Books in brief: No Ordinary Bread; Journeywork: A Creative Life; and Can I Have Your Charm Bracelet When You Die?
By Jim Ward
Ace of Swords Publishing, €18
An ambitious, promising debut novel of conflicting ideologies fishing for men's souls. The story is set in rural China in the midst of the civil war, and is experienced through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy witnessing first-hand the spiritual revolutions within the country: both the surgent Chinese Communist Party, and the Catholic Church missionaries in the determined teachings of a Belgian Jesuit. A clash of wills is inevitable and lives are changed forever. Ward writes in an unadorned, straight-ahead style (which works well considering the narrator), and he shifts easily into expansive, more philosophical realms when the political provocateurs push their way to the centre of the story. A cleverly structured historical novel, rich with lively dialogue; a fine first book.
NJ McGarrigle
Journeywork: A Creative Life
By Dave Duggan
Nerve Centre, £12.99
Derry-based writer and dramatist Dave Duggan's luminous collection of 13 essays offers a deeply personal map of a life shaped by story, language, resilience, and artistic vocation. Moving between memoir, reflections on illness, his working-class background, and meditations on creative practice, Duggan explores imagination with clarity, grace, and hard-won wisdom. 'Adapt and persist. Don't doubt,' he urges, a quiet anthem of endurance throughout. The author is edging towards 70, but his work exudes the energy of a writer just beginning – curious, lucid, and alive to the world. 'My father had books. My mother had songs,' he writes. With wit, humility and insight, Duggan weaves local politics, international literature, and poignant moments, including an Oscar nomination for Dance Lexie Dance, into a celebration of creativity, resilience and artistic bravery.
Adam Wyeth
Can I Have Your Charm Bracelet When You Die? A Dublin Childhood
By Sheila Hamilton
Hen's Teeth, €17.50
Esther, an adored aunt of the child narrator, is having man trouble. 'Hold the bone and the dog will follow', is her mother's play-hard-to-get advice. 'He's gorgeous looking, a model for a coddle he'll do for a stew!', says a sister. Everyday joys and cares in two loving households fill two-thirds of this endearing 1970s-1980s south-inner-city memoir 'sprinkled with the lightest embellishment'. Childhood is followed by interludes in New York and Amsterdam that do not lessen the family bonds as cruel illnesses blight the adult lives of the author, her mother and Esther. Hilarious, then heartbreaking, this is a story 'shared with love' and with charm.
Ray Burke
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Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Hugging, French kissing and shoes indoors: The western habits Chinese people hate
The circus tent was big enough for an audience of about 700 but only a few dozen of us had battled through the torrential rain that hit Beijing at the weekend. I was sitting in the front row with my friend Song, who had not been to a circus since he was 12 and was peering at the tightrope with a sceptical eye. 'They're not going to fall on top of us, are they?' he said. The first act featured four acrobats on the tightrope, sometimes blindfolded, walking backwards or balanced on top of one another. The youngest of them, who looked about 16, appeared later somersaulting on top of a giant treadmill as it was spinning at speed high in the air. The only animal act featured five performing poodles who jumped through hoops, pulled tiny rickshaws and danced on their hind legs for their trainer, who looked like a kindly version of Rosa Klebb as played by Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love. Most of the audience were families with small children, all of whom loved the slim, good-natured clown as he dipped into a bag full of tube-shaped balloons which he hurled towards them like javelins. READ MORE The show lasted just over an hour and even Song agreed that it had been a delight from start to finish. He had been reluctant to travel out to this suburb in the southsouthwesthe city until he discovered that 10 minutes away from the circus was a museum of Chinese gardens and landscape architecture. Among Song's enthusiasms is Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin's novel about the declining fortunes of an aristocratic family during the Qing Dynasty. Much of the action takes place in the Grand View Garden, an ornamental garden that serves a similar function to the Big House in Irish novels as a symbol of the family's decline. The museum had a replica of a literati garden of the kind created by the educated classes between the 16th and 18th centuries as places of contemplation in harmony with nature. As Song led me through it, lifting the red ropes to enter each cordoned off space, he pointed out notable features and delivered a little lecture on them. [ Beijing Letter: Getting exercised when the gym goes bankrupt Opens in new window ] [ Beijing Letter: a night to remember at the Chinese opera Opens in new window ] Afterwards, with a couple of hours to kill before the circus, we sat in a huge empty restaurant where he slurped loudly on a lamb broth. I remembered how off-putting I once found this noisy eating and I asked him about the habits of westerners that gave Chinese people the ick. 