself is the narrator, and then we return to McHugh’s own story. And unlike the Irish he (and most of us) didn’t learn in school, he encountered a rich, deep language and fell in love with it. It’s an interesting read but it’s also testament to the man himself. He didn’t give up, he didn’t run and hide, he took the bull by the horns and did what he had to do. If only all our TDs were so inspiring!
Little Red Death, AK Benedict, Simon & Schuster, €16.99
A retelling of some of the grimmer moments of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, this unusual murder mystery has DI Lyla Rondell investigating a spate of killings in the New Forest in southern England. The killer has been dubbed the Grim Ripper, based on how he executes his victims, leaving more than a nod to some scenes in the fairy tales. On top of that, it’s known he wears a wolf’s mask while on his sprees. For Rondell it’s the case of a lifetime. With lots of plot twists, along with a little magic and some strange mushrooms, this is far from the traditional police procedural and the sock punch at the end is so unexpected, it might set the reader back to the beginning, just to check what they might have missed. Clever, and more than a little heart-stopping. A thriller in the real sense.
The Hidden Dead, Tracy Whitwell, Pan, €14.99
This is Whitwell’s fourth novel in The Accidental Medium series, which has become very popular. The accidental medium here is Tanz, who’s fond of a drink or five and who has discovered she can communicate with the dead. This turns out to be a very handy skill to possess when you’re trying to work out who killed whom. In this story, Tanz meets the attractive Einar in a bar (where else!) and agrees to return to Iceland with him, to attend a retreat there and have some fun. Einar turns out not to be so great and Tanz finds herself alone in a country where she doesn’t speak the language. But she soon finds herself in the middle of a cold case. She dreams of a man standing on the edge of a cliff. Is he going to jump? And she dreams of a woman, distressed at her husband’s double-dealing. Are these dreams connected? Tanz decides she will try to help this woman and finds herself solving a murder, with help along the way from her new Icelandic friends, Thor and Birta. Funny in spots, this is one for the ‘cosy murder mystery’ fans who might also like a bit of magic and ghostly (ghastly) mayhem.