Having kept Port Mortuary with a great sense of anticipation while I finished reading a couple of other novels, I’m sorry to say that it didn’t live up to my expectations. I had heard that Patricia Cornwall was back on form with Port Mortuary so I had expected to be drawn in from the first pages and held throughout the remainder. In the event, I found that the first half of the book hard to get into and the non-stop acronyms were distracting and sometimes made for difficult reading. More than once, I had to flick back to remind myself what a particular acronym stood for. Eventually, the story did come together and the last part of the book is much stronger. Having said all of that, it is still a fast read and I did not consider abandoning it. If you are a Patricia Cornwall fan, and you haven’t already read this, then I am sure that you will want to. If you are new to her writing, I would recommend that you start with some of her earlier novels which, for my money, I think are much better.
Izzy Reads, Page 10
For anyone with an interest in the banking shock that hit Ireland, The Fitzpatrick Tapes is a good read. Published by Penguin in January 2011, it is based on interviews conducted with Sean Fitzpatrick, the former Chief Executive and Chairman of Anglo Irish Bank.
Written by Sunday Times journalists Tom Lyons and Brian Carey, The Fitzpatrick Tapes is a pacy, well-written and gripping read that provides some real insights into what went wrong in Ireland’s banks, particularly in the later chapters where it goes in to the circumstances surrounding the bank guarantee.
Contemporary accounts based on conversations with key players are interesting because they fill in gaps and provide colour for what we know of the story. It’s also interesting to get a sense of the thought processes of one of the key players. But as every historian knows, sources are rarely objective and so the reader must sift and read more widely for a more rounded understanding of any subject.
If you like this book, chances are you will also like Simon Carswell’s Anglo Republic, also published by Penguin. Kindle editions of both books are also available.
Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor
I am a Joseph O’Connor fan. I first fell in love with his books many years ago when I read Desperadoes. If you haven’t read him before, I recommend that as a great starting point. I also loved Star of the Sea. More recently, Redemption Falls was less to my taste because I found the voices difficult to distinguish and the unrelenting misery in the tale hard to bear. In choosing to read Ghost Light I was hoping to get back to more familiar territory and, in a way, I guess I did.
Ghost Light is a kind of love story that centres on an actress, Maire O’Neill and the playwright, John Millington Synge. The title is well chosen because the telling of the tale has a kind of half lit melancholy about it that is reminiscent of a particular time in Ireland. ‘Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low and the glistening shadows softly come and go’.
Again, O’Connor is experimental with voice and the story flips backwards and forwards in time and flips between the USA and Ireland. For me, these techniques got in the way of connecting with the story at first, but as the tale unfolds, you do get drawn in. For me, it’s not O’Connor at his best and I still think, if you’re only going to read one of his novels, I would recommend one of the earlier ones like Desperadoes or Star of the Sea.
