Tipperary [Audio CD]

Frank Delaney (Author, Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2008

16 hours 40 minutes on 14 compact discs

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Book On Tape; Library edition (2008)
• ISBN-10: 1415940096
• ISBN-13: 978-1415940099
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 6.7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,670,091 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

'The Most Eloquent Man in the World', says NPR, about the writer, broadcaster, BBC host and Booker Prize Judge, Frank Delaney. Over a career of interviews that has lasted more than three decades, Delaney, an international-best-selling author himself, has interviewed more than 3,500 of the world's most important writers.

Frank Delaney has earned top prizes and best-seller status in a wide variety of formats, from prolific author, a polished broadcaster on both television and radio, to journalist, correspondent, screenwriter, lecturer, playwright and scholar. He has been the president of the Samuel Johnson Society, president of the UK Book Trust, and the Literary Director of the famed Edinburgh Festival.

A judge of many literary prizes (including the famous Booker), Delaney also created landmark programs and passionate documentaries on many subjects including Joyce, Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Hemingway, Mailer, Matisse, Van Gogh and the vitality and organic growth of the English language - his famed BBC show on the way we speak, Word of Mouth, is still heard all over the English-speaking world. And his six-part series, The Celts, originally broadcast in forty countries, is still in active DVD distribution, some twenty years after its launch.

Mr. Delaney lectures all over the world, writes every day, and has created a significant podcast series: Re:Joyce, deconstructing, examining and illuminating James Joyce's Ulysses line-by-line, in accessible and entertaining five-minute broadcasts, posted each week on this website. The project is estimated to run a quarter of a century.

Born and raised in County Tipperary, Ireland, Delaney spent more than twenty-five years in England before moving to the United States in 2002. His first 'American' book was the New York Times Bestseller, Ireland. His second, the non-fiction Simple Courage, was chosen as one of the top five books of the year by the American Library Association. Since 2006, he has published five Novels of Ireland, all addressing, decade by decade, the twentieth century history of his homeland. His latest novel, "The Last Storyteller" (Random House, February 7th 2012) celebrates the mysteries of the ancient oral tradition as the last itinerant storytellers work their magic in 1950's Ireland.

Mr. Delaney lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut, with his wife, writer and marketer, Diane Meier.

Delaney broadcasts "Re:Joyce," a weekly podcast on James Joyce's "Ulysses" on his website www.frankdelaney.com. You can find his daily writing tips on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FDbytheword

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Look at Ireland, October 26, 2007

By 

Jean Brandt "faceinbook" (Richfield, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tipperary: A Novel (Hardcover)

"Tipperary" it is safe to say, is one of the most enjoyable works of historical fiction I have read.
At first I had a bit of a struggle with Delaney's style. Delaney told his tale from alternating points of view. He often switched points of view in the middle of a page and without any distiction other than the "voice" of the narrator. I have participated in enough reading groups to know that there are readers who would have issues with this. To them I would advise that they "hang in there" because the story is well worth the effort. It doesn't take long for Delaney's voices to become distinct.
The author's format allows for a very large perspective on the lives of his characters. I loved this about the book.
Delaney also has a very low key sense of humor which I really enjoy,very subtle but very funny when he uses it.
I didn't know very much about Ireland when I started this novel. I tend to shy away from sob stories or "poor me" type books. It was a wonderful surprise to hear about Ireland and the Irish people from Delaney's perspective. The story was heartfelt and not at all sappy or over dramatized.
After completing this book, I will no doubt read Delaney's first novel titled "Ireland". The author tells a good story in a captivating style.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tipperary, November 17, 2007

By 

clamairy (CT, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tipperary: A Novel (Hardcover)

Played out against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent periods of Irish history, Tipperary doesn't read like a history lesson, yet it paints a vivid picture of those brutal days. If it is a love story, then it is a tale of the Irish and their great love of the land, revealed through journal entries, some penned more than half a century apart. This device works well, if a bit awkwardly in a few places. The overall effect is one of a chorus of voices weaving a complex tale of turmoil, with the predominant theme being the people's great passion for Ireland itself. The romances between people mostly take a back seat here, thankfully.

We see predominantly through the eyes of Charles O'Brien, who has an almost Forest Gump-like ability to meet and interact with nearly every important player who graced that period of Irish history. His encounters include that tragic genius Oscar Wilde, the legendary Charles Parnell, those brilliant writers William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, and culminate with his interactions with many crucial participants in the battle for Irish Home Rule, including Michael Collins himself. While I initially felt these meeting to be too contrived, I came to the realization that a member of the Irish upper class in that period could indeed have interacted with many of the history makers of those days.

I could barely put the book down while finishing off the final third of it, and having finished, I am left not only with a longing to fill those woefully large gaps in my knowledge of Irish History, but also with a desire to seek out more works by Frank Delaney.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Major Disappointment, November 22, 2007

By 

Douglas S. Wood "Vicarious Life" (Monona, WI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tipperary: A Novel (Hardcover)

I enjoyed Frank Delaney's first novel Ireland : A Novel so much that I went on record as favoring it over Edward Rutherfurd's sweeping epic of Irish historical fiction. After reading 'Tipperary' I wonder if that earlier judgment was wrong or whether Delaney's second book has really fallen that far short.

'Tipperary' centers around an Irish itinerant folk doctor named Charles O'Brien who falls in love at the age of 40 with a young English woman named April Burke in Paris, but the love is decidedly unrequited. The telling of his story is choppy with multiple narrative voices each in a different time period. Delaney has O'Brien meet numerous lights of Irish literature and politics of the late 19th century - among others he meets Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Shaw, Parnell, de Valera, and Collins. Annoyingly most of these people make only brief cameo appearances and add nothing to the story. What is the point of the name-dropping?

At nearly the half way mark, the book finally gets a purpose, albeit a rather unlikely one as O'Brien and April Burke join forces after a fashion to bring Tipperary Castle, an Anglo Irish Great House in O'Brien's neighborhood back to its former glory. With the Irish Civil War in the background, Delaney also finally delivers a little sustained history.

`Tipperary' disappoints and only in part due to high expectations based on Delaney's `Ireland'. Having waded through 200 pages of tedium as Delaney struggled to pull the story together, this reader found it hard to work up much of an interest in what happened to Charles O'Brien and April Burke and the bloody stupid `castle'.

Once I find an author whose work I enjoy I tend to go back to them again and again - like Edward Rutherfurd, for example: The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga, Sarum: The Novel of England, London: The Novel. `Tipperary' has put readers on notice to exercise caution in picking up a Delaney novel not called 'Ireland'.