Frank Delaney’s Top 10 Irish Novels

Here it is..

Is the Elizabeth Bowen on the list the same author as the one who wrote John Adams and the American Revolution? Dad?

From this list, I have read Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, both by Joyce, obviously, The Country Girls, by Edna O’Brien, and Amongst Women, by the miraculous writer John McGahern.

The Country Girls, O’Brien’s first novel, is a trilogy about two young girls from County Clare who end up in Dublin, and we learn about their love affairs, their issues with their families, their jobs. It’s most definitely a first novel, but there are bits of prose so delicious you want to eat it, you want to read over certain images again. She GETS it. The way in is through your senses. I can still remember her talking about the mist rising from the grass, the red-velvet dress of the sort of slutty mother in their town … other sensory things, too. I like the first part of the trilogy best – when Kate and Baba are teenage friends, in the country … before they make the break to the city … before they start to get married and have awful love affairs. Not a great book, certainly, but a favorite.

And Amongst Women is a treasure. It’s one of the most painful books I think I’ve ever read. (Not as painful as Atonement, but pretty damn close.) That FATHER. He is one of the most well-drawn characters I’ve ever seen. He made my heart hurt. McGahern blew me away.

But … no At Swim-Two-Birds? In a round-about way, my old blog is named after that great book!

(via Dan)