After Ireland: Writing the Nation from Beckett to the Present

This final volume in a trilogy on Irish literary history from Kiberd (Ulysses and Us), a professor of Irish studies at the University of Notre Dame, plods along in regrettably forgettable fashion. The book picks up the thread begun by the trilogy’s previous entries, Inventing Ireland and Irish Classics, in the mid-20th century, with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and moves up to the present day. Along the way, Kiberd interrogates—sometimes usefully—the Republic of Ireland’s failures as a state and points to the persistence of Irish writers in continuing to raise hot-button political issues, such as those concerning language, immigration, the role of women in society, and globalization. In the book’s clearest and most coherent chapter, Kiberd illustrates the ways that the novelist John Banville shuns nationalism by publicly identifying his work more with the continental-European than the Irish literary tradition. Kiberd less convincingly argues that Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha illustrates the moral bankruptcy of national history, family, and religion through its 10-year-old protagonist’s perspective. Kiberd’s detailed plot synopses overwhelm his interpretations with extraneous detail, while the interpretations themselves often fail to convince, making this ambitious survey a missed feint at a worthy target. (Jan.)