Customer Reviews

This Troubled Land: Voices from Northern Ireland on the Front Lines of Peace

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Gripping, inciteful, fast moving account of daily life in N Ireland today. Can't put it down once you get in to the book. Great history lesson and description of how life is lived so soon after all the violence that occurred during the Troubles in Belfast and N Ireland

In the autumn of 1998, journalist Patrick Rucker returned to Northern Ireland to see how things have changed since the Good Friday peace accord. Interviewing many different people, he paints the picture of a land that is still not at peace, but filled with the bitterness from the long struggle, but too exhausted to keep the fighting up.

This book is quite interesting, showing the reader a side of Ireland that is just not visible in most books. Allowing the people to tell their own stories gives this book a powerful grip, which makes it hard to put down and harder to forget.

My one complaint is that Mr. Rucker focused heavily on the Catholic community, showing their bitterness against the Protestants, the British government and army, and against the IRA (which is painted in stark colors that are not flattering). However, even with those limitations, this is a very good book, one that I highly recommend to anyone interested in the condition of Northern Ireland.

In 1998, six months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement that brought peace to Ireland's war-torn Northern counties, Irish-American journalist Patrick Michael Rucker returned to Northern Ireland after a seven-year absence to see what changes had taken place.

Rucker takes us through a number of individual lives, interviewing paramilitaries and civilians, victims of violence or their family members, turning newspaper stories back into life stories. Assassinations and bombings, the Maze prisoner blanket protest and hunger strikes, IRA funerals, the Shankill Road bombing and the larger-than-life personas of infamous paramilitaries are laid before us, many motivated by personal vendettas at least as much as political motivations.

Not a current description of the Northern life, but an intelligent and well-researched overview of the tragic events that marked the Troubles and their immediate aftermath. A highly recommended read for those interested in learning about Northern Irish history.

- Caroline Oceana Ryan, author - AN OLD CASTLE STANDING ON A FORD: One Yank's Life in an Almost Peaceful Belfast (Eloquent Books, 2010)

Rucker's book is a fast-paced and well-written book about Northern Ireland from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Though much of the book seems to be written by someone advocating for the Protestants, he does give a few examples of victimized Catholics. The main problem with the text is it's sensational feel. The picture he paints of Belfast in the late 1990s is that of a war zone. It's not a war zone; sure, there is violence, but what major city isn't struck with violence. The interviews he conducts are interesting, yet through his own narrative voice he seems to negate all of what the interviewees have said. With little mention of the criminal organizations created by the loyalists, it surely seems as if the Catholics are causing all the problems--the Catholics are not causing all the problems.

Still, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about contemporary Northern Ireland: if and only if they intend to read other books about contemporary Northern Ireland.