Madam, - I write with respect to Declan Kiberd's view that the young Irish novelist Claire Keegan is the true heir to the generation of McGahern and other greats (a judgment reiterated and endorsed in your end-of-year review of books).
Given that the notion of hierarchy has been introduced, I make a plea to Prof Kiberd - and all readers of Irish literary fiction - to listen again for the voice of another young Irish novelist: Deirdre Madden.
Her work, despite glittering reviews in national and international media, has somehow - inexplicably - slipped below the radar of "greatness" which influences the judgment of even the most perceptive of our national literary critics.
Her last novel, Authenticity (Faber, 2002), is a masterpiece from beginning to end; and its final movement contains a series of breathtaking epiphanic moments which I believe would have delighted even Joyce himself.
There is, in my judgment, no greater novel by a young Irish writer. Read it and weep (I have: three times). - Yours, etc,
HELEN COONEY, The Square, Slane, Co Meath.