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Seanachie: A Boston Irish Storyteller and Part-Time Shaman
Books about place, magic, Faeries, Ireland, sex, God, and love
Currently reading
New Orleans as It Was
New Orleans after the Civil War
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (complete: First & Second Series)
Bright Dead Things: Poems
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
Desire: Poems
Selected Poems 1976-2012
An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry
I Am An Executioner: Love Stories
An Artist of the Floating World
A Little Life: A Novel
This is an appalling and brilliant story of a talented but damaged lawyer who is unable to shake his worst conception of himself despite the love of those around him and the evidence of his own achievements. Ostensibly, it is the story of four college roommates who remain (more or less) life-long friends, but quickly the center of their existence becomes the lawyer, Jude St. Francis. Narration shifts among the various friends and their extended circle. Beginning somewhat emotionally flat, the novel ratchets up the power as Jude slowly but unwillingly narrates the childhood experiences that make him the complicated, reticent, troubled, and beloved person who so bewitches his circle. There’s no avoiding the fact that this book is not for everyone: the scenes from Jude’s childhood -- even though not graphically catalogued -- are so brutal and emotionally raw as to induce occasional nausea. There is no triumph over demons here; there is only coming to grips with a terrible sadness. If the author Yanagihara falls short anywhere, it is the exhausting relentlessness of Jude’s childhood misery and occasionally failing to depict exactly what draws Jude’s friends to be so devoted to him when he gives them his story so grudgingly in return. Nevertheless, the richness of the various narrators’ inner lives -- particularly Jude’s -- make this a compelling and extraordinary, if occasionally traumatizing, read. (Kind of a silly book cover, however!)
