The Celebrated Letters of John B.Keane

click here for more details, find new or used items	John B. Keane Our price £8.99 (£12.99) New from £8.00 Used from £5.44 Pages: 390 (Paperback) ISBN: 1856351564 Pub: The Mercier Press Ltd Pub date: 1996-11 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 228480

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Reading doesn't get much better than this. (13/14 people found this helpful)

Review of The Celebrated Letters of John B Keane

This is a book for everyone who regards himself/herself as a student of human nature and of all the strengths and weaknesses that it encompasses. It also helps if you have a penchant for all things Hibernian - but this is not strictly necessary.

The letters are "written" by various characters - from that magnificently Machiavellian TD, Tull MacAdoo, through to the pathetic yet principled Love Hungry Farmer, the omniscient and proudly presumptious Matchmaker, the benevolent yet bigoted Irish Priest and finally the reappearance of Tull as Irish Minister of State - but the continuing thread which binds them into a satisfying entity is the shared appetite for life which all of the above display, an appetite which materialises in various guises - love, lust, passion, compassion, jealousy, greed, generosity, atheism, godliness, loneliness; one could go on endlessly. Suffice it to say that John B Keane has obviously a keen understanding of, and love for, the human spirit.

The stories which emerge through the letter form are all set deep in the heart of Ireland, probably in Kerry where Mr Keane himself lives and works. Consequently the characters are keenly observed and realistically depicted to the reader. They fairly leap at you from the page so that when I next visit that part of Ireland, I shall confidently expect to meet at least some of them. I feel I should know them on sight despite the fact that there is very little physical description given in the letters, this being of minor importance in a book which is concentrating on the indomitability of the human spirit. Going along with this is the strongly felt influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the lives of all the main characters. One feels the ambivalence of the writer's attitude to its benevolent tyranny in the words he gives to a clergyman in Love Hungry Farmer: "I go along with Church's teachings because my calling forces me to do so. I do not, however, agree with them." The character of the Irish Priest emerges as an intelligent and sensitive man capable of deep compassion and understanding who cares for his flock in a truly selfless and Christian (in the real meaning of that word) way, and yet he condemns poor Rosie Monsey to certain death by forbidding her the use of contraceptives. This paradox seems to sum up not just what is perceived to be wrong with the Roman Catholic faith, but also surely what is wrong with human nature; the constant battle between logic and passion, head and heart.

I was prompted to buy this book after seeing a performance of The Matchmaker at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It is a measure of the brilliance of the writing that the Letters successfully transmogrified to the stage with apparently little or no editing. I will not extol the virtues here of the two actors involved as I must contain myself to the book, but suffice it to say that I read the rest of the letters with the voices of these two in my head pronouncing the words in wonderful Southern Irish accents. Reading doesn't get much better than this.

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