Best/ Worst Irish Books (1 Viewer)

[Goodbye]

Best:

Worst:

 

[shitepipe]

best

 

[Mitchum]

Hmm. Bestest is 'Ulysses' or 'The Unnameable' (Beckett not Lovecraft) but I've a real soft spot for Aidan Higgins' 'Balcony Of Europe' and the shamefully out of print 'Meusli At Midnight' by Aidan Matthews.

Worst? Oh I dunno, I tend not to bother finishing books I think are poorly written. I did think 'oh dear, we've been here before' about thirty pages into Patrick McCabe's 'Call Me The Breeze'. He keeps writing the same book again and again.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I did think 'oh dear, we've been here before' about thirty pages into Patrick McCabe's 'Call Me The Breeze'. He keeps writing the same book again and again.

he does alright. i remember reading an interview with him about 8 or 9 years ago in which he said he was going to change his style because his books up to that point were more or less the same. then i bought his next book thinking it'd be different and it was more of the same. i'll never read another of his books, although none of the ones i have read were terrible or anything. Inish Owen by Joseph O'Connor was a load of cack.

best... umm... i liked the third policeman a lot, and the whereabouts of eneas mcnulty by sebastian barry was excellent too.

 

[La La]

g'jaysus, now i dont know if i've read that much irish literature when i think about it.........under the hawthorn tree i read about ten times when i was 9.........


i really did NOT enjoy the gathering by anne enright though so i'll vote that as worst?

 

[travispickle]

i really did NOT enjoy the gathering by anne enright though so i'll vote that as worst?[/quote]
I thought that was great!
Don't read much Irish usually - But of stuff read recently, The Gathering and Blackwater Lightship
Worst will have to be P.S. I love you and similar chick-lit crap.

 

[sugar_referee]

Ah it has to be

Worst, because I know people involved in the story and because she distorted a fucking horrible event into something ambiguous, and against the express wishes of the family, and also because she can't write for toffee

 

[ernesto]

anything by this spa

 

[Dktr. Faustus]

 

[jimmybreeze]

anything by this spa

As the best?

 

[Lili Marlene]

Hmm. Bestest is 'Ulysses'

Fucks sake Mitchum, we get it

 

[Mitchum]

Fucks sake Mitchum, we get it

tut.

 

[MDR]

I haven't read enough books by irish authors to really choose properly, but I really enjoyed the Ginger Man and the Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B by JP Donleavy (american but pretty much a naturalised irishman). I liked walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan as well as McGahern's and Flann O'Brien's stuff. I've read Ulysses, Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist but, impressive though they are, they had little emotional hold over me.

 

[IFF]

on fiction, i really liked zoli by colum mccann, i always really enjoyed the 3 jjoyce books i';'ve read though the best of them was Portrait of the artist but i've just finished it this week so a bit biased. non-fiction, both manchan magan's book were great reads

actual;ly i don't read alot of irish book so i'll shut up

 

[Monkey]

"Sophisticated Boom Boom" by John Kelly is the worst Irish book i've started to read. The writing was so bad I stopped after a few pages.

 

[BC]

best: "the third policeman" by flann o'brien. i have never tired of reading this, the mood seems to change everytime. surrealist perfection: mitchum, i prefer "finnegans wake" as my favourite joyce work.

worst: anything by roddy doyle. yes, he may not strike you as especially dismal, but doyle offers a particularly repugnant example of derivation. just like irvine welch, he "MEANS IT MAAAAN" 'cos 'e spok' in' der' fookin' venaculah', buh'. who gives a shit about gimmicks like this, when "the commitments" stands as a deeply patronising testament to irish self-hatred.

 

[ernesto]

As the best?

oh yes, sorry...... the best.
i mean, what a talent.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

best

John McGahern - The Dark.

I discovered this on my parents' bookshelves when I was 13. Have re-read it loads of times since. An extremely well-written, gripping, descriptive and scathing novel.

The character of 'Mahoney' is the coolest.

 

[Lili Marlene]

"Sophisticated Boom Boom" by John Kelly is the worst Irish book i've started to read. The writing was so bad I stopped after a few pages.

great song buh



anyway, all the best Irish books were written by Eilis Dillon and are about islands off the coast of Galway and curraghs