Mary Kenny
The Wild West
Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom
By Tim Robinson
Penguin Ireland 422pp £20
Ireland was born in a fusion of two tectonic plates 440 million years ago. The northern half, and what would become Connemara, lay on the edge of a continent called Laurentia, which is now in North America and Greenland; the rest of Ireland originated in the shores of a continental fragment called Avalonia, which is now part of Baltic Scandinavia. It is wondrous to look upon the landscape of Ireland and think of it as having such disparate geological roots.
The third volume in Tim Robinson’s trilogy on Connemara is packed full of such extraordinary and engaging information. But the book is almost impossible to categorise: it is geography and geology, history and mythology, biography and sociology. It is agriculture and pisciculture and linguistics and music; it is
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Interview with Iris Murdoch by John Haffenden via @Lit_Review
I love Helen Garner and this, by @chris_power in @Lit_Review, is excellent.
Yesterday was Fredric Jameson's 90th birthday.
This month's Archive newsletter includes Terry Eagleton on The Political Unconscious, and other pieces from our April 1983 issue.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk