Customer Reviews

The Green Fool

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Patrick Kavanagh's autobiography of life in rural Ireland differs in many ways from McCourt's ubiquitous Angela's Ashes offering. In my opinion, it is far superior on every level - humour, pathos, wisdom, language, love...

Being from Ireland, this book speaks volumes in its meagre 250 pages. The final paragraph reads... "I returned to Ireland. Ireland green and chaste and foolish. And when I wandered over my own hills and talked again to my own people I lookde into the heart of this life and I saw that it was good".

Beautiful stuff... Seek this treasure out.

...was to pick this book up at the Dublin airport on my way home to Atlanta. It is charming and, no surprise since Mr Kavanagh is a poet, very poetic. My favourite quote, which should give you the flavour of the book is: "But though the coin of joy isn't legal tender in the mundane shops of the world, it is in the lands of Imagination, and I to-day, jingling my purse of memory, know I am richer than Rockefeller or Henry Ford or the Rothschilds ever were."
This book gives you a feel for the harsh realities and magic of living in Ireland in the first half of the 20th Century. I highly recommend it.

Want to find out what it was really like in Ireland just after the turn of the (19th) century? Want to know what language really sounded like? Read this lovely charm-filled little book by the author of Raglan Road.