Bord Na Móna - In for the night

Bord na Móna Fuels, In for the night Winter Collections

Book Club

- Christine Dwyer Hickey Reviews

- Paul Byrne Reviews

Movie Club

- Christine Dwyer Hickey Reviews

- Paul Byrne Reviews

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Book Club

Our Winter Book Selection – book ideas for your perfect night in

Christine Dwyer Hickey – Christine Dwyer Hickey is an award winning novelist and short-story writer. She is the author of The Dublin Trilogy; three novels - The Dancer, The Gambler and The Gatemaker which span the story of a Dublin family from 1913 to 1956. Her novel Tatty was short-listed for Irish Book of the Year in 2005 and was also long-listed for The Orange Prize. Her latest novel, Last Train From Liguria, is set in 1930's Fascist Italy and Dublin in the 1990's and was published in June 2009 by Atlantic Books (UK). She is a member of Aosdana.

Christine Dwyer Hickey Reviews – Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Clara by Janice Galloway, Liars in Love by Richard Yates, The True History of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, Havoc in its Third Year by Ronan Bennett

Paul Byrne – Having started out in the field of entertainment journalism in 1989 - when he joined Hot Press magazine as a staff writer - Paul Byrne has worked for many of the major media outlets in Ireland over the last two decades, including a regular column for both In Dublin and The Irish Press. Paul is currently a regular contributor to The Evening Herald, The Irish Examiner and RTE, as well as the country's only website dedicated solely to the wonderful world of films, movies.ie. Through the years, Paul Byrne has watched far more than his fair share of movies, and talked to far more than his fair share of movie stars.

Paul Byrne Reviews – Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Post Office by Charles Bukowski

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

A few years ago while dying of throat cancer, John Diamond, the late journalist and then husband of Nigella Lawson, wrote a piece for The Observer Review listing his reasons to keep on living for another year. To re-read Great Expectations was one that really struck me. I had read it a long time ago and remembered it as a highly enjoyable and absorbing read. Diamond inspired me to revisit the experience. It is an extraordinary work by a writer with an uncanny and strangely cinematic eye. Its sweeping panoramas and terrifying close-ups are nothing short of astonishing. There is adventure and danger throughout and it also manages to be one of the greatest novels ever written on the human condition. A pleasure from start to finish. Definitely one for a Christmas fireside.

Clara by Janice Galloway

Born in Leipzig in 1819 to an overly ambitious and utterly tyrannical father, Clara Wieck would grow from a child prodigy to one of the foremost concert pianists of her time. She would also become the wife of composer Robert Schumann and mother of his eight children. This is the story of her life. Like all good historical novels, the past reads like the present. Beautifully and unsentimentally written, it is a story of love, duty and above all fear. Clara - who didn't speak until she was four years of age - starts by being terrified of her piano, then of her father, before finally, and perhaps most tragically of all, she becomes afraid of her beloved Robert. Her life was a constant struggle; a husband suffering from madness (he died in a mental asylum, having spent the last two years of his life there), it was down to her to keep the family going, emotionally and financially. At the same time she had to play down her own considerable talent and success to protect Schumann's insecurities about his own failing career. I didn't want to let go of this book, slowing up my reading pace as I came towards the end. In an effort to prolong the experience (and to learn a little more about her life), I followed it with a biography of Clara Schumann. Then I discovered the music of Robert Schumann. One of the most beautiful books I have ever read.

Liars in Love by Richard Yates

Richard Yates is a very underrated writer. Often dismissed as 'a writer's writer' - whatever that may mean - the recent film adaptation of his novel, Revolutionary Road coupled with the fact that Vintage have recently reissued all his work, has gone some way to bring him the attention he so richly deserves. Yates led a very unsettled childhood moving from one place to another with his sister Ruth and his alcoholic mother who had artistic as well as social notions way above her station. Always outsiders, they were frequently evicted from homes they could ill-afford in neighbourhoods where they simply did not belong so that in school Yates was always 'the new boy' as well as 'the poor one.' By the time he was in his late twenties he had been in the army; married and divorced; lived for a short time in Europe where he cut his teeth at writing; worked in the advertising business and finally suffered a nervous breakdown that landed him in the notorious Bellevue mental hospital in New York. In short, he had accumulated enough writing material to keep him going for the rest of his life. Liars in Love is a collection of short stories and a good indication of the range of his work. Some - such as the heart-stopping Oh Joseph I'm So Tired - are based on his own vagabond childhood. Others such as Compassionate Leave deal with his life as a soldier. In a way, his mother was his muse. She certainly haunts most of his work but tragic as his childhood was, it has to be said, she made him the man and therefore the writer, he was.