'Wearing shoes indoors, especially in the bedroom,' he said. Chinese people leave their shoes at the door, but they keep their socks on and according to Song, 'if you're a man, nobody wants to see your bare feet'. Most people shower at night rather than in the morning and going to bed without bathing is another turnoff. If you are in a queue in China, the person behind you will be right behind you and they don't think of such proximity as an incursion into your personal space. Nobody minds being jammed against one another in the subway either, but when it comes to social interactions, it's better to keep body contact to a minimum. 'Shaking hands is okay but all that hugging is too much,' Song said. Too much eye contact is also perceived as a bit creepy and if you accidentally catch a stranger's eye, you should look away immediately. Noisy eating, slurping and chewing with your mouth open are fine but picking up food with your fingers and putting it in your mouth is disgusting. Song was tentative at first when I asked him about our nasty western habits but now he was getting into his stride as he thought of fresh horrors. 'French kissing,' he said. 'It's too wet and we don't like the tongues. A lot of people don't open their lips at all when they kiss.' This brought us onto sharing bottles and other questions of hygiene but there was one matter I knew he would not mention without prompting: the smell. East Asians have a higher prevalence of a gene variant which means they have less body odour, making them more sensitive to what some call lao wai wei, or foreigner smell. 'It's armpit but it's sour and smoky like a barbebarbecue said. 'We'll say to each other, 'here comes the barbebarbecueIt had been a long day in the garden museum with the temperature in the high 30s and humidity in the 90s and I started to worry about the level of my lao wai wei. Song read my mind and looked out the window. 'I don't mind it,' he said. 'Not really.'
Irish Times
17-07-2025
- Irish Times
Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa: An unforgettable masterpiece depicting rural China during the Cultural Revolution
Old Kiln Author : Jia Pingwa, translated by James Trapp, Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne ISBN-13 : 978-1838905262 Publisher : Sinoist Books Guideline Price : £19.99 Jia Pingwa is one of the most respected and widely read writers in China . He is particularly associated with realist writing about rural communities in his home province of Shaanxi. Though several of his novels have been translated into English, he has not yet had the major breakthrough he deserves. Old Kiln adds to the growing list of contemporary Chinese fiction that explores Mao Zedong's disastrous Cultural Revolution, including works by Yan Lianke, Zou Jingzhi and Zhang Xianliang. Jia Pingwa was a teenager during that period and writes with both the authority of direct experience and the benefit of perspective. The novel is set in the remote village of Old Kiln, known in years past for its excellence in porcelain, but now a poor backwater relying on subsistence communal farming. The story focuses on young Inkcap, who was found in a river and adopted. He lives with his Gran who is considered a 'class enemy' owing to Inkcap's grandfather's ties to the nationalist Kuomintang army. READ MORE Bash is a charismatic local tough who becomes the leader of a violent faction at the vanguard of the Cultural Revolution. He is central to the bloody internecine struggles between rival factions in the village. Contrasting with Bash is Goodman, the village's unofficial spiritual guide and healer, whose world view is steeped in Daoism and Buddhism rather than Maoist ideology. This long novel moves at the slow pace of village life; however, it is brimming with vibrant characters, ribald humour and memorable anecdotes. It offers precision writing that re-creates the experience of living among uneducated people who have become infantilised and bewildered by successive waves of ideological reform. The translation has been split between three talented translators, and it is to their immense credit that the novel retains such unity of style and coherence of tone, without losing any of the comedy and tenderness that makes it so human. Old Kiln is quietly epic in its patient but unforgettable depiction of life in rural China under the tyranny of the Cultural Revolution. It is unquestionably a masterpiece and ought to consolidate Jia Pingwa's reputation as a writer of international importance.
