Customer Reviews

Bad Blood: Walking Along the Irish Border

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Written in Toibin's (that's the way we spell it round my way) characteristically spare prose this account of a walk along the Irish border is by turns depressing, humourous and hopeful. It's written at a time when there seeemed to be no end to the conflict in sight, but it treats people on both sides of the divide with equally non-judgemental respect. It's a work of travel writing as much as political journalism, and he seems to find wildness and exoxiticsm in an area 300 miles away from where he was himself born.

I'm reminded once more of the sheer awfulness of the hype printed on book covers.There is a classic here,"Toibin writes prose of heart - breaking beauty".Well not really. Toibins' prose here is solid and workman like.This is journalism from a novelist and it's quite interesting.If there is a viewpoint here it escaped me.The author crosses back and forth between the Republic and the North and reports on what he sees and hears.The time is 1986 and things are not good.Violence is routine and people are scared.If you don't know much about this conflict but enough to understand who the players are,this book will almost certainly help you understand what was and to a lesser degree is still going on.If you are a little more up on the Irish conflict , your'e also likely to enjoy the book because your'e reading first class reporting by an intelligent observer with no axe to grind.It's easy to underrate a book like this.It isn't profound and you won't have an epiphany reading it.However, it's good to read about what really is an important story told by someone who is a bit sharper than a TV hack and capable of writing better than most historians.