The True History of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Peter Carey is the most daring of novelists; he always tries something new. This time he has taken the life of Ned Kelly, the Australian outlaw and folk hero, and given it a completely different spin. As a starting point, Carey used the last surviving piece of writing by Kelly, (the Jeliderie Letter), and adapted the same informal style to weave this magnificent story. The lack of punctuation gives the writing added impact and makes for a very realistic read. We are never less than completely connected to Kelly and our sympathy stays with him right to the end. The plight of the poor Irish immigrants is well explored, as is the vast, beautiful and often savage continent of Australia. A book that gets right under your skin. During the few days it took me to read the book, I could hardly bear to put it down and anytime I did, found myself worrying about what the Kelly boys were getting up to in my absence. A powerful read and much deserved winner of the Man Booker prize.

Havoc in its Third Year by Ronan Bennett

Set in the North of England in the beginning of the 1630's, this is a novel that could fit almost any era - so long as men prejudge each other and power is used to corrupt. The hero is the coroner, John Brigge; a Catholic amongst the Puritan reformers, a humble man amongst the self-righteous. When an Irish itinerant, Katherine Shay, is accused of murdering her baby, Brigge is called upon to make an inquisition. He suspects that evidence is being withheld and refuses to find her guilty. And so his downfall begins. Bennett is one of our finest writers. His prose is never less than a pleasure to read and there is a brooding quality to his work. His characters, often lonely and isolated creatures, are utterly engaging. Brigge moves through a desolate landscape and we are with him every step of the way. A real winter book. I admired this novel so much that when my own novel was shortlisted alongside it (and two others) for the Irish Novel of the Year 2004, I didn't mind losing so long as Havoc in the Third Year won. It did, and deserved to. By a mile.

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind

As with so much great art, cinema in the 1970s was a time of major upheaval, the blissfully bonkers colliding with the sweetly majestic, the big studios with all the money bowing, temporarily, to the young mavericks with all the exciting new ideas.
Such a wondrous meeting of art and commerce gave us such fine filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Terrence Malick, and would allow the geeks of the pack, Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas, to rewrite the Hollywood rule book. By inventing the blockbuster.
The story of that incredible decade - when, for a brief few years, studios were forced to think like independents - is thrillingly captured in Peter Biskind's hugely entertaining book.
As Marty, Francis and co tried to reinvent the wheel, Spielberg and Lucas invented the event picture. Up until Jaws and Star Wars, movies in America had always followed the pattern of opening on a few select screens before, through word of mouth, building over the coming weeks to cover the entire country, until, hopefully, hitting some kind of peak. With Jaws and Star Wars, Hollywood realised that, with the right kind of push, you could open wide in just about every screen available, thus sparking a box-office phenomenon. This way, even a bad film could clean up over an opening weekend. In other words, as Spielberg himself later put it, Hollywood suddenly learnt how to sell it before you could smell it.
Biskind does a remarkable job piecing this heady, hearty jigsaw together, offering up great insight and tantalising detail behind some of modern cinemas true classics. A rollercoaster of a read.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

It was Woody Allen who said that comedy is basically tragedy plus time, and the quintessential New Yorker has been exploring the thin line between the two ever since he let the influence of his hero, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, into the mix with Annie Hall and Manhattan. Chances are, if Allen could come up with something half as hilarious and heartbreaking as Waiting For Godot, he'd happily retire. Which might not be a bad thing. As anyone who saw Cassandra's Dream will testify.
The one thing that many people seem to miss when it comes to Samuel Beckett is the man's devilish sense of humour. The simple, stark idea of two men waiting for a third who never comes is just about the very essence of comedy. Put on a laughtrack, and Waiting For Godot plays like a comedy double act. This could be Laurel & Hardy, Hancock and James, Morecombe & Wise, Reeves & Mortimer, Foster & Allen.
Having premiered, in the original French, on January 5th, 1953 at the Theatre de Babylone, the plight of the decreasingly patient Vladimir and Estragon has been the subject of many an interpretation down through the years. From the political to the Freudian, from the Biblical to the Jungian, through the homoerotic, the existential and the autobiographical. No doubt, Beckett would have found plenty to chuckle about in each and every one of them.
As our two protagonists attempt to "hold the terrible silence at bay" by entertaining one another during their wait for a man they both admit they wouldn't recognise were he to walk by, there's something particularly Irish about Estragon and Vladimir, despite their names. When the play opens with the former giving up his struggle to remove his boot with the line, "Nothing to be done", the latter takes it as the task for the day. Translated into Irish and put on a plaque, it wouldn't look out of place outside any Irish institution. Especially those paid for with taxpayers' money.
It's a play that has inspired generation after generation. And it can all be summed up in the Dylan Moran line, "Two out of every three people wonder where the other one's gone". Hmm...

Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald

Given the recent slight return of Beatlemania - thanks largely to the remastered re-release of the Fab Four's 12 studio albums on CD - it would seem that now, once again, is a fitting time to read rock journalist Ian MacDonald's painstakingly researched and smartly written biography of every song The Beatles ever recorded.
Not that you would need a special occasion to delve into the inspiration and perspiration that went into recording some of the most celebrated music of all time. And it's celebrated because this was the soundtrack to the decade when the teenagers emancipated by Elvis and rock'n'roll attempted to take over the world. For many, The Beatles' music shaped much of what the sixties came to represent.
The fact that you could sing along to each step of the band's incredible evolution from Please Please Me to Come Together is the real reason The Beatles can still spark mania 39 years after they called it a day.
It would be easy to dismiss a book such as this as simply an anorak's guide, but that would be missing the beauty of following four lads from Liverpool through the sort of journey that would have made Dorothy's head spin. Never mind Alice. This was a surreal, thrilling, world-changing adventure, John, Paul, George and Ringo experiencing the sort of hair-pulling hero worship that only Elvis had witnessed before them. The difference with The Beatles though was that they managed to evolve, dramatically at times, after that initial explosion, taking pop music into new, uncharted territories as they progressed from rock'n'roll covers to perfect pop creations of their own, and on through psychedelic daytrips, soulful primal screams, social anthems and all the way back home to their rock'n'roll roots once again. And this is as good a map as any when it comes to retracing their steps.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

There are two reasons I love this book. One is the simple fact that it's beautifully written, and, hey, it makes you think. The second reason is, this is one short and sweet book - the sort of read you can devour in one sitting. Which, you know, is sometimes the only way to read a book.
Then, you can spend the rest of your day - or your life, depending on how well you chewed the words - digesting what might be between the lines. Or simply what was right in the middle of the lines. Such as a manifesto for teenage rebellion. Or a fear of growing up and moving on.
Originally published in 1951, The Catcher In The Rye still sells approximately 250,000 copies a year, its current total sales having now cruised past 65 million. Which should generate more than enough moolah to keep Jerome David Salinger in milk and cookies - or whatever the old guy happens to tuck into as he remains hidden away from public view. The fact that Salinger became a recluse a few short years after The Catcher In The Rye caught fire only adds to the book's rally against all things phony. The celebrity culture was never going to be Salinger's cup of tea. Heck, if it isn't good enough for his anti-hero Holden Caulfield, it's hardly going to rock Jerome's world either.
Still can't find that bit about going out and killing John Lennon though...

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

In these politically correct times, when men and women are finally equal, when we're all wise enough not to drink, smoke and sleep on asbestos the way our parents did, and we each have to watch our every step to ensure we don't leave a dirty big carbon footprint, there's still a need in all of us for those who only seem to care about the next party. Even if the only ones there are themselves and a bottle.
Charles Bukowski was one such individual, battling an unhappy childhood and teenage years full of acne and giggling girls by drinking himself into oblivion and notoriety - and cleverly keeping a diary of the journey through his books and his poetry. When fame finally came knocking, that journey changed - or, at least, the destination did, as Bukowski began to bask in the glory, and the groupies.
With Post Office though, Charles Bukowski was still on his wobbly road to nowhere, knocking back whatever women he could find, with his favourite bottle of liquour by his side. He was a real man; brilliant and pathetic.
As with so many good drunks, it's the humour that shines through the despair here that makes Post Office so special, Bukowski working his way through a series of dead-end jobs as he works up the courage, and the discipline, to write something a publisher might actually publish. Keeping it simple, Bukowski writes mainly through dialogue, like Raymond Chandler without a murder mystery to solve, or a beautiful woman to seduce. The only mystery for Bukowski was where and when and how that next party was happening. It was always about the night. The term 'good morning' was an oxymoron.

