Search:

Results 111 to 120 of 189 | « previous |

We don't know ourselves : a personal history of modern Ireland / by O'Toole, Fintan,1958-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A celebrated Irish writer's magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. Fintan O'Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government?in despair, because all the young people were leaving?opened the country to foreign investment and popular culture. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity. In We Don't Know Ourselves, O'Toole, one of the Anglophone world's most consummate stylists, weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society-perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. Born to a working-class family in the Dublin suburbs, O'Toole served as an altar boy and attended a Christian Brothers school, much as his forebears did. He was enthralled by American Westerns suddenly appearing on Irish television, which were not that far from his own experience, given that Ireland's main export was beef and it was still not unknown for herds of cattle to clatter down Dublin's streets. Yet the Westerns were a sign of what was to come. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish, women in particular. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism. In O'Toole's telling, America became a lodestar, from John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit, when the soon-to-be martyred American president was welcomed as a native son, to the emergence of the Irish technology sector in the late 1990s, driven by American corporations, which set Ireland on the path toward particular disaster during the 2008 financial crisis. A remarkably compassionate yet exacting observer, O'Toole in coruscating prose captures the peculiar Irish habit of "deliberate unknowing," which allowed myths of national greatness to persist even as the foundations were crumbling. Forty years in the making, We Don't Know Ourselves is a landmark work, a memoir and a national history that ultimately reveals how the two modes are entwined for all of us"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; O'Toole, Fintan, 1958-;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Redwood and wildfire / by Hairston, Andrea,author.;
"At the turn of the 20th century, minstrel shows transform into vaudeville, which slides into moving pictures. Hunkering together in dark theatres, diverse audiences marvel at flickering images. Redwood, an African American woman, and Aidan, a Seminole Irish man, journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a "city of the future." They are gifted performers and hoodoo conjurors, struggling to call up the wondrous world they imagine, not just on stage and screen, but on city streets, in front parlors, in wounded hearts. The power of hoodoo is the power of the community that believes in its capacities to heal. Living in a system stacked against them, Redwood and Aidan's power and talent are torment and joy. Their search for a place to be who they want to be is an exhilarating, painful, magical adventure"--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; African American women; Motion pictures; Vaudeville;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The heart's invisible furies / by Boyne, John,1971-author.;
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he? Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from - and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Adoptees; Friendship; Conduct of life;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Orphan train / by Kline, Christina Baker,1964-author.;
Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to 'aging out' out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance. Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life -- answers that will ultimately free them both.
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Women; Orphan trains; Female friendship;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

From dust to stardust : a novel / by Rooney, Kathleen,1980-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Chicago, 1916. Doreen O'Dare is fourteen years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train with her beloved Irish grandmother. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy, and the secrets of a dangerous marriage. Her professional life in flux, Doreen trades one dream for another. She pours her wealth and creative energy into a singular achievement: the construction of a one-ton miniature Fairy Castle, the likes of which the world has never seen. So begins Doreen's public tour to lift the nation's spirits during the Great Depression--and a personal journey worth remembering. A sweeping journey from the dawn of the motion picture era through turbulent twentieth-century America, From Dust to Stardust is a breathtaking novel about one determined woman navigating change, challenging the price of fame, and sharing the gift of real magic"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Actors; Actresses; Dollhouses;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Unrest / by Tuinman, Gwen,author.;
"Bytown, 1836: The lawless cesspool that will become the city of Ottawa is beginning to reek of more than just swamp water. Rife with squalor, corruption, and organized crime, class injustice divides the town more starkly than the canal that bisects it, cutting off its Irish poor--who are ready to fight back. On a homestead in the woods near Bytown, a domestic drama is also reaching a fever pitch. Quiet, ungainly Mariah, her face scarred in a dog attack back home in Ireland, has been living on sufferance in her sister Biddy's home since they sailed for a new life. She's treated as the spinster aunt, a farmhand working alongside Biddy's husband, Seamus. But the three of them are keeping a bitter secret: Mariah, in love with Seamus, is the mother of Thomas, the family's oldest child. And she's about to burst under the strain of making herself small. While Mariah plots to claim her rightful place in the world, Thomas keeps secrets of his own. Eager to escape the roiling tensions at home, he's apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in Bytown, but soon falls into trouble too big for him to handle. To save himself, he's made a deal with the one man colder than the devil--Peter Aylen, leader of a powerful Irish rebel gang. As danger mounts, both for Thomas and for the town, there's only one way for Mariah to save her son: by becoming the hero of her own story, facing her deepest fears with a determination she never knew she had."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; Novels.; Family secrets; Gangs; Irish; Mothers and sons; Secrecy; Sisters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

The wren, the wren / by Enright, Anne,1962-author.;
"From Booker-prize winning author Anne Enright, an astonishing novel about the love between mother and daughter--sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent. "Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother had been." Nell--funny, brave and so much loved--is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions. In this penetrating and beautifully written novel, Anne Enright luminously brings to life the essence of what makes a family survive the vicissitudes of life. The Wren, the Wren is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual, or genetic. A generational saga that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women, by one of the greatest living writers of our age."--
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Novels.; Children of authors; Children of celebrities; Coming of age; Families; Love; Mothers and daughters; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Ordinary wonder tales : essays / by Urquhart, Emily,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagine--and reveals the magic in the everyday. "I've always felt that the term fairy tale doesn't quite capture the essence of these stories," writes Emily Urquhart. "I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories." In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter storm--or the onset of a loved one's dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday."--
Subjects: Essays.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Fenian Street : a mystery / by Emery, Anne,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."Shay Rynne grew up in the Corporation Flats -- public housing -- in Fenian Street, Dublin. He has always toyed with the idea of joining the Garda Síochána, the Irish police. But in the early 1970s, young fellows from the tenements of Dublin have not been welcomed in the police force. When his friend Rosaleen is killed and the case goes unsolved, Shay decides to put on the uniform of a Dublin garda and sets out to find the killer. The murder inquiry makes an enemy of the detective who failed in the first investigation. Shay knows Detective McCreevy is just waiting for the chance to get revenge. But the violent death of a prominent politician gives Shay the opportunity to prove himself, perhaps even be promoted. Shay works with the lead detective on the murder inquiry and his star is rising, until suspicion falls on a member of Shay's own family. So Shay is off the case. Officially. Determined to clear his family name, his under-the-radar investigation takes him from an opulent mansion in Dublin to Hell's Kitchen in New York. And his good friend Father Brennan Burke has some surprising contacts for Shay in the shadowy world of New York's Irish mob."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Novels.; Ireland. Garda Síochána; Murder; Police;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Daring to dream / by Roberts, Nora,author.;
"Margo, Kate and Laura were brought up like sisters amidst the peerless grandeur of Templeton House. But it was Margo whose dreams first took her far away . . . Margo Sullivan had everything a young woman could ask for. But while growing up along the rocky cliffs of Monterey, she couldn't help but dream of bigger things. The daughter of the Templetons' stern Irish housekeeper, Margo had been treated like a member of the family. Deep down, she knew that money could not buy the thing she craved most--her mother's acceptance. Maybe things would be different if she could be sweet like Laura, or had Kate's shrewd head for business. But all Margo knew how to do was be Margo, and that meant doing things her own way--no matter what the consequences"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Romance fiction.; Friendship;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
unAPI

Results 111 to 120 of 189 | « previous |