Howling Frog Books

 The Lost Island, by Eilís Dillon Eilís Dillon published 50 books during her long career; at first she wrote in Irish, and The Lost Island seems to have been her first English book.  It came out in 1952 and after that she wrote in English, and also switched to adult novels, mainly mysteries set in Ireland.  She was deeply involved in the Irish literary scene and, among other things, she founded the Irish Children's Book Trust. Somewhere on the western coast of Ireland (my own guess is the bay of Galway), Michael helps his mother run their farm.  He is 14 and his father disappeared four years ago; Michael has never been exactly sure what happens.  When a menacing tramp brings the family a message from the lost man, Michael learns that his father had been inspired to sail after a treasure, said to be found on the legendary island of Inishmanannan, from which no one has ever returned. Michael and his friend Joe just have to go in search of the lost father.  T...

  Cathy at 746 Books hosts Reading Ireland Month every year, and I'm not very good at it.  But my TBR shelf features a huge and kind of old book titled The Story of the Irish Race , and this seems like a good time to tackle it.  It dates from 1921 and I don't think it will quite count as 'dodgy anthropology,' since it seems more like a mix of legendary and actual history, but it does look like a lot of fun. Can you resist that over-the-top cover?  Not me. The Goodreads description says:   The whole saga of the Irish from earliest times to the present -- the various races from the time of Firbolg and the quest and occupation by the Milesians Spain through the various invasions; history, culture, religion, laws, arts, ties, folklore, trade, literature, heroes Fein, Easter Uprising, etc. Sketches a rough and ready picture of the more prominent peaks that rise out of Ireland's past-the high spots in the story of the Irish race. Written especially for the Ame...

My copy is ancient; but it's still in print! A Celtic Miscellany, ed. Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson This is one of those TBR books I've had around forever and ever.  I can tell, from the price written on the inside front page, that I got it at our local used bookstore, but it must have been a long time ago! Miscellany is an appropriate description; here we have samples of literature from six Celtic languages, primarily Irish and Welsh, but also Cornish, Scottish-Irish, Breton, and Manx.  The translator, Jackson, wanted to produce a representative collection that wouldn't just include all the things everybody is already familiar with -- but some of the favorites had to go in, or else it wouldn't be representative.     The selections are in themed sections, starting with adventure stories (Cu Chulainn, Fionn, and others), and going on to such topics as love, nature, epigram, satire, elegy, and so on.  They also go somewhat chronologically, with the earliest mater...

Irish Fairy Tales, by James Stephens I wanted to read something for Cathy's Reading Ireland 2020 event, but my TBR pile did not hold any modern Irish literature.  It did hold this volume of Irish tales, retold by James Stephens, and as a bonus, it turned out to be illustrated by Arthur Rackham.  In fact it's a lovely volume all 'round, though sadly missing its dust jacket.  My copy is a modern reprint of the 1920 original. Most of the stories are about Fionn mac Uail (in this version; I've seen it spelled other ways and in English it's Finn MacCool), the heroic leader of the Fianna Finn.  There are some other tales as well, such as the story of the man who hated dogs, the 'carl with the drab coat' who ran a race over Ireland with a foreign king, and the Hag of the Mill. One of the great joys of this collection of stories is Stephens' language, which is lovely and descriptive, and often very very funny.  I could not resist sharing some of the bits...

Last Ones Left Alive, by Sarah Davis-Goff I was intrigued by the premise of this story, which is that Orpen has grown up on a tiny island off the coast of Ireland with just her mother and Maeve, who have raised her to fight the skrake, the monstrous menace that destroyed their world.  Now Orpen has to go in search of other survivors, if there are any. So: post-Apocalyptic Ireland!  Fun! But I found it kind of disappointing.  Orpen spends her whole life wishing to go to the mainland for adventure, to see something new, to learn about the world.  The adults around her won't talk about it or explain, which seems like the obvious way to get her to run off unprepared at her first chance.  The skrake, which sounds really interesting, turns out to be....well, I'll put it down at the bottom, if you was to avoid spoilers.* So Orpen is on her way to find Phoenix City, which is supposed to be full of banshees -- formidable women warriors.  Again, every human b...

I've been meaning to read Lord Dunsany's Book of Wonder for some time.  Well, I read it once long long ago, and don't remember anything about it except that I didn't get it, so I wanted to try again.  It was on my TBR shelf, and I figured I'd read it for the Ireland event.  It turns out I just don't like Lord Dunsany.  I read several stories, and the idea of reading a whole lot more of them is not a happy thought, so I'm quitting.  The stories are all very short, and consciously strange, with lots of names: King he was of Afarmah, Lool and Haf, over-lord of Zeroora and hilly Chang, and duke of the dukedoms of Molong and Mlash, none of them unfamiliar with romance or unknown or overlooked in the making of myth. He pondered as he went in his thin disguise. So, I guess I still don't get it.  But I don't think I'll bother with Lord Dunsany again, be he never so important a pillar of early fantasy literature (something I usually try hard to read)....

Stories of Red Hanrahan The Secret Rose Rosa Alchemica, by W. B. Yeats This book has been sitting around forever and I don't know where it came from.  It's a very elderly book, and the spine label is nearly illegible.   I had a vague idea that it contained Irish folktales, but when I actually opened it up and inspected it, it revealed itself to be short stories by W. B. Yeats.  There are two different collections and then one longish story that is still too short to be a novella.  My copy was published in 1914, but this fancier version in the image is from 1927. Stories of Red Hanrahan -- these seem to have been written at different times, all about Owen "Red" Hanrahan, who starts off a young schoolteacher.  He gets a message from his sweetheart, summoning him to help her, but first a strange man insists that he play cards for a little while.  After playing for hours, Hanrahan wanders out into the mountains and finds a sleeping queen, with four cr...

The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien Flann O'Brien was a pen name for Brian O Nuallain (O'Nolan) -- he seems to have had a few.  He was born in 1911 in an Irish-speaking home, where his father was reluctant to send the children to an English-speaking school; they could all speak English just fine, and he preferred that they be taught in Irish, but such a school was not to be found.  O'Brien became a comic, satirical writer -- and he drank a lot -- and The Third Policeman was his last novel, written in 1939 but not published until 1967, after his death. The blurb on the back cover says O'Brien was "one of Ireland's great comic geniuses" along with Joyce and Beckett. The narrator, who never gets a name, is a young man, a fanatic scholar of the great philosopher de Selby, and he's going back to the family farm after university.  He's an orphan and the farm is run by one John Divney, who suggests they remedy their lack of money by killing a...