Ireland audiobook

It is as if Frank Delaney wrote his novel, Ireland, to be an audio book. Ireland is a novel about a Storyteller and the stories he tells about Irish history. We are treated to the creation of Newgrange and the Book of Kells. We learn about Brendan the Navigator and Conor, the King of Ulster. Each story stands alone but together they form still another story. I cannot recommend this book more highly…especially as an audio book.

Ireland, by Frank Delaney, is a compelling and in some ways remarkable book. When I found it I was looking for a history of Ireland. I didn't get that, or at least not exactly. This is a story of Ireland, told by examining the lives of several Irish individuals. The main theme of the book is that you can't really understand Ireland with just names, dates, and facts. To really understand the country and its people you must hear the stories behind the history, and the author does exactly that using some rather clever narrative devices throughout.In the first act, we meet a young boy who is visited by a… wait for it… travelling storyteller with a penchant for walking around Ireland telling the stories that make up the history of his beloved country. In act two the boy is grown and, through a series of events sown together by a strange connection to the storyteller, finds himself walking the streets and countryside of Ireland hearing stories and telling a few of his own. In the third act the boy, now a man and notable historian in his own right, continues his pursuit of the storyteller and ends up finding himself in the process. If all this sounds a bit contrived and superficial, it isn't. I don't want to spoil the story, but suffice it to say that Delaney weaves a rich, highly textured tapestry of characters and history that I couldn't put down. I hadn't read much of any Irish history before this book, but I've gained a new found respect and admiration for this tiny country and a people that have had an enormous impact on the world. Highly recommended.

I read this for my book club and did not look forward to it. What a surprise! I was enchanted by the storyteller's tales. The novel has both a plot and a history of the stories told by a traditional storyteller in Ireland. Ireland has had a rich history of itinerant storytellers, and it was as if I were being read to rather than reading it myself. Frank Delaney's goal is to tell the history of Ireland during the course of his life's work. If any of his other books are anything like this one, I look forward to listening.

Frank Delaney"s Ireland reminds me of a caduceus, like the staff of the Greek god Hermes, with two intertwined serpents. One of the serpents is the story of a young man named Ronan O'Mara, son of a prosperous Irish attorney, who falls under the spell of the last of the traveling storytellers, known in Gaelic as a seanchai. The other thread (or serpent) is the story of Ireland itself, from prehistoric times at Newgrange to the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin. In between Ronan's quest to meet up with the storyteller, we are regaled with a series of anecdotal episodes from Irish history, many heavily laden with mythical overtones. Not that it matters to me: I have always been interested in Irish history and realized from the outset that the mythical elements form a large part of it. I keep harking back to that line from John Ford's film (and was he not an Irishman?) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."I have always loved stories. Many of my favorite writers -- men like Nikolai Leskov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Robert Louis Stevenson -- were great storytellers, who, like the Irish seanchai, belonged in a very special way to the land of their birth. In his essay on Leskov (reprinted in Illuminations), Walter Benjamin rues what has become of the story:The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. This, however, is a process that has been going on for a long time. And nothing would be more fatuous than to want to see in it merely a "symptom of decay," let alone a "modern" symptom. It is, rather, only a concomitant symptom of the secular productive forces of history, a concomitant that has quite gradually removed narrative from the realm of living speech and at the same time is making it possible to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.Ireland is perhaps a bit behindhand in this secular process, as I recall from the good priests and nuns of my Catholic education, and that is a good thing for those of us who love a good tale. Allow me to end with the storyteller himself, on the last page of Ireland:Conveniently for me, I liken Ireland to whiskey in a glass -- a cone of amber, a self-contained passage of time, a place apart, reaching out to the world with sometimes an an acrid taste, a definite excess of personality, telling her story to all who would listen, hauling them forward by the lapels of their coats until they hear, whether they want to or not. But always, always -- the story is the teller and the teller is the story.This is the first of a score or more books I plan to read this year featuring those tales of Ireland -- tales told by historians, poets, and storytellers like Frank Delaney, a worthy practitioner of his craft.

