Ireland's Eye Travels

by Jarman, Mark Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780887846922
• ISBN10: 0887846920
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-03-17
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press

Summary

On August 22, 1922, near Macroom, County Cork, a single bullet from an unknown gunman killed Michael Collins, the Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army. The day Collins was buried, businesses across Dublin shut down as thousands lined the streets to pay their respects. And on that day, Michael Lyons, a cooper from the Guinness factory taking advantage of the day off, drowned quietly in Dublin's Royal Canal.In Ireland's Eye, Mark Anthony Jarman uses this confluence a famous death and an obscure death as the starting point for a meditation on the intertwined history of a nation and his pursuit of the circumstances of his grandfather's drowning.Thwarted by family gossip, aunts who can't drive shift, cousins more interested in pubs than lore, and his own fascination with the many Irelands that have been, Jarman finds what he's seeking despite, or perhaps because of, the antics and the unreliable histories. What he reconfigures is a revelation, and an enchanting and engrossing read.

Table of Contents

Wankers and Widows and Chancers and Saints	1	(194)
Interviews with My Sainted Mother When She Was Speaking to Me Once More and Before She Lost Her Mind in the Wilds of Hollywood, So to Speak	195	(16)
Put the Moan on Ya	211	(80)
Acknowledgements	291