Irish Times
04-07-2025
- Irish Times
Celebrating the Irish writer whose ghost stories still grip Japan
Expo 2025, the sprawling world exposition in the Japanese city of Osaka, is bounded by Sou Fijimoto's Grand Ring, the largest wooden structure in the world and designed as a symbol of unity in diversity. Just inside the entrance to the Expo is another ring, Joseph Walsh 's six-metre tall Magnus Rinn, a monumental sculpture made of bronze and oak. Walsh's sculpture stands outside the Irish pavilion, itself composed of three intersecting circular structures based on the Celtic triskele and clad in fir timber. The French pavilion features displays of haute couture and luxury goods and the American is themed on space, but the Irish one is notable for its restraint. The three spaces inside on the ground floor are dark and the first features an installation based on the sights, sounds and smells of Ireland, with some living bog at the centre. The second shows objects that connect Ireland and Japan, and the third is a performance space that looks at creative collaboration between the two countries. When Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited the pavilion on Thursday, he lingered over an exhibition upstairs of prints based on the Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn's Japanese ghost stories. Once as famous as Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe, Hearn is still widely read in Japan, where he was also known as Yakumo Koizumi. READ MORE [ Lafcadio Hearn, a profoundly homeless world-class writer Opens in new window ] 'Japan and Ireland share a deep respect for the past and the love of culture, literature and music, along with a deep connection to nature. We are both storytellers, and in this pavilion, we tell the story of Lafcadio Hearn. Hearn came to Japan as a journalist in 1890 and wrote about life in Japan for a western audience, keen to know more about this wonderful country,' the Taoiseach told a reception in the pavilion later. At 8am every morning, millions of Japanese television viewers start their day watching the latest 15-minute episode of the current asadora, or morning drama. Each drama runs for six months with about 150 episodes on the national broadcaster NHK, where it has been among the most popular shows since 1961. Every series features a woman who overcomes adversity to find fulfilment, often inspired by the lives of real historical figures. The next series is The Ghost Writer's Wife, loosely based on the life of Setso Koizumu, who was married to Hearn. Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born in 1850 on the island of Lefkada near Ithaca to an Irish father and a Greek mother. When he was two, his mother brought him to Ireland, where she discovered that Hearn's father had left her for another woman. Hearn's mother soon returned to Greece with a new partner and she left her son behind in Dublin to be raised by his great-aunt Sarah Brenane, a wealthy widow with no experience of bringing up children. She sent him to school in England but when she fell on hard times, he found himself in low company on the backstreets of London before gaining a passage to America. He moved to Cincinnati where he made an impression as a journalist who wrote vivid accounts of grisly crimes. But marrying a black woman led to his dismissal and he moved to New Orleans, where his accounts of the high life and the low life of the city attracted the attention of Harper's Monthly, which hired him and later sent him to Japan as a correspondent. Six years after he arrived in the country, Hearn became a Japanese citizen, adopted a Japanese name and took his wife's family name. His most famous book is Kwaidan, a collection of supernatural stories based on Japanese folk tales but he was also as a journalist a perceptive observer of Japan's modernisation. 'Unlike contemporaneous Western Japanologists, he understood that Japan was becoming westernised, not western: it would take what it required from the West but remain quintessentially Japanese,' wrote Hearn's biographer Paul Murray. 'His vision was double-edged, illuminating both Japan and the West, the latter seen as morally inferior to a Japan which embodied to him many of the virtues of ancient Greece. His scepticism about the civilising mission of the West, evident in his Cincinnati journalism, turned into downright hostility in his Japanese work.' A former Irish ambassador to South Korea, Murray discovered Hearn in a Tokyo bookshop when he was a junior diplomat in Japan. The Embassy's new home at Ireland House Tokyo, which the Taoiseach opened this week, has a library named after Hearn. Ten years ago, the Little Museum of Dublin staged an exhibition and a programme of events about Hearn's life and work . Now that he is about to become a star of Japanese morning television drama, perhaps it's time for this remarkable figure to become better known in the country where he spent his childhood.
