Chicago has James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan. New Orleans has John Kennedy Toole’s Ignatius J. Reilly. Boston has Edwin O’Connor’s 'Last Hurrah.' And William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle series has “ironweeds” like Billy and Francis Phelan. What, then, is the greatest book ever written about the New York City Irish?
Paul Lynch’s 'Prophet Song' was inspired by the Syrian Civil War and the plight of those seeking refuge from the destruction and death occurring in Syria.
Some of Jimmy Breslin’s best work has now been collected in the Library of America’s latest volume, judiciously edited by one of Breslin’s true heirs, The New York Times correspondent Dan Barry.
The novelist Mary Beth Keane has staked her claim as a creator of subtle but poignant storytelling. She also has strong words of rebuke for the church of her childhood.
Like the haunted Dublin of his forebear James Joyce, Edward P. Jones’s Washington, D.C., is visited by spiritual powers left off the tourist maps. Both Joyce’s and Jones’s stories move us through tragic epiphanies that leave the soul, pained by paralysis, on the threshold of conversion. Both ask us to peel our eyes open with pity for their people.