Ireland Unhinged: Encounters with a Wildly Changing Country
"Writing with an unhurried and considered hand, his wryness evident but checked by a brooding malaise, Monagan visits with landscapes both sullied and unsullied, in search of Ireland's many silver tongues. There are great bar-side chats with anonymous pubsters, as well as a wonderfully anecdote-strewn day with author J.P. Donleavy. A penetrating, droll embrace of an Ireland in the midst of tumult." --Kirkus Reviews"IRELAND UNHINGED is incisive, wry, and witty, but also coldly surgical and it repeatedly and perfectly catches the zeitgeist of an Ireland hell-bent on self-destruction. Monagan sees it all: there is Mad Max stuff in here, but this American-in-Ireland's analysis is also highly reasoned and grinning. Read it." --Patrick McCabe, author ofThe Butcher Boy,Breakfast on Pluto, andThe Stray Sod Country"David Monagan's charming, funny, sometimes harrowing take on modern Ireland is a pleasure to read. His approach is fond but not uncritical, and he avoids the cliches that mar so much writing about the Irish. Trust this fella - he knows his stuff." --Bill Barich, author ofA Pint of PlainandA Long Way Home: On the Trail of Steinbeck's America