Stocking fillers: Bishop's Move by Colm Keena and Change in the Wind by Niall OConnor

DERMOT BOLGER,  I imagine, is a busy man – as writer and a reader. And this year he found time to read two of my Christmas stocking-filler recommendations: poet Niall OConnor’s Change in the Wind (Nobul Publishing €10) and Colm Keena’s novel Bishop's Move (Somerville Press €14.99).

Niall OConnor's Change
 in the Wind (image may be
 subject to copyright)

Of OConnor, who published this collection of poems earlier in the year, Bolger said: “Here is a poet who understands the wonder of youth as finely as he grasps the slow journey of old age; a writer whose imagination is equally at home in his native country as when capturing the waterscapes of Venice or streets of Budapest with observations that are eloquent, inquisitive and challenging.”

It is true, I think, and OConnor also manages to confer seasonal relevance
 on his work with Snow:

“…and I watch as in slow motion the falling eyelashes of snow

 whisper me towards sleep…”

And Snow Girl:

“…and after two further button ornaments were pressed

 she stood back with pride

to admire the snow girl by her side…”

Bishop's Move
(image may be
subject to copyright)  

Bolger described Colm Keena’s Bishop’s Move as “Incisively illuminating the high octane of the Celtic Tiger and also the secretive cloisters of ecclesiastical intrigue.” Keena does demonstrate a deft handling of the issues that created strange speculative marriages made in banks and dissolved as quickly in backrooms or on courthouse steps.

However, it is his subtle and eloquent descriptions of the everyday – for instance, ‘She was a thinning cloud of smoke a soft draft would some day soon sweep from the living world’ – that create moments of beauty to reward the reader throughout this novel. 

That and the somewhat biblical openings to many chapters create a sense of the languid liturgical that is at once rooted in our present and some time that is now, maybe, past.

These are slim volumes and perfect stocking fillers. Both are available from a number of bookstores and are also available to order online through their separate publishers. Maybe a home should be found for both in that great new library in the cloud – where e-readers go to read?

Happy Christmas

Barbara Clinton © 2013