An Irish Christmas Feast: The Best of John B. Keane

by John B. Keane

Overview

This bountiful collection of more than fifty tales by one of Ireland’s liveliest and most popular writers offers holiday charm and Gaelic humor by the Christmas stockingful. Drawing on the rich folk culture of County Kerry, John B. Keane brings new life to old customs in his portrayals of not-so-ordinary country people during the Christmas season.

Keane revisits the Christmases celebrated by characters like Dotie Tupper and Johnny Naile, the doughty Canon Doyle and deaf Canon Cornelius Coodle, the amiable spendthrift Aenias Mackson, and Hiccups O’Reilly, who disappears one Christmas Eve for seven years. Keane bears delightful witness to the trials and triumphs of the inhabitants of County Kerry, Ireland.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628731804
Publisher:	Skyhorse
Publication date:	10/11/2011
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

John B. Keane, the beloved playwright and author of such novels as The Contractors and Durango, as well as collections of poetry, songs, letters, and short stories, lived in Listowel, County Kerry. There he presided over one of the liveliest, most literary pubs in Ireland until his death in May 2002.

Editorial Reviews

Enough Christmas stories-52 in all-to last the whole year long, each one generously laced with classic Keane blarney (An Irish Christmas, 2000, etc.). Keane, who died this past May, was something of a national institution in Ireland. As famed for the pub he ran in Listowel, County Kerry, as he was for his writing, he exemplified the tradition of the Irish storyteller and was a phenomenally prolific and popular author. His Christmas stories were especially prized, and he collects a great haul of them here. Most are simple, homely tales depicting the foibles of small-town (usually Listowel) life and the motley, somewhat roguish characters who live there. If Keane is to be believed, the average Irishman spends much of his life trying, with only modest success, to walk a straight line along the boundary that separates honesty from vice. Edgar Guff (of "The Course of Time") is a good example: a drunkard and layabout, Edgar is shamed into repentance by eavesdropping on his own wife's confession on Christmas Eve. Then there's Mickey Dooley ("The Great Christmas Raid at Ballyhooley"), a local thief who was wounded in a heist and saved his reputation by blaming it all on the Black and Tans. Ned Muddle ("The Miracle of Ballybradawn") is another scamp saved in spite of himself: a salmon poacher, he's pursued by game wardens and can escape only by dropping in at church for Midnight Mass-for the first time in 15 years. But this isn't only a rogues' gallery: There is a touching portrait of the career of the parish priest Canon Coodle in "The Fourth Wise Man," and we find occasional meditations on life in general (as in "Christmas Noses," which offers a few observations on the nature of nasalcongestion). Corny, trite, and delightful: tales sure to delight anyone who has ever cried over a good rendition of "Danny Boy"-or passed out at a Pogues concert.

Kirkus Reviews