A slow, winding read about the central stories that make up the core of Ireland's mythology and history. The novel is framed by the story of Ronan O'Mara, who journeys through a great swath of the countryside in search of an itinerant storyteller, a Seanchai, who created an enigmatic obsession in him when he was young. Braided throughout his search are the facts and fictions of the country, as told by the mysterious storyteller. Newgrange, Strongbow, the Battle of the Boyne, St. Patrick, Hugh O'Neill, the creation of Handel's Messiah (and its first performance) in Dublin, the Easter Uprising, are but to name a few of the stories. The reader also learns about the penal laws, the land laws, and the further depredations levied at the Irish people by the British. Yet, the book focuses on the beauty and "ancient profundity" of the island. Small little things interested me, like the linguistic history of "Uileann pipes" ("uile" is an Irish word for "elbow") or that Galway is called the City of the Tribes, a city that "aches with memories of those who made the long--and, in those days, forced and never to be retraced--journey to the New World." Did you know that Ireland is the only country whose national symbol is a musical instrument? Do you know the Irish origin of the word "boycott"?The book is sentimental, to be sure. However, since I'll be traveling there next month, I think the stories in this book will help bring the history of the country to life for me in a way that a copy of Lonely Planet's guidebook could not. Despite the contrivance of the frame story, and the slow nature of the episodic pacing, the book is a deep and heartfelt ode to Ireland.

Frank Delaney’s Ireland is my kind of novel. Rich with character, history, and lyrical language, it is at once the chronicle of a nation and the coming of age tale of a young man. The story opens with the arrival of a man who may be Ireland’s last itinerant storyteller, and from the moment he lights his pipe by the fireside, and begins describing the evolution of prehistoric New Grange, his audience is enthralled. As is Ronan, who from that evening on finds his career and his very life shaped by this enigmatic, nameless wanderer. The millenium-long, traumatic epic of a nation’s building, the travails of a single 20th century family, the beauty of the landscape, the pain of loss, forgiveness and love, poets and leprechauns – it’s all here, fascinating and beautifully expressed. If the book has a flaw, it’s in its length. Though it bogs down after the halfway mark, Delaney’s riveting conclusion more than makes up for that. Highly recommended for lovers of good historical fiction.

Excellent narration and story telling on the history of Ireland.

I decided to read this in memory of my Irish brother-in-law, who died a year ago. And a great choice it was, I'll tell you for sure! This book offers a wonderful overview of Irish folktales, history, topography, and people. The Washington Post stated, "History, legend, memory and myth come seamlessly together." They do.At first I thought it was Irish stories woven together by a novel, but it is those and so much more. I'm so glad I made this choice. (I miss you, Bill.)

Ireland is a story about Ronan, a boy who hears a traveling storyteller for three consecutive nights, and is forever changed by the experience. Ronan’s relationship with the storyteller is mysterious, sometimes frustrating (because the reader really identifies with Ronan’s journey), moving and heartwarming. It is lyrical, for the storytelling is rich with moments that make you sit back and collect yourself, because you didn’t realize that there could be something so poignant written. It is epic, for it spans centuries and millennia without missing a beat. It is transporting, for it feels like you are really there, in a living room by the fire, sharing this moment with Ronan, who is lovable from the moment he is introduced.Ireland is also a story about stories, the lost art of the traveling storyteller and the way that myths and history are weaved together to form a blanket that encompasses all sides of history. It hearkens to the days when families spoke to each other, sharing their collective histories to pass on to successive generations. And, to top it all off, it’s beautifully written. Frank Delaney’s writing warms the heart like freshly baked bread (I’m sitting next to a loaf of it right now and it smells the way that I imagine it has smelled for centuries). Rarely have I encountered a book that takes on the whole spectrum of emotions like this book; I wanted to start reading it again the second I finished it, making the stories into part of my own personal story. I know this review seems like a laundry list of things that I loved about the book. Reading over the review, I see that. The only thing that I didn’t like about the book was that it ended; I’m comforted by the fact that I will be able to read it again and again, revisit the characters in both the Storyteller’s tales Ronan’s narrative. This kind of book does not happen everyday.

Near the beginning of this story the narrator of the story says..."a good story lifts the heart." There is nothing like an Irish brogue in the voice of Frank Delaney telling a compelling story of Ireland. I have enough Irish ancestry to celebrate St. Patrick's day but know little of the stories and legends that pepper the Irish heritage and landscape. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the notion of a story teller who goes from home to home and village to village with not much more than a story in his pocket is a great device. The storyteller hopes to find respite in any home that will listen to his stories and giving him room from any place such as a barn to a long term place among a family unit. I listened to the audio version of this book in my car and was enchanted. You will visit the such tales such as the story of St. Patrick to the potato famine. The story of the two bishops will leave you chuckling. Enjoy this trip to Ireland and you will not be sorry you spent the time there.

I often will read books along a theme. This was one from my 'Ireland' period. It was a fictional story of the last traveling storyteller in the country, and the boy who became obsessed with following what he did. The book intertwines include the storyteller's tales, which are fictional and historical stories of Ireland, with the the stories of the lives of the storyteller, the boy, and the boy's family. And, like any good Irish story (or at least the ones I grew up on), there's an unexpected twist at the end.

Randomly found this book and gave it a try. This was a great read very different from what I normally like. It is so well written I want to read more of Frank Delaney books.