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“... One explanation for this phenomenon, fairly obvious but persuasive nonetheless, is put forward by Dermot Bolger in his introduction to the recent Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction. Today’s Irish writers, he claims, have inherited a self-confidence ‘and (through Joyce and Beckett) a sense of belonging within the mainstream of European ...”

“... are is a way of trying to make contact with a mother, not a condition in itself. Roddy Doyle and Dermot Bolger rank among Dublin’s so-called Northside realists, creating a world in which compulsively blaspheming council-estate dwellers keep cocaine in the bath and horses in the kitchen. This novel, by contrast, could be described as Southside ...”

“... team of historians, in some ethnopolitical seminar. But then, perhaps Friedrich Harris is real. Dermot Bolger’s novel about Ireland, The Journey Home, is evidently in earnest. It begins with a youth and a girl hiding in a ditch, hearing the boots of policemen above their heads: they are on a journey of escape, and we might fancy them to be members of ...”

“... audience. Whether the w0rk of Anne Enright, Sebastian Barry, Colm Tóibín, Patrick McCabe and Dermot Bolger constitutes a ‘new direction in Irish fiction’ is less certain. The major trope of Irish fiction is certainly no longer Modernist paralysis but change – Tóibín’s second novel, The Heather Blazing, is a very good example of ...”