Wow. I love the way Sebastian Barry writes, and in The Long Long Way - a story about Irish soldiers fighting in the First World War - he really puts us through the wringer. Some of the imagery (e.g. men in trenches walking over the bloody fragments and broken bones of fallen colleagues) is so … Continue reading “A Long Long Way”
Category: Writing
Some recent Substack posts
"when you see anything of mine that you don’t like remember that I’m sincere in doing it and that I’m working toward something." - Ernest Hemingway A selection of links to recent posts from my Substack site. "Writing until the light goes out" "Writing until the light goes out"
“That They May Face the Rising Sun”
Not very much happens in John McGahern's "That They May Face the Rising Sun" - but don't let that put you off! The novel paints a considered and in-depth picture of slow, rural Irish life which, even though the scale of it is quite narrow, still manages to touch on the universal. If I had … Continue reading “That They May Face the Rising Sun”
Books available at discounted prices!
Thanks to an agreement with the printer, you can obtain a number of my books at lower than list price (UK and US only). These are: 17 Alma Road (novel) An Irregular Piece of Sky (short stories) At Maunston Quay (novel) Bound (poetry) Dust, dancing (short stories) Grimsby Docks (poetry) Less (poetry) not the Sonnets … Continue reading Books available at discounted prices!
“The Tattoo Collector” & “no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song”
I include both these poetry collections in the same post not simply because I finished with both today, but because I couldn't finish reading them... I read Tim Tim Cheng's "The Tattoo Collector" about two months ago. Not being sure about it, I put it to one side and recently came back to it. Whilst … Continue reading “The Tattoo Collector” & “no matter how it ends a bluebird’s song”
“The Brueghel Moon”
A small confession. I had no real idea what was going on in Tamaz Chiladze's "The Brueghel Moon" - though I suspect this says more about me than the book! It was the first time (to the best of my knowledge) that I've read any Georgian fiction, and whether my confusion had anything to do … Continue reading “The Brueghel Moon”
“Strange Husbandry”
On first reading I was distinctly unimpressed with Lorcán Black's "Strange Husbandry". Indeed, I very nearly didn't finish it. But I put it aside (for a couple of months) and re-read it last week. [This is a new process I seem to have adopted with poetry collections - especially those I struggle with initially.] The … Continue reading “Strange Husbandry”
“The Black Snow”
The language in Paul Lynch's "The Black Snow" possesses a kind of sustained lyricism which blends the poetic, the archaic, and the rural vocabulary of old Ireland. If you're not au fait with the language, occasionally you can get lost in it (in the sense of not being quite sure what is being said) and … Continue reading “The Black Snow”
Book trailers
Over the last few weeks I have been generating short video trailers for my books (most are less than a minute long). Here they all are collected in one place!
“Ham on Rye”
I have just read Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye in double-quick time. It's urgent, powerful, raw - and like Henry Chinaski himself, doesn't pull any punches. It's a book which also peels back layers on society, on belonging (and not belonging), on the treadmill of vacuous routine. Pointlessness is never very far away, and romance … Continue reading “Ham on Rye”
Ian Gouge - Writer 