Over There, and Over Here The Water Star By Philip Casey Picador 434pp, £14.99 in UK. In fiction, it is entirely possible to be in at least two places at the one time. Having fantastically superimposed the worlds of Spain, Germany, Wexford and Dublin in his successful first novel, The Fabulists (1994), Philip Casey has [...]
Thank you for sending me ‘The Fabulists’. It’s a very strange and impressive book. Mr Casey has managed to make two lost and empty lives obsessively interesting. The print is hard for me to read so I proceed slowly marvelling that he can make so much out of so little action and impoverishment. I wish [...]
An ordinary, almost staid, couple are overwhelmed by crisis when their third child is born. The book starts off fairly ordinary and staid too, but this makes the crisis all the more realistic when it hits and easier to sympathize with. Once the new baby is born, the writing becomes sensitive and involving, the characterization [...]
A New Start in Finsbury JOHN TAGUE TLS Philip Casey THE WATER STAR 434pp. Picador. £14.99 0 330 37190 8 Philip Casey’s second novel, The Water Star, confronts the central Irish experience of the twentieth century: exile. It is distinguished by the finely wrought lyricism that has characterized much of his poetry. His first novel, [...]