sadbh@irish-times.ie
Broadcaster John Bowman wasn't asking any questions when he launched Dr Finola Kennedy's book, Cottage to Creche - Family Change in Ireland, in the Institute of Public Administration during the week. All the answers were provided since the tome is the first to comprehensively trace changes in family life in the State this century, with the author concluding we're not so browbeaten after all and that economic factors are having a greater influence on family size and structure than religion and tradition.
Kennedy details how the breakdown of the class system and the flight of domestics has domestic workers has also played its their part in the move to smaller households. although, ironically, the pressure for home-help is now growing from the more compact, but better-off, units. The book contains a wealth of sociological information about age, emigration and how the move from rural environments means the elderly are less likely to spend their final days with younger family members.
Nobel prizewinner Gary Becker wrote a preface to the book. He has known the author since the mid-1980s and he, too, concludes that economic factors won the struggle with religious beliefs in the quest for preferred family arrangements - the lowest birth rates are now in Catholic countries. The book includes comments from two former taoisigh, Charles Haughey and Liam Cosgrave. Kennedy is an economist and former lecturer in UCD, who has sat on bodies such as the Second Commission on the Status of Women and the more recent Review Group on the Constitution. Cottage to Creche is published by the IPA at £34.
It helps to be a morning person if you're intent on turning up to at the Edinburgh International Book Festival next month. Running from August 11th to 27th, the event features over more than 430 authors from 20 countries who will congregate in Charlotte Square Gardens. And one of the events will be Celtic Writers for Breakfast - , no less. We're assuming they're not planning to eat them but the no, they are not on the menu as such; the plan is to bring together Irish and Scottish writers in the stunning surroundings of the Speigeltent at the start of each day. Among those participating will be Bernard MacLaverty, Patrick McCabe, Ciaran Carson, Anne Enright, Joseph O'Connor, A.L.Kennedy and Alasdair Gray. Other writers taking part in some of the 500 events for adults and children include Gore Vidal, Margaret Atwood, V.S.Naipaul, Beryl Bainbridge, Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje.
Following the astounding international success of the Little Book of Calm, Jarrold Publishing has produced The Little Book of Ireland. Juliet Berridge has penned the tiny, tiny book and that includes nuggets of information such as that the shamrock was once being considered a delicacy in Ireland. Other interesting facts revealed include that in 1895, Irishman James Harden Hickey wrote a bestseller, The Aesthetics of Suicide, which listed 139 ways to commit the act. Three years later, he killed himself. Underground news is that there are supposedly no moles in Ireland and as for puff Daddy, Tom Gallagher, of Derry, is said to have invented the modern cigarette.
Tony Parsons is almost as famous as the ex-hubbie of journalist Julie Burchill as he is as a novelist. He'll be in Dublin at Eason/Hanna's Bookshop in Dawson Street, on July 25th, at 6.30p.m., signing copies of his new book, One for My Baby. He made a packet with his first novel, Man and Boy, and makes frequent and unflattering appearances in Burchill's Guardian column, a collection of which has just been published by Orion. Somehow, you can't help thinking this loggerheads business is helping both of them.
The winner of this year's Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in poetry is Susan Connolly. Born in Drogheda, Co Louth, in 1956, Connolly in her work explores the significance of place through layers of time, resonating with history, folklore and archaeology. Connolly has published a poetry collection, For the Stranger (1993), as well as other works. Race to the Sea (1999) was a short book of poems depicting her personal encounter with the landscape of the Boyne Valley, while Stone and Tree Sheltering Water (1998) was a collaboration with the photographer Anne-Marie Moroney on the holy wells of Co Louth. They also collaborated on Ogham, Ancestors Remembered in Stone (2000). Connolly intends using the fellowship - worth £5,000 - to prepare for another collection of poetry, Forest Music, which is scheduled to appear from Salmon in 2002. The fellowship, is funded by royalties from the works of by Patrick Kavanagh, aims and it seeks to provide provides support for poets in their middle years.
The Kilkenny Arts Festival kicks off on August 10th and runs for just over a week, with Booker award Prize winner Michael Ondaatje due to read from his poetry collection, Handwriting, as well as from his most recent novel, Anil's Ghost. Graham Swift, and Blake Morrison and the current IMPAC award winner, Canadian Alistair MacLeod, will also be involved. Every library in Co Kilkenny will be used to stage performances as part of the outreach programme for children, and the work of Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwe, in will be hung from buildings throughout the city. And that's just for starters. Bookings for all events: 056 52175
The proposed new Galway Writers' Centre is to be named after the Irish language poet, Caitlin Maude. The notion of a centre arose from a project by the Literary Officer at the Galway Centre for the Unemployed, Fred Johnson. The novelist and poet is also the founder of Cuirt, Galway's annual festival of literature, which was initiated as a poetry festival in 1986. Under the project a literature group already holds meetings in temporary accommodation at Canavan House, Nuns Island.The proposed new centre will be in Galway city and will have a brief to provide an information service for creative literary activities, amateur and professional, in Irish as well as in English. Caitlin Maude was born in Casla, Co Galway, in 1941, and acted in An Taibhreach. She recorded an album of sean-nos singing in 1965, and collaborated with the late Michael Hartnett on a play. She is best-remembered for her poetry, however. Her Danta was published posthumously in 1985 - she died in 1982.