- Paperback: 132 pages
- Publisher: River Foyle Press (30 Nov 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0615163696
- ISBN-13: 978-0615163697
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 0.8 cm
A Certain Place of Dreams
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Product Description
Product Description
More than four dozen pieces of microfiction that are set in and around the northern Irish city of Derry carry the reader to places of incredible beauty and vicious nightmare, times of absolute joy and moments of complete terror. In stories which tread a b
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Terrible beauty
3 Sep 2009
Format:Paperback
Ira David Socol has written a love letter to Northern Ireland. Love being the complicated business that it is, his method is somewhat roundabout. An unnamed narrator grew up in Derry and went off to the United States. He has come back with an American girlfriend and attempts to show her what it is he loves about his country. He grew up amid Irish airs and Beatles songs; ancient myths and boys' adventures; stories of the Irish revolution and personal experiences of "the Troubles." He seems to have taken part in the Troubles - on the Irish Catholic side - and that's what drove him off to the U.S.
The narrative unfolds in a non-narrative way: 56 vignettes, one, two, three pages long, hopping about from ruminations about the ancient gods of Eire to a hurling (the sport) genius whose body was ruined by the British, to sneaking out from Derry's Catholic enclave as a kid and taking days to find a way back in, to driving, walking, skinnydipping in the lush green country. Also drinking and smoking; lots of both. (There is also a 20-page sort of impressionist/realist interlude that takes place in New York City and is quite good in its way, but doesn't belong in this collection.)
Socol calls them "very short stories," and there are stories in them, not to mention a story revealed through them; but they are more like prose poems. His style is calculatedly "Irish" - not aye and gomorrah Irish, more like Yeats Irish - and while one wonders what an Irish reader might make of it, it works well for these two American readers. There is much that is terrible in this book, but Socol tells it all quite beautifully.
- James Yarnall and Nancy Stewart
The narrative unfolds in a non-narrative way: 56 vignettes, one, two, three pages long, hopping about from ruminations about the ancient gods of Eire to a hurling (the sport) genius whose body was ruined by the British, to sneaking out from Derry's Catholic enclave as a kid and taking days to find a way back in, to driving, walking, skinnydipping in the lush green country. Also drinking and smoking; lots of both. (There is also a 20-page sort of impressionist/realist interlude that takes place in New York City and is quite good in its way, but doesn't belong in this collection.)
Socol calls them "very short stories," and there are stories in them, not to mention a story revealed through them; but they are more like prose poems. His style is calculatedly "Irish" - not aye and gomorrah Irish, more like Yeats Irish - and while one wonders what an Irish reader might make of it, it works well for these two American readers. There is much that is terrible in this book, but Socol tells it all quite beautifully.
- James Yarnall and Nancy Stewart
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