I’m having a few days away in Mayo with the in-laws and decided to buy a couple of books with me. There’s no wifi or phone connection in my mother-in-law’s house so Internet is limited to a few snatches of connection whenever I’m in an area where there is coverage, hence this very very short post.
I decided to bring two sort of Jewtown-related books with me and neither of them are poetry books. The first is Ita Daly’s memoir of her late husband David Marcus. For those who don’t know, David Marcus’ family hailed from Cork’s Jewtown and he went on to be one of the most important figures in the Irish literary scene. The second book is from Ruth Gilligan and is called Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan, which actually starts off in Jewtown in the 19th century. Both books were only released in the last few months, which is an amazing coincidence.
I have read a number of memoirs over the years while researching Jewtown but also just for pleasure as I really like this genre. However, I’m not much of a novel man and haven’t read one for quite some time. The last one I read was Merrion Road by Justin Quinn and that was only because he’s a poet and I was interested in seeing what he did. The last one I enjoyed was The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan and, in fairness, it’s more of a set of short stories! Anyway, looking forward to reading this and seeing what Ruth Gilligan has to say about the JEwish Community of Cork in the early part of the 20th century.
I’m looking forward to getting stuck into both of the books over the next few days. It’s amazing what the Internet can do to hinder the amount of reading one does!
