Irish Stories for Christmas

Irish Christmas Stories #1?

by John Brendan Keane

The author of The Field and The Bodhran Makers now provides a charming collection of 15 stories--rich, colorful tales of Irish holiday traditions and ordinary people. "Country humor, holiday spirit, and insightful characterization are found in abundance."--Publishers Weekly.

Genres: Christmas

160 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Rosalinda Carter]

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. The first few stories were a little on the boring side but I liked all the ones later on. Most of them had very sweet themes but a few others were quite strange! (I feel bad for the cat)I liked almost all of them. Most seem to focus on simple Irish living back in the 30's.

[Joy Gerbode]

Considering the theme ... Irish ... and Christmas ... two of my favorite subjects, I was deeply disappointed in this book. One was about a man who was confessing his fornication on his deathbed, one about a couple arguing about nonsense, and all the others were equally under-whelming. I was not impressed.

[Kathy]

Many of these stories are just strange. And depressing. And not particularly “Christmassy” other than taking place during December.

[Rachel]

If you're looking for feel-good, Christmassy stories set on the emerald isle... look elsewhere. These are rather gritty stories that have very little to do with Christmas other than happening to fall at Christmas time.

Conscience Money is the only story I actually enjoyed (in fact I quite liked it), but it only gave this whole book one extra star.

If the other stories had followed the same vein, I would have quite loved this book. But most of the other stories are about abusers, drinkers, brawlers and the like.

[Shane]

If you want to know about the "west" of Ireland, a good place to start would be with John B. Keane. the last of "the wren boys"

The Wren, The Wren, the king of all birds,
On Saint Stephens day, he was caught in the furze,
Although he was little, his family was great,
Rise up! Landlady and give us a treat.

[Kent]

I guess in reading Christmas short stories I'm looking for a balance of realism and inspiration, a mixture of earth and heaven, of the human and the divine. These stories strive for inspiration, but with little of heaven and the divine in them, they fall flat, for me at least.

[Ann]

"Were we to depart life now we would surely see heaven for the happiness we spread this day. " The first story left me tempted to close the book for good. The remaining 14 gave me happiness and made me glad.

[Simone]

Lovely short, sometimes sweet, tales written with an Irish tone of days gone by. Heartwarming.

[Kaye Wingo]

good book

[Kris]

Tragic and hysterical

[Gina]

I had bigger dreams for this book, but it didn’t do much for me. A Christmas Performance was the short story I liked best.

[JJ Waggy]

It was both charming and irritating that I never really knew if some of the stories collected here were fiction or if they were all spin-offs of something that Keane had experienced or heard in his time. The characters are very lively and wondrously real--I could absolutely see the busybodies, the petty thieves, the lovers and fighters and priests. There were several stories that I didn't quite get, several that I wished were much longer, so it's a bit of a grab bag. My biggest complaint is that there seems to have been a shortage of commas in the publishing house that made this, which sort of drove me up the wall as I was reading. Seriously, missing commas all over the place. I'm not sure if it was to facilitate the speech-type sentence structure or what, but it was distracting as all get out.
Best thing is that the book made me miss Ireland, so it must have been true to its roots. A cute collection to run through around the holidays, but I don't think I'll be hanging on to it.

[Molly]

A very nice collection of stories, but I think one has to be interested in and a bit familiar with Ireland to get much out of it.

[Rich]

Like all short stories collections there are some hits and some misses. But overall this is a charming collection.

[Regina]

Read most of the book, the stories are interesting but the book didn't capture my long-term attention.

[Michelle]

Cute, charming stories set in the Irish countryside. The characters are charming.