Movie Club

Our Winter Movie Selection – movie ideas for your perfect night in

Christine Dwyer Hickey Reviews – The Wire, Brideshead Revisited, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Barton Fink, To Kill a Mockingbird

Paul Byrne Reviews – Not Just The Best Of The Larry Sanders Show, The Last Picture Show, Groundhog Day, The Incredibles, 7-49 Up

The Wire

Another all-absorbing television series from HBO the makers of such gems as The Sopranos and Deadwood. Created by David Simon and co-written by Ed Burns, both of whom have extensive experience in working with the police force and it shows - The Wire is certainly a police drama but so much more besides. It is the story of modern America as told from the viewpoint of one of its toughest cities, Baltimore in Maryland. Indeed, it could be said, that the city is its main character. Each of the five seasons focuses on a theme - the drug trade; the docklands and the trade unions; local politics and bureaucracy; the educational system and finally the newspaper business - and each theme is brought to life by individual and/or overlapping stories. We learn how people at every level and in all walks of life manipulate the truth for their own benefit and how as a result, corruption thrives. The Wire takes the lid off a city and allows us to peer down at the various power struggles that are simmering below. As Baltimore has a white minority this makes for a more unusual setting with a lot of unexpected twists. No big-name stars here, just a solid cast of some of the finest character actors working today. Possibly the best television series yet to be made. The first episode can be a little confusing but stick with it, once The Wire takes a hold, it won't let you go.

Brideshead Revisited

Based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh and adapted by John Mortimer for Granada Television in 1981, Brideshead Revisited took off from the word go. Beautifully filmed and now reissued on a single digitally remastered DVD, it is easier on the eye than ever. I have just finished watching it and am pleased to say it was even more enjoyable this time round. There is one particularly luscious episode set in Venice, another set entirely on board ship, but in the main, the story belongs to England. Set between the two world wars, it explores the decline of an era, a family, and indeed an entire class. It also happens to be an astute study on the destructive nature of alcoholism, respectability, and Catholicism. At times hilarious - and savagely so - Waugh's black humour is never compromised in this faithful adaptation. There are stellar performances from old pros such as Laurence Olivier and John Geilgud. And the (then) young bucks, Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews rise to the occasion. There are actors whom I have never or rarely seen again but will always remember as the characters they played; Rex Mottram, Anthony Blanch, Boy Mulcaster, to name but a few. Deservedly, the series won several awards and would knock the stuffing out of most of what passes as period drama today. Pull up the chair, put up the feet and allow yourself to be lost in eleven episodes of unadulterated bliss.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

A stylish thriller, adapted from the novel by Patricia Highsmith and one of those rare cases when the movie works better than the book. Directed by the late and much lamented Anthony Minghella, this is surely his love poem to Italy. It is set in the late 50's in the heyday of La Dolce Vita, when well-dressed women were applauded on the streets of Rome and young wealthy Americans let it rip on Daddy's allowance. It begins with a case of mistaken identity which quickly turns into stolen identity; a love that dares not speak its name; a murder here and there and a plot that moves from Naples to Rome to San Remo to Venice with enough twists, turns and suspense to intrigue and often terrify. Stunning performances from all concerned particularly the men - Matt Damon, Jude Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman, with the victims often showing more menace than the killer. This is one where we find ourselves rooting for the murderer, despite the fact that he is clearly psychotic. Incidentally, the soundtrack is nearly as good as the film, and that's saying quite a bit. I know I rushed out to buy it.

Barton Fink

The Coen brothers at their weirdest and most wonderful. This is the story of Barton Fink, a playwright who, having found sudden and unexpected success on Broadway, is lured to Hollywood to write a screenplay. Fink, played by a delightfully neurotic John Turturro, decides he wants to stay connected to the 'common man' and so chooses the run-down Earle Hotel as his base. And so it begins. Or in Barton's case it doesn't - he is parlaysed by writer's block and the distractions of his eerie room with its peeling wallpaper and dripping tap are not helping much. Then there's his peculiar neighbour Charlie, played by a cheerfully sinister John Goodman... Part horror, part film noir and a whole lot of rich black humour, Barton Fink is as much about the difficulties of writing as anything else. The Coens explore the snobberies, inverted and otherwise, of writers; the ruthlessness of the Hollywood bosses and, this being 1941, the paranoia and anti-Semitism of the times. A multi-layered film full of symbols that will keep you wondering long after you've switched off the box.

