The Best Of John B Keane: Collected Humorous Writings

by John Brendan Keane

Book Overview

John B. Keane is known nationally and internationally as a successful playwright, handling tragedy and comedy with equal art, and as a prose fiction writer of great invention and skill. Yet an equal claim to fame is made by the hundreds of short pieces which have been published in more than a dozen highly popular collections, their titles ranging from the polemical to the surreal, from Inlaws and Outlaws to Is the Holy Ghost Really a Kerryman?...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 185635265X
• ISBN13: 9781856352659
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Length: 365 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Irish Literature at its very best

Over the last year I've considered myself truly fortunate to have discovered the work of John Keane. In September of 2004 I stopped by the Dublin Writer's Museum and saw his books prominently featured. Much harder to spot in America and not fiction that I had previously run across. On a whim I took a chance and bought one of his books: it was one of the best gambles I've made. This magnificent and long book of short stories absolutely sparkles with carefully drawn, always engaging and focused tales of characters that command the page with energy and wit that is wholly and mysteriously their own. John Keane rolls out the welcome mat for the reader - he is absolutely honest and at the same time conspiratorial as he pulls you into the world of his characters. Ireland telegraphs through very strongly in these tales, however, the characters, the intrigue and the resounding integrity of these stories is absolutely universal and timeless. It would be misleading to simply categorize Keane as an Irish author. I've read many of these stories multiple times and they only get better with each reading. An Irish Christmas Feast is one of the very few books I've bought and given as a gift. Not a book to borrow, An Irish Christmas Feast is a book to own.