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The Walking People
The Walking People
Mary Beth Keane | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
It’s the 1960’s, and Greta and Johanna Cahill leave their farm and sail away on a ship to New York. They leave with Michael, a ‘Tinker’ who wants to settle down once he’s there, and make a life for himself.

Greta makes a life for HERself once she’s in New York - out of the shadow of her more confident sister, but in doing so, she ends up keeping secrets that I wondered would have been better shared. But these are people constrained by the times they live in and the place they come from.

I really enjoyed following the lives of Greta and Michael as they struggled (and succeeded) to make lives for themselves. Part of me wondered why anyone would want to leave the beauty of rural Ireland for the hustle of New York, but in reality there was nothing there for a lot of young people. If they wanted to earn money and have a job, they left for America and the UK.

It’s just a lovely story, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story of a family that loses touch and finds one another years later - with a bittersweet ending.

Recommended.
  
Scoundrel (the sailing thrillers, #5)
Scoundrel (the sailing thrillers, #5)
Bernard Cornwell | 1993 | Fiction & Poetry
3
3.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
It's been a long time since a book has made me this angry.

Maybe because I'm *from* Belfast, Northern Ireland and have relatives who lived through the period of history colloquially known as The Troubles (I was a teenager in the 90s, when they 'ended', and when this is set), so know exactly what the IRA and their loyalist counterparts were/are like.

It made my blood boil to read passages in this where they were treated as heroes by some in Boston (and, yes, I know it's a fiction book): surely to goodness nobody could be that naive??

Anyway, I normally like Bernard Cornwell (Author) novels.

I know he spent a bit of time here (the BBC, I believe?), before moving to the States.

His knowledge of landmarks does show.

I would have thought he would have known better, though, in how he portrays the tangled mess that is politics and history that went on in this fair isle.

Sorry, Mr Paul Shanahan: you're unlikeable as a lead character; no match to a Richard Sharpe or an Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

(his other stand-alone sailing thrillers - those I have read, at least - are all much better)