The Contemporary Irish Novel

Critical Readings

Linden Peach

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780333948927
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781403938541
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This essential guide offers innovative critical readings of key contemporary novels from Ireland and Northern Ireland. Linden Peach discusses texts that are representative of the richness of Irish writing during the 1980s and 1990s, and reads works by established authors alongside those by the new generation of writers. The novels examined include works by John Banville, Jennifer Johnston, Roddy Doyle, Emma Donoghue, Seamus Deane, William Trevor, Dermot Bolger, Joseph O'Connor, Patrick McCabe, Mary Morrissy, Glenn Patterson and Robert McLiam Wilson.

The Contemporary Irish Novel addresses themes such as ghosts and haunting, mimicry, obedience and subversion, the relocation and reinscription of identity, the mother figure, parent-child relations, madness, masculinity, self-harm, sexuality, domestic violence, fetishism and postmodernity. Drawing on a range of critical approaches including postcolonial, gender and psychoanalytic theory, Peach explores and celebrates the diversity of Irish fiction and suggests that the boundary between literature and theory is as permeable as that between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Interruptive Narratives: Emergent Voices and Haunted Presents
• 2 Posting the Present: Modernity and Modernization in Glenn Patterson’s Fat Lad (1992) and Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka Street (1996)
• 3 Secret Hauntings: Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark (1996), Joseph O’Connor’s The Salesman (1998), Jennifer Johnston’s Fool’s Sanctuary (1987), Mary Leland’s The Killeen (1985) and Linda Anderson’s To Stay Alive (1984)
• 4 Mimicry, Authority and Subversion: Brian Moore’s The Magician’s Wife (1997), Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin (2000) and John McGahern’s Amongst Women (1990)
• 5 Unspoken Desires: Jennifer Johnston’s Later Novels, Emma Donoghue’s Stir-fry (1994) and Kathleen Ferguson’s The Maid’s Tale (1994)
• 6 Fetishizing Absence: Dermot Bolger’s Father’s Music (1997) and Emily’s Shoes (1992)
• 7 ‘Mater Dolorosa’: Abject Mothers in Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper (1990) and Mary Morrissy’s Mother of Pearl (1995)
• 8 Limit and Transgression: Roddy Doyle’s The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996), Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1992) and William Trevor’s Felicia’s Journey (1994)
• 9 Return to Silence and Beyond: Speculative Narrative in Bernard MacLaverty’s Grace Notes (1997) and John Banville’s Birchwood (1973)
• Afterword
• Appendix: Time Chart
• Select Bibliography
• Index