To Kill a Mockingbird

This is adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name written by Harper Lee (regrettably her only novel). Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch, widower and local attorney; a man of principle and father to two children - the tomboy Scout and her older brother Jem. The setting is small town in Alabama at a time when racial inequality was the norm and people were marginalised for the smallest misdemeanour. When a black man is accused of raping a white woman, the whole town becomes involved and racial tensions are stretched to breaking point. There are two worlds portrayed in this film; that of the grown-up and the more exciting and often more dangerous, parallel world of the child inhabited by Scout, Jem and their frail, but no less courageous, pal Dill. They spy on the goings-on in town and speculate on their neighbour, the reclusive Boo Radley whose father keeps him locked up in a spooky house as a punishment for a crime committed a long time ago. Here is a film in which most of the characters, and not just the worthy Atticus Finch, have a shot at being the hero. A story that is full of warmth, tenderness and above all tolerance. A perfect family film for a cold Sunday afternoon.

Not Just The Best Of The Larry Sanders Show

Not content with giving us perhaps the greatest TV show of all time, creator and star Garry Shandling went far above and beyond the call of duty when he put together this 2007 4-disc celebration of his multi-award-winning chat show satire. Alongside 23 of the finest episodes from the HBO show that ran from August 1992 to May 1998, Shandling offers up 8 hours of newly-produced material, paying a visit to many of the main cast, along with a handful of the many, many stars who had happily played caricatures of themselves.
Exploring the dark arts and dimwits of celebrity culture a decade before becoming famous jumped to the top of everyone's list, that Shandling uses this celebration of his near-perfect comic creation to also revel in his own self-doubt means the new material is every bit as intriguing and heartbreaking as the original episodes are insightful and hilarious. It's a thin line indeed between comedy and tragedy...

The Last Picture Show

When movie buff Peter Bogdanovich decided to adapt Larry McMurtry's semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in a small west Texas town in the early 1950s, he decided early on that such a movie needed to be shot in black'n'white.
This was, after all, a tale wherein the local cinema just gives up the ghost, as this small town coughs up another tumbleweed. It's also a tale about the loss of innocence, about growing up and moving on as your schooldays come to a close, about realising that all things must pass. Released in 1971, for many people, their childhood dreams of escape and their once-glorious teenage wildlife had been in black'n'white. Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges are the two best friends who end up divided and conquered by Cybill Shepherd's pretty rich girl, The Last Picture Show capturing perfectly the sort of growing pains that every generation faces.

Groundhog Day

A film that actually benefits from repeat viewings, as Bill Murray's curmudgeonly weatherman Phil Connors gets to live out the same day again and again, and again, so can we. As many times as we like. Unlike Phil though, we know this day has a happy ending. Eventually. And lots of laughs to go along with all that character building and existential angst about the true nature of being alive.
One of those comedies where the joke never gets old, Groundhog Day has grumpy, cynical weatherman Phil trapped in his worst nightmare - having to live out, ad nauseam, that one day of the year where a small rodent, in deepest, darkest Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, predicts the coming of spring. Phil's path from exasperation, to exploitation, through euphoria, boredom, despair and, finally, redemption offers up running gags aplenty, but Groundhog Day proves to be not just witty, but heartwarming and wise too. Which, you know, is pretty perfect when you're snuggled up by an open fire.

The Incredibles

Through such much-loved hits as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, WALL-E and Ratatouille, computer wizards Pixar have now firmly taken Disney's crown as animation's leading light. And their finest hour (and 55 minutes) came in 2004 with this hilarious adventure comedy about a superhero couple coaxed out of retirement (and strained suburban family life) by a would-be evil genius.
Written and directed by Brad Bird (who had previously given us the criminally-overlooked 1999 animation gem The Iron Giant), the inspiration was that middle-aged panic about not having followed your dreams. About settling into a life of domestic blitz. And developing a beer gut.
Alongside the stunning retro-cool visuals, Bird celebrates and affectionately sends-up the action hero movie, his goodies' superpowers giving Marvel and DC a run for their money, his baddie's hi-tech island HQ enough to leave Bond shaken and stirred with envy. One of the greatest animated movies of all time. And lots of fun to boot.

7-49 Up

What a wonderful idea - take a bunch of 7-year old kids from different walks of life, get them to impart their wisdom, their hopes and their dreams on camera, and then, every seven years, revisit them for an update.
Originally a World In Action outing, commissioned by Granada Television and directed by Paul Almond, noted British filmmaker Michael Apted (Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorky Park, The World Is Not Enough) made the move from researcher on that original programme to helming each subsequent outing.
There's nothing stranger than real life, and nowt more fascinating, as we follow, over these six discs, the often diverse paths these fourteen lives have taken. None moreso than Neil, who went from wide-eyed hopeful at 7 to homeless and suicidal at 21, before, by the age of 49, becoming a District Councillor in Cumbria. And these stories aren't over yet...