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Hurrish: A Study
A vivid portrait of an Irish community, where memory, loyalty, and fate shape ordinary lives. This novel follows a broad cast of neighbors and kin as they navigate love, loss, and the stubborn pull of home. Across landscapes from hillside villages to bustling towns, it threads personal stories into a larger view of Irish life, politics, and the hope for a new departure.
With a blend of warmth, local color, and quiet moments of insight, the book captures how kindness and memory can sustain people through hardship. Its large cast and careful attention to place create a rich, immersive experience that invites reflection on what it means to belong to a place—and to one another.
Atmospheric depiction of rural and small-town Ireland, with vivid sense of time and place.
Memorable characters whose lives intertwine in tender, often humorous ways.
Exploration of community, faith, family, and the costs and gifts of memory.
Elegant storytelling with accessible language and strong emotional resonance.
Ideal for readers who enjoy historical fiction and character-driven portraits of Irish life, where personal stories illuminate a larger culture.
With a blend of warmth, local color, and quiet moments of insight, the book captures how kindness and memory can sustain people through hardship. Its large cast and careful attention to place create a rich, immersive experience that invites reflection on what it means to belong to a place—and to one another.
Atmospheric depiction of rural and small-town Ireland, with vivid sense of time and place.
Memorable characters whose lives intertwine in tender, often humorous ways.
Exploration of community, faith, family, and the costs and gifts of memory.
Elegant storytelling with accessible language and strong emotional resonance.
Ideal for readers who enjoy historical fiction and character-driven portraits of Irish life, where personal stories illuminate a larger culture.
- GenresIrish Literature
Kindle Edition
Published August 24, 2018
12 people want to read
About the author
Emily Lawless
159 books4 followersThe Hon. Emily Lawless (17 June 1845 – 19 October 1913) was an Irish novelist and poet from County Kildare. According to Betty Webb Brewer, writing in 1983 for the journal of the Irish American Cultural Institute, Éire/Ireland: "An unflagging unionist, she recognised the rich literary potential in the native tradition and wrote novels with peasant heroes and heroines, Lawless depicted with equal sympathy the Anglo-Irish landholders."
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 17, 2008
I'm partial to this book because I wrote my master's thesis on it. So I'm giving it four stars because I find it so interesting, rather than for the quality of its prose.
Emily Lawless was a peer of W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and the literary nationalist movement (otherwise known as the Celtic Twilight)--respected authors of their time who were trying to create an Irish national identity through very idealized portraits of Irish Catholics/the peasantry.
Hurrish, written against the backdrop of the Irish Land Wars of the 1880s, gives a much more problematic view of Ireland at that time. Lawless, as a member of the disenfranchised Anglo-Irish landlord class, asks important questions about what Ireland is becoming.
Emily Lawless was a peer of W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and the literary nationalist movement (otherwise known as the Celtic Twilight)--respected authors of their time who were trying to create an Irish national identity through very idealized portraits of Irish Catholics/the peasantry.
Hurrish, written against the backdrop of the Irish Land Wars of the 1880s, gives a much more problematic view of Ireland at that time. Lawless, as a member of the disenfranchised Anglo-Irish landlord class, asks important questions about what Ireland is becoming.
Displaying 1 of 1 review