Overview

Tull MacAdoo TD is kept busy procuring jobs and IRA pensions for deserving voters and keeping his spendthrift son under control. Somehow he must also contest an election and save his reputation while holding fast to his personal philosophy: ""Forage between honesty and crookedness and do the best you can'. Martin O'Mora, the Parish Priest of Lochnanane dispenses justice in his own inimitable way. While battling for the souls of his parishioners, he must also deal with his nephew's shaky vocation, a sex-crazed curate and an uncontrollable outbreak of inflatable dolls. The clients of Dicky Mick Dicky O'Connor require spouses who are willing, wealthy and in perfect working order – difficult to find in the underpopulated hinterlands of Ballybarra, but anything is possible for a gifted matchmaker.

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9781856351560

Table of Contents

Reviews

'This joins the hallowed heights of books I simply didn't want to come to an end (the others being Adventures in the screenwriting trade & On the Street where I live ). JB writes in the rich patois of North Kerry, a hiberno-english mix of Elizabethean english and Bardic irish, brimful of similes and metaphors of the land. The book covers the fictional correspondence four men of the locale. The letters of McAdoo, a local MP (or TD as we say in Ireland) bookend the selection. To use the term Machiavellian on him would be to describe Operation Barbarossa as a minor skirmish. In contrast to the endearing portrayal of the other characters, McAdoo comes across as a cynical self-serving monstrosity who will steep to any trick to ensure he remains atop of the local political machine. This is taken to jaw dropping levels in the final letters when he has finally become a Minister of State. The fun is had in that it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to recognise many rural TDs of the the 60's and 70's in McAdoo's antics, given several would still have had the whiff of cordite from the war of independance. The letters of the local priest and matchmaker are poignant, funny and endearing, and in the matchmaker's case sometimes heartbreaking. Given the time that they were written in (1967-'75), J.B. didn't blink when it came to hacking at the twin shibboleths of nationalism and religion, a hobby not for the faint of heart in the days that were. What's endearing is that he still loves his subjects and characters for all their flaws, never sinking into humourless diatribes even when puncturing crawthumping pomposity and hyprocrisy. There is just such a sense of place, colour and vibrancy in the letters. If you've ever been to rural Kerry, you know that there is no exaggeration in the language used. In summary, a true delight.' - Weshty, Amazon review.

Author Information

John B. Keane, one of Ireland's most prolific and respected literary figures, died on 30 May 2002 at the age of 73, after a long and difficult battle with cancer. He was born in Listowel, County Kerry and it was here that he spent his literary career, running a pub which provided him with inspiration for his characters and ideas. He remains one of Ireland's best-loved and best-selling authors. His plays Sive, The Field and Big Maggie are widely regarded as classics of the modern Irish stage and jewels in a crown which also includes such popular hits as Sharon's Grave, The Year of the Hiker, Many Young Men of Twenty, The Man from Clare, Moll and The Chastitute and The Year of the Hiker. It was not just in his plays that John B. Keane managed to portray all aspects of humanity with both wit and truth. He also wrote many fine novels, including The Contractors, A High Meadow and Durango. Also a writer of essays, short stories and letters, his humorous words live on in Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane, More Celebrated Letters, The Best of John B. Keane and The Short Stories of John B. Keane.

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