Honey Spike [Paperback]

Bryan MacMahon (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Poolbeg Pr Ltd (January 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1853713104
• ISBN-13: 978-1853713101
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,557,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The intimacy of Ireland's traveling people, September 8, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Honey Spike (Paperback)

In poetic, visual prose MacMahon evokes the Tinkers, the traveling people of Ireland, despised, illiterate and living by their wits.

Martin Claffey has fulfilled his ambition to travel the length of Ireland and now, just days before her time, his wife, Breda, insists on returning to Kerry to birth her first child in the Honey Spike, known to her family as a place with a lucky hospital.

Martin, reluctant and grumbling, agrees and the novel describes their journey home through an IRA raid, the suspicious countryside and the King Puck fair where a goat is crowned the only King of Ireland.

MacMahon homes in close to his characters so the reader feels nose to nose with them, pushed together in the intimacy of caravan and tent, day in, day out. Breda's mind drifts back to the days before she and Martin were wed - the feuds between clans that led to the death of her father, Martin's worrisome attaction to a girl from the rival clan, their own restrained courtship and early married days.

The book explores an intimacy so complete that Martin is like a new powerful limb grafted on to Breda, one that must be manipulated carefully to overcome its dangerous rebellions. It's a quiet, compeling book but the American reader is aware of details missed, subtleties unseen, simply by virtue of the close relationship between author and subject.