An old adage says that some good things are better left alone – and I've certainly found this to be true here, because although this "Finbar" sequel was devised and edited by Dermot Bolger, who also oversaw the original project, I cared decidedly less for this book than I did for the first "Finbar" ...
There my be something about the experience of writing in Ireland that drives writers into exile. For every Yeats who holes up in a castle in County Sligo at the end of his days, there's a Joyce or Beckett or Shaw or Wilde who leaves Ireland and doesn't so much not look back as look back with love an...