Review: Interesting and Insightful
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 5, 2014
I found Caroline Ryan's book, "Adventures in Belfast: Northern Irish Life After the Peace Agreement " to be full of humorous insights on the people she met there.For example,"This was to be only my first foray into the Northern business psyche, a no-nonsense drive toward profit and a hatred of expenses, executed with a directness that would make a New Yorker blush.""Within a few weeks I found I was living with six joyfully loud, messy university students—three women and one “fella,” as the Irish say—who took me under their wings, foreign and old (over thirty) that I was. Their noisiness alone could have sunk the Titanic.""Another Belfast surprise: I found none of the condescension and rudeness waiters receive from customers in so many big cities in the world. Northern courtesy was the norm. My customers typically apologized if they needed anything extra, thanked me for whatever I brought them, and often asked why I’d come to Belfast. Any mistake on my part would be answered with the reassuring Northern Irish-ism, “No, yer all right!” I was not surprised to hear a few years later that Belfast had been named Europe’s Politest City for 2003."What I liked best, besides the narrative of everyday life and ordinary people, were these lovely insights dispersed randomly:"Coming home one afternoon I noticed a lone white rose growing on an otherwise barren rose bush in the front garden. How amazing, to have one pure and beautiful purpose, and live it out so perfectly, I thought.""Now anger and resentment were simply a block in the road, for me and the North both. I felt caught between an old form of identity—reaction and protest—and a very new one where I allowed the world to live and let live, to get on with its own reality, whatever that might be, without judgment. I thought of Baby Suggs in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Here is a woman, whom slavery finished in so many ways. Yet she tells her suffering daughter-in-law Sethe, “Lay down your sword.” Because she knew the madness of fighting what could not be defeated that way."If you plan to visit Belfast, read this book. However, If you read this book even if you don't plan to visit Belfast; it may inspire you to change your mind. :-)In Caroline's words:"This book is a door held open. If you are curious, angry or intrigued about what you read here, I invite you to travel to the Northern counties and to write about what you see. You’ll know you’ve fully visited this amazing culture the moment you realize your life has changed in some remarkable way."(I downloaded a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.)