Author Description

Three short novels by three Irish writers displaying all the diverse strengths of contemporary creative writing. Tea with Mrs Klein, Ronit Lentin In a Dublin housing estate an unusual friendship develops between a lonely Jewish widow and a sympathetic Catholic priest. Father Daly is fascinated as Gertrude Klein's story of her family's origins in Lithuania, of the Limerick pogrom and of the realities behind a seemingly supportive family is unravelled. Tea with Mrs Klein is an unsentimental yet sympathetic expose of Irish and Jewish prejudices. Young Men go Walking, James Liddy Vince and Steve, two poets, reveal in private journals and emotional letters aspects of their intense relationship. In literary Dublin of the '60s they booze, argue and mourn with other well-known characters of that 'golden age'. Each attempts at times to escape this friendship and milieu until finally their highly charged affair reaches a crisis of decision. James Liddy's writing is evocative and lyrical but with a precision as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. Ivy Lodge, Tomas 0 Murchadha A young, inexperienced male nurse, newly arrived at the Ivy Lodge Psychiatric Hospital near London, is at first terrified of the patients and in awe of the skills of Kennedy, a senior nurse. But gradually his perceptions change as he observes the keeper and the kept. Ivy Lodge explores the shifting borders between the sane and the insane, between justice and injustice.