Books to Enjoy

One night he dreams of a distant treasure at the Egyptian Pyramids and so goes off to follow his dream. We travel with him from his home in Spain to the markets in Tangiers and from there to the Egyptian Desert where he meets the alchemist. His journey is packed with weird and wonderful experiences all conspiring to help him to realise his dreams.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it, the alchemist tells him. Many clichés come to mind when reading this fable, e.g. "follow your dreams ... reach for the stars" etc., but while they may be obvious and a little wearisome to the cynic, the story itself is magical and captivating. Coehlo believes that each person has a dream to pursue and that life should be lived in pursuit of that dream.

This is not great literature; the characters are quite functional and lack depth. The Alchemist has all the simplicity and directness of fable. It is an easy, quick, enjoyable read that will inspire you - if you want it to. It may certainly help those who still haven't found what they're looking for!

Coincidentally, I read this book as Coehlo's countrymen shimmied and samba'd their way through the World cup. Ronaldo, that footballing alchemist, certainly saw his opportunities and turned them to gold.

Kate O'Carroll who teaches in Wesley College, Dublin 6 writes about two novels she has recently enjoyed. September, and our holiday castles crumble as the classroom walls rise up around us. One way to keep some free space in our heads is through reading books that are just for us, setting aside all those 'I wonder how the fourth years would like this' speculations. Two books which, in very different ways, are exhilarating and entertaining adult reads are Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn. Kingsolver, author of the highly acclaimed The Poisonwood Bible, is a biologist by training and deploys her knowledge brilliantly in this story of loss and renewal in the lives of three women: Lusa, tragically widowed and uncertain where home is; Deanna, like her classical namesake, a lover of the wilderness and a shunner of men, until ... ; and Nannie Rawley, wise and cranky, waging a war against pesticides and her equally cantankerous neighbour. This book is filled with the wonderful generosity of the imagination that characterises so much good American writing. While not denying sorrow, it is ultimately celebratory.

Glynn's novel also focuses on hope and possibility but, as its title implies, its vision is bleaker. Eddie Spinola, the engagingly flawed narrator, stumbles on a drug that immensely
speeds up brain function. What will he do with such an extraordinary performance-enhancer, in dot.com 90s New York? But as the light thickens and the dangers increase, the question that bedevils him, and the reader, is, what is this wonder-drug doing to him? This is a page-turning thriller, but it's also a thought-provoking exploration of the human desire to escape our limits, and the way that our reach will always exceed our grasp. The title is taken from the elegiac conclusion to The Great Gatsby; in Glynn's novel, the dark fields suggest the inner human landscape, full of enchanting and terrifying possibility. And, despite the narrative's perfectly pitched New York speak, the writer is from Drumcondra, not Brooklyn!
Prodigal Summer
(Faber, £7.99 sterling)
The Dark Fields
(Little, Brown £10.99 sterling)

Honor O'Connor who teaches in Alexandra College in Dublin 6 sent us this review of Peter Carey's
True History of the Kelly Gang.
This is a great read. Ned Kelly and his turbulent times are brought to life in the novel which Peter Carey has grafted on to the dog-eared pages of Kelly's own memoirs. These, though fragmentary, open a window into the struggle to survive faced by the transported Irish in the colony of New South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century. Carey imitates Kelly's non-standard style, which can be daunting at first, but the whole effect is convincing; a sense of "true history" is created - or constructed.

Ned's education was rudimentary and cut short by the imprisonment and subsequent death of his father. As the eldest son he took on the care of his mother and siblings, meeting obstacles that included her family, "The Wild Quinns", suspicious and fractious police, terms in prison and his own rebellious nature. Kelly's natural intelligence, resourcefulness, physical prowess and horse-manship, as well as his warm-hearted charm, kept the gang together.
The vast and open territory of New South Wales was the stage for the daring exploits that made him a folk hero. Carey's novel gave me a sense of Australia that complemented Patrick White's Vos and Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings. I strongly recommend it.

Della Meade read On Green Dolphin Street
By Sebastian Faulks Vintage Paperback 2002 Set in 1960 Washington, this is the story of Charlie and Mary van der Linden who have recently moved from England. Charlie is a diplomat with the British Embassy. They have two children who have been sent to boarding school back in England and they live a life full of diplomatic cocktail parties and martini lunches. Mary seems to be the model wife who adores her husband and children. She is caring, supportive and a superb hostess and is a most unlikely candidate for an extra-marital affair until Frank Renzo, a New York journalist, enters the picture. Charlie is another matter; he drinks and smokes far too much and pops pills constantly and appears to be living on a knife-edge. Mary and Frank indulge in a wildly passionate affair as Mary travels between New York and Washing-ton pretending to be researching and writing a book. Despite her love for Frank, she remains committed to her marriage and the reader gets caught up in her dilemma waiting all the time for Charlie to finally to break down.

Faulks is best known his books set in wartime France The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray. This book does not continue in that vein but it does show how peoples' experiences of World War 11 still haunt them, as neither Frank nor Charlie can forget its horrors some 15 years later.

The novel is set against the backdrop of the Kennedy/Nixon presidential campaign and Faulks presents a powerful snapshot of those times. He is an evocative storyteller who splendidly captures the atmosphere of the era.

Alec McAlister read The Map of Tenderness by Bill Wall Sceptre, (Hardback)
This novel is distinguished by a sense of economy. The central metaphor of maps delineations, landscapes, features, topography etc. is drawn on to probe and sustain the notion of how we chart relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the past and how the past defines the contours of our lives and sometimes our very existence.

Joe, the central character is a writer and through this novel he charts his emerging relationship with Suzie, the lines of their love life: its latitudes and longitudes. But there is an invisible fault-line in his character. Years ago, a book of his destroyed his relationship with his mother: his art has sundered them. He returns to the home place as she is dying and discovers that her illness is caused by an hereditary gene which he has a 50-50 chance of suffering from also. Against the erosion of this life, he and his estranged sister, Mary, struggle to come to terms with her death, their own life choices and their fathers will.

This novel meditates on love, intimations of mortality, randomness and certainty and the redeeming power of forgiveness. For all of that, it is no bleak house: Wall is gifted with a lightness of touch and a sense of pace that keeps the story as a living story to the end. He more than avoids the longuers that can mark (mar?) so many works of contemporary literary fiction. His use of music, the landscape and a few locations ensures that there is cohesiveness and a focus that never loosens its grip on the reader. I enjoyed it immensely.

William Wall, who teaches at Presentation College Cork, wrote for the "Writers in Schools" feature in our April edition of TESS.