GALLERY BOOKS

Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed. Premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998.

On Christmas Eve, Arthur breaks his two front teeth. A teammate on the rugby pitch is too slow with a handoff, and instead of catching the ball, Art catches an opponent's foot right in the mouth. When he regains consciousness, the match is almost over, but he keeps playing regardless. Where else would he go? His entire life, Art has only cared about sports and nothing grabs his attention quite like the lightning-fast violence of Rugby League. He knows it could kill him, but it also makes him feel alive. In this hard-bitten Yorkshire mining town, the warriors of the rugby pitch are treated like gods. Through the aggressive sport, Art finds money, friends, and countless women. But when his lust for violence begins to fade, will he have the courage to leave the game behind?

'Molly Sweeney' tells the story of a woman who has the chance to regain her sight after being blind. Through a series of interconnected monologues we follow Molly's journey from darkness into light, as she lies in her hospital bed, attended by her husband and her eye surgeon. It was first produced at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 1994.

"Brian Friel's affinity with the work of certain nineteenth-century Russian writers is manifest in his own fiction and drama and in acclaimed adaptations of works by Chekov and Turgenev." "This marvellously inventive new play is based on a theme in 'The Lady with the Lapdog', a story Chekov wrote in 1899. At an end-of-season resort on the shore of the Black Sea, a pair of strangers play 'the Yalta game': divining the lives of other holiday-makers or investing the lives of others with an imagined life. These companions in adventure seek an end to their loneliness by throwing themselves into the game and by almost convincing each other that 'disappointments are only the postponement of the complete happiness which has to come'." "Brian Friel has unravelled a thread of Chekov's original and woven it afresh into a startling tapestry of deep longings and flawed resolutions."--Jacket.

"JPW King is an English, upper-middle-class 'dynamatologist' -- a quack psychologist -- living in Dublin. Caught between the demands of Mona, his mistress, Helen, the unattainable love of his life and an insatiable taste for vodka, the major question is how to get through the day. Then a client walks in to his office -- an Irish man who wants to sing like Beniamino Gigli."--back cover.

A woman - gaunt and ill, haggard after giving birth eight times - faces death. What was life? What was love? What else could have been? Full of mordant, bitter humour, this is a passionate threnody from one of Ireland's leading playwrights. 'Woman and Scarecrow' premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006.

"Derek Mahon's rich new collection turns its wide-angled lens on a 'dozy seaside town' in County Cork, four fellow Ulster poets, a bicycle shop in Delhi and the volcanic origins of the Canary Islands, against the background of a 'cascading world economy'. Alive to the current climate, it also revisits Chinese poetry of the T'ang era and explores that of modern India in the work of the fictitious Hindi poet Gopal Singh."--BOOK JACKET.

A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match. Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness.