Deirdre Madden

One by One in the Darkness is an account of a week in the lives of three sisters shortly before the start of the IRA ceasefire in 1994, undercut with the story of their childhood in Northern Ireland of the 1960s and 1970s. The history of both a family and a society, One by One in the Darkness confirms Deirdre Madden's reputation as one of Irish fiction's most outstanding talents. 'Her authority when writing on her native Northern Ireland is supreme . . . beautifully written . . . an author with a rare talent . . . haunting and beautiful.' Literary Review 'No other book has left me with such a lasting impression of the hurt of Northern Ireland.' Sunday Tribune 'Ambitious and wide-ranging . . . skilfully constructed . . . particularly good at the way in which the past constructs the present, how intense memories transfigure current experience . . . A quiet and effective psychological realism.' Independent on Sunday

One by One in the Darkness

When the timid millionaire pianist Barney Barrington moves to Woodford, extraordinary things start to happen. For local millionaire Jasper Jellit doesn't like all the attention Barney is getting and will do anything to upstage him, including hosting an extravagant chocolate party for Woodford residents. But when Barney and Jasper want to buy the same painting, Jasper finds less scrupulous ways of getting what he wants. As Barney is too kind to ever have a suspicious thought, it falls to his hyper-intelligent cat Dandelion to save the day - with the help of Jasper's two misunderstood dogs Cannibal and Bruiser. Winner of the Eilis Dillon Award for a First Children's Book

Snakes' Elbows

Dublin. Midsummer. While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly’s, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox’s Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.

Molly Fox's Birthday

Fintan Buckley is a pleasant, rather conventional and unimaginative man, who works as a legal adviser in an import/export firm in Dublin. He lives in Howth and is married to Colette. They have two sons who are at university, and a small daughter. As he goes about his life, working and spending time with his family, Fintan begins to experience states of altered consciousness and auditory hallucinations, which seem to take him out of a linear experience of time. He becomes interested in how we