James, one of the island’s few teenagers, becomes a go-between when the two men take an instant dislike to one another, and as his artistic talent becomes clear, the terrorist violence of the Troubles rears its head. Jean-Pierre Masson is a French linguist, a defender of endangered languages, who has devoted successive summers to recording spoken Irish there.
Mr Lloyd is a London artist whose marriage and career are in a rut he has rented a cottage to paint the rugged coastal landscape. Fiction pick of the weekĪudrey Magee’s latest novel is set on a tiny island off Ireland’s west coast where the dwindling local population still speaks Irish as their first language.
Normal text size Larger text size Very large text sizeīook critics Cameron Woodhead and Fiona Capp cast their eyes over recent fiction and non-fiction releases.