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One is at first impressed with the very ordinariness of it all. The characters and situations in Chris Binchy’s novel of contemporary Ireland’s young college and professional set , Five Days Apart, seem so commonplace, but then one realizes that it is the very commonness of it all that is the novel’s greatest asset. The novel [...] In this article I once again return to my faerie tale for early teens, O’Shaughnessey: the Faerie Circle. In this chapter, twelve year old skeptic Margaret McNiell Mahoney, whose father has foolishly stepped into a faerie circle and been swept away, Rip Van Winkle like, to the hill fort ruled by the faerie king [...] For, long has he tormented me, this priest, long has he used the powers of earth against me. So shall he endure not, so shall he be obsessed, so suffer, so be tormented. Go thou then, and all those who are without you. Hold a mirror to his face so he can see [...] I use the word “illustrator” because I really do hesitate the use the word, “artist;” a word that has gotten such a aura of Divine Revelation in the past few centuries aided, no doubt, by Academia, which does tend to tear off our fool’s cloaks and anoint us “Artists” in Gothic script and illuminated [...] I am now thoroughly embedded in the fourteenth century. France. It’s landscape, it’s customs, and delightfully enough, its cuisine. Medieval cookery is a fascinating subject and I have been especially grateful for Maggie Black’s history, with recipes, called The Medieval Cookbook. There are some things I like better about research than others. [...] The Sight is a metaphor for any number of things; among them are things like “hopes, dreams, and the childlike ecstasy of discovering the world as if for the first time, of finding out who we are and what we were put on this planet to do. Most of us rather stumble into the [...] Liz has an uncanny ability to detect what my intentions are and then suggest changes and modifications that will better communicate them. Thank God for editors! They keep us poor ink-stained wretches from making fools of ourselves in print for the entire world to see. All authors must at some point [...] An excerpt from “O’Shaughnessey: The Faerie Circle” After her father, Bobby Mahoney, is taken by the Faerie King Finvarra and held prisoner under Knockmaa in Galway, twelve-year-old Margaret is made to confront the possibility that everyone in the world is not dotty, and that there really might be an “invisible world,” that Moira McCarthy might be [...] In spite of being warned not to, Bobby Mahoney has stepped into a faerie circle and been whisked away to Finvarra’s court for his presumption, leaving Margaret, his twelve year old skeptic of a daughter, behind. The storyteller and Guardian of the Invisible World, Moira McCarthy must try to convince the girl of what [...] An excerpt from Chapter 1 of “O’Shaughnessey: The Faerie Circle,” edited. This was the final indignity. Margaret McNeill Mahoney was, after all, firmly planted in the twentieth century. This was 1985 and there were televisions, videotapes, electronic games, radio and tape-players, cars, trains, and buses, yet here she was being bounced along in a [...] |
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