THE WILD LAUGHTERBy Caoilinn HughesThe millennial prowl of the Celtic Tiger across Ireland, its appetite for greedy investors, and its subsequent capture and demise, may have caused indescribable suffering but, like any catastrophe, it has spawned some notable fiction. Novelists like Paul Murray, Claire Kilroy and Donal Ryan have examined the mentality of a nation that allowed avarice to flourish so unconstrained. The Tiger roars again in Caoilinn Hughes’s second novel, set in Roscommon soon after the crash, through the voice of Doharty Black. Doharty is the younger of two farm sons, whose family has been hit hard by both the financial downturn and illness. The novel opens with the death of the family patriarch, the “Chief,” a fairly benign presence in a story that, in less original hands, might have offered us another Bull McCabe lording over his family with cruelty and violence.

Source: International New York Times August 05, 2020 09:00 UTC