With April come the Irish publishers' lists of forthcoming offerings for late-spring and summer reading. Gill & Macmillan has Gene Kerrigan's memoir of growing up in Cabra in the Fifties and early Sixties called Another Country (£7.99), an account of a happy childhood in a country that was itself far from happy; reissues of biographies of Daniel O'Connell by Fergus O'Ferrall, Sean O'Casey by Hugh Hunt, James Connolly by Ruth Dudley Edwards, Eamon de Valera by T. Ryle Dwyer, James Joyce by Peter Costello and Oscar Wilde by Richard Pine, all paperbacks, £6.99 each; A History of Hurling by Seamus J. King (£9.99); A Pocket Treasury of Irish Verse (£5.99), a selection ranging from Thomas Moore to Paul Durcan and Eavan Boland; and a new edition of Irish Legends for Children (£6.99), including book and audio cassette, with Yvonne Carroll's tales beautifully read by actress Ronnie Masterson.
From O'Brien Press: The Blasket Islands: Next Parish America by Joan and Ray Stagles (£9.99), a history of the islands' people and their way of life up to their evacuation in 1953; reissues of two novels by Peadar O'Donnell - Proud Island and The Big Windows (£4.99 each); Celtic Names for Children by Loreto Todd (£5.99), for those who are tired calling their offspring Jacinta, Jasmine or Tiger Lily; The Gift of the Gab: The Irish Conversation Guide by Tadhg Hayes (£4.99), to show that we know more words than the usual four-letter ones; Only Some- times Looking Sideways (£6.99), a collection of pieces by Polly Devlin on topics as various as lost dogs, Keanu Reeves and world issues; and A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music by Gearoid O hAllmhurain (£4.99).
From Four Courts Press, a selection from a pretty full catalogue: to commemorate the 1798 rebellion we have Rebellion in Kildare: 1790-1803 by Liam Chambers (£30/£9.95), The Uniforms of 1798 by Glen Thompson (£24.95/ £9.95), and a reissue of Daire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong's The Mighty Wave: The 1798 Rebellion in Wexford (£29.95/£9.95) to complement their new The Women of 1798 (£29.50/£9.95); Irish Town lands: Studies in Local History (£25, illustrated), edited by Brian O Dalaigh, Denis A. Cronin and Paul Connell; Studies in Irish Cistercian History by Colmcille O Conbhuidhe (£39.50/£14.95); and Elizabeth Bowen Remembered: The Farrahy Addresses edited by Eibhear Walshe (£22.50), a selection from the annual lectures given at the church in Farrahy in North Cork where Bowen is buried.
The Mercier and Marino Press catalogue is also a full one, highlights being: Writings from Prison by Bobby Sands (£9.99), the first book to include all of the late hunger striker's writings in one collection; an Irish language edition of John B. Keane's Dan Pheaidi Aindi (£6.99), the definitive account of a Kerry matchmaker; a novel by barry McHugh set in 1798 called The Road to Vinegar Bill (£7.99); There Is an Isle: A Limerick Boyhood by Cristoir O'Flynn (£9.99), promising a happier version than the other fellow's - what's his name?; a reissue of a marvellous collection of reminiscences of the 1916 Rising and the Civil War, Curious Journey edited by Kenneth Griffith and Timothy O'Grady (£9.99); The Mercier Companion to Irish Literature edited by Sean McMahon (£9.99), from the 17th century to the present day; and The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 edited by Cathal Poirteir (no price given), a specially commissioned series of Thomas Davis lectures to be broadcast by RTE.
From Marino Press comes The Four Seasons of Mary Lavin by Leah Levenson (£20), the first full account of the life of one of Ireland's most important 20th-century writers; The Journeyman by Eamon Kelly (£16.99), taking up the story of the actor and seanchai's life from where be left off in his first volume of autobiography, The Apprentice; and a novel, Pilgrims, by John Evans (£7.99), a powerful work about an expatriate Irishman living in Germany and experiencing his own Via Dolorosa.
From Blackstaff Press: Hope Deferred: Experiences of an Irish Unionist by Basil McIvor (£12.99 in UK), in which a liberal Protestant politician looks back; The Trouble with Guns: Rebublican Strategy and the Provisional IRA by Malachi O'Doherty (£11.99 in UK), a political journalist's views on the present; The Republican Ideal: Current Perspectives edited by Norman Porter (£12.99 in UK), in which a number of interested parties open up Irish republicanism to public debate; Only Human and Other Stories by Jude Collins (£6.99 in UK), penetrating stories of men under pressure; and a novel by Evelyn Conlon, A Glassful of Letters (£7.99 in UK), about the lives and times of people living in the same Dublin street.
Wolfhound Press continues the Father Browne collection of photographs with Images of Aran: 1925 & 1938 edited by E. E. O'Donnell, (£9.99); a completely revised and rewritten edition of Anne Chambers's The Life and Times of Grace O'Malley, c 1530- 1603 (£7.99); reissues of two Liam O'Flaherty novels, Return of the Brute and Mr Gilhooley (£6.99); and new fiction from Sean Kenny, Celtic Fury (£6.99), and Dolores Walshe, Fragile We Are (£6.99).
From Town House and Country House come new editions of Celtic Dawn: A Portrait of the Irish Literary Renaissance by Ulick O'Connor (£8.99, illustrated) and Stories from Tory Island by Dorothy Harrison Sherman (£9.99, illustrated); Exploring the Burren by George Cunningham (£5.99); and Irish Dancing Costume by Martha Robb (£5.99), exploring the design, origin and evolution of Irish dancing uniforms up to Riverdance.
From Poolbeg Press: Mirror Mirror, the new novel by Patricia Scanlan (£6.99); a novel by the Cork writer Gaye Shortland, Polygamy (£6.99); Stolen Child- hood, an account of child sexual abuse, as told in their own words to Iseult O'Doherty by a number of survivors (£6.99); Fatal En- counter by Nicholas Eckert (£7.99), an account of the Gibraltar killings of three IRA members by the SAS; and Favourite Irish Fairy Tales retold by Soinbhe Lally and sumptuously illustrated by Finbarr O'Connor (£9.99) - if you buy any book for the kids this year, buy this one.
From the Collins Press: Reiki at Hand by Teresa Collins (£12.99), an account of an alternative healing system; a new edition of Bow- en's Court by Elizabeth Bowen, with a foreword by Thomas McCarthy (£6.99); and Kerry: A Natural History by Terry Carruthers (£29.95, illustrated).
From a rejuvenated Brandon: Brandon Book of Irish Short Stories edited by Steve Mac Donogh (£6.99), featuring writers who have emerged in the last twenty years; and Going to the Well, poetry by Alice Taylor.
From Mount Eagle, two novels: Anger's Violin by David Thomas, about terrorism in Europe, and In and Out of the Shadows, an autobiographical novel by well-known broadcaster Liam Nolan.
New Island Books has a novel by Glenroe actress Kate Thompson, It Means Mischief, set in the sexy and intriguing world of the Irish theatre.
Blackhall Press gives us a practical guide in Law & the Family in Ireland by Maureen Mullaly and Pamela Madigan, while Lonra Press provides two novels: Birth- days by Sive Haughey and Wasting by Degrees by Conor Bowman.
Finally to Lilliput Press: The Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone edited by Thomas Bartlett, a new, unabridged edition of Tone's own autobiography commenced in 1796 (£20); The State of Ireland by Arthur O'Connor, edited by James Livesey, (£25), a new edition of a work first published in 1798 by one of the leaders of the United Irishmen; The '98 Reader: An Anthology of Song, Prose and Poetry edited by Padraic O'Farrell (£5.99); Mary Carbery's West Cork Journals, 1898-1901 introduced and edited by Jeremy Sandford (£17.95, illustrated); and a novel by Paolo Tullio called mushroom.man (£7.99), a tale of a loner and his hallucinogenic odyssey round and about the fringes of civilisation.
Vincent Banville is a freelance journalist and critic