Ireland Unhinged

Ireland Unhinged

Summary

Where is Ireland's soul? This is the question that surface time and again in Ireland Unhinged, a searching, sometimes scathing, often hilarious journey through a country that in the space of a few years has fallen from the dizzy heights of the 'bouncy-castle' boom to the bewildering depths of the crash.
Ireland Unhinged is a story of reverse emigration to Cork City and then rural Waterford, from cosy US confines to the true Wild West of these last years. David Monagan's sharp eye pinpoints the excesses and absurdities of modern Ireland. But his real search is for the enduring essence of his adopted country, as revealed in his meetings with literary legends, with witches and monks, with property developers and gnomic farmers.
Itis a riveting memoir of a family adapting to a strange land, and an unflinching portrait of Ireland today.

Reviews

  • Ireland Unhinged is incisive, wry, and witty, but also coldly surgical and it repeatedly and perfectly catches the zeitgeist of an Ireland hell-bent on self-destruction. Monagan sees it all: the bouncy castles inflated on every delirious lawn; the madness of a Euro-funded motorway slicing through the ancient Hill of Tara; witches, priests, and ghost estates - characters beyond counting, not all good ones. There is Mad Max stuff in here, 'Aisy Rider in the Land of the Bouncy Castle', but this American-in-Ireland's analysis is also both highly reasoned and grinning - read it
    Patrick McCabe, author of THE BUTCHER BOY and THE STRAY SOD COUNTRY

About the author

David Monagan

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