Dermot Bolger
Dermot Bolger (born 1959) is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet born in Finglas, a suburb of Dublin. His older sister is the best selling writer June Considine. His early work – especially his first three novels, all set in the working class Dublin suburb of Finglas, and his trilogy of plays that chart forty years of life in the nearby high-rise Ballymun tower blocks that have since been demolished – was often concerned with the articulation of the experiences of working-class characters who, for various reasons, feel alienated from society. Later novels are more expansive in their  themes and locations. Two novels, The Family on Paradise Pier and An Ark of Light, chronicle the fate of a real Anglo-Irish family, The Goold-Verschoyles, some of whom embrace communism in the 1930s with tragic consequences. While the first novel chronicles the fate of the family until 1948, the second novel, focuses on the daughter, defies convention in 1950s Ireland by leaving a failed marriage to embark on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery from teeming Moroccan streets to living in old age in a caravan that becomes an ark for all those whom she befriends amid the  fields of Mayo. An indefatigable idealist, Eva strives to forge her identity while entangled in the fault-lines of her children’s unravelling lives. An Ark of Light explores a mother’s anxiety for her gay son in a world where homosexuality was still illegal Bolger’s novel, The Lonely Sea and Sky, uses the real-life story of a wartime sea rescue, by the unarmed crew of a tiny Wexford ship, The M.V. Kerlogue, of German sailors from the navy who had previously tried to sink them. His novel, Tanglewood, which explored the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, was  described by Colum McCann in the Irish Independent as “a superb novel about the implosion not only of the economy in the mid-2000s, but the implosion of marriage and morality and memory too”. Bolger adapted James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses, for the stage. It was first staged by the Tron Theatre in Glasgow in 2012, who toured it to China in 2014. In 2017 it was staged by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, who revived their production for a second run in 2018. In much of his work Bolger has been said to question the relevance of traditional nationalist concepts  of Irishness, arguing for a more plural and inclusive society. As an eighteen-year-old factory worker in 1977 Bolger set up Raven Arts Press, which published early books by writers like Patrick McCabe, Colm Toibin, Sara Berkeley, Fintan O’Toole, Eoin McNamee, Kathryn Holmquist, Michael O'Loughlin, Sebastian Barry and Rosita Boland as well as the first English language translations of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, and, in 1988, Paddy Doyle’s ground-breaking and shocking memoir, The God Squad(1988): one of the first books to break the silence about institutional child abuse in Ireland. In 1990 Raven followed this up with Song  for a Raggy Boy (1989) a harrowing memoir of life in an Irish Industrial School by the poet Patrick Galvan, which was later made into a 2003 film, directed by Aisling Walsh. Bolger ran Raven Arts Press until 1992, when he co-founded New Island Books with Edwin Higel to continue to support new Irish writers. New Island Books is today one of Ireland's leading independent literary publishers. In recent decades he has acted as associate editor of the “New Irish Writing” page, which has been edited by Ciaran Carty in a succession of Irish newspapers since 1989, continuing  a tradition started by David Marcus in 1969. In May 2010, Bolger’s wife, Bernie, died. Writings. Night Shift (1985) is Bolger's first novel. The main protagonist is Donal, a young man from Finglas who works the night shift in a local factory. Donal's girlfriend, Elizabeth, is pregnant and they both live in a caravan at the foot of her parents' garden. Needless to say, her parents are hardly thrilled at the situation and Donal works hard to improve the life he shares with Elizabeth. This is a complex narrative, containing meditations on the prospects for young people  in 1980s Ireland and the rupture between tradition (as represented by Elizabeth's family and those in authority) and the future (as represented by Donal and Elizabeth). The Journey Home (1990) was originally published by Penguin and was a controversial Irish bestseller. It was later re-issued by Flamingo/HarperCollins. 18 years after its publication, it was published in the United States by the University of Texas Press and received the lead front cover review on the "New York Times" Book Review section. The "Irish Times" said of it: "All 1990s life is there – drink, drugs, political corruption – all the  words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock." The Family on Paradise Pier (2005) starts in the tranquil idyll of a Donegal village in 1915 and follows the journeys of one Irish family through the Irish War of Independence, the General Strike in Britain, 1930s Moscow, the Spanish Civil War, and on to Soviet gulags, Irish internment camps, and Blitz-era London. The Goold-Verschoyle children are born into a respected freethinking Protestant family in a Manor House alive with laughter, debate and fascinating guests. The world of picnics  and childish infatuations is soon under threat as political changes within Ireland and the wider world encroach. The novel shows how quickly a family and a class can find themselves displaced as outsiders in their own land, with a new generation forced to invent new roles in which to belong. For Eva the dream is to be an artist, yet her fragile vision cannot cope with first love or the reality of art school in London. She finds herself married into a stiff Anglo-Irish family, struggling with growing debts, while yearning for personal freedom. Politics is how Eva 's brothers make sense of their new world. The eldest son, Art, rejects his inheritance to become a hard-line Marxist. Isolating himself from his family, he tries to belong among the poor, a party agitator working as a manual labourer in Dublin, Moscow and London. Brendan, the initially carefree younger brother, also embraces communism until confronted by its harsh realities in the Spanish Civil War with consequences that will haunt and divide his family. Based on real-life people, this family saga grows into a kaleidoscopic portrait of the lives, dreams and tensions of a generation finding their own  paths in life. The character of Brendan is based on Brian Goold-Verschoyle who died in a Soviet gulag and Art is based on real-life Irish communist Neil Goold-Verschoyle. She is based on Sheila Fitzgerald ("née" Goold-Verschoyle; 1903–2000). The novel's origins are in tape recordings that the author made in her caravan in 1992. Father's Music (1997) “Music is the pulse of Tracey Evan's life, its beat luring her through dance clubs and rave parties, a seemingly free-spirited 22-year-old London college drop out who laps up the late-night, often ecstasy -induced, pleasures of that city. Yet behind her tough street-wisdom and promiscuity, lurk layers of vulnerability and self-loathing. Her spirit is still in thrall to a past she cannot quit and to memories she cannot obliterate, even by living on a knife-edge of risk. That risk is never greater than when she enters into an uninhibited world of sexual games and fantasies with Luke Duggan, a married Irish businessman living in London. At once loathsome and tender, the chameleon-like Luke is torn apart by the alternating currents of his infamous Dublin criminal family, from  whom he has tried to distance himself. When family responsibilities force Luke to return to Dublin, taking Tracey with him, their games of risk and chance become frighteningly real. It is her first visit to Ireland, except for a brief, traumatic childhood excursion to seek her father, a wandering traditional musician from Donegal who vanished after Tracey's birth. Now, as Tracey tries to thread a path through the dangerous criminal underbelly of a drug-ridden city, primed to explode, the answers to her questions about herself, her lost father and Luke's ultimate motives become intertwined. Other novels: External  links. Portrait of Dermot Bolger by Olivier Favier https://www.flickr.com/photos/olivierfavier/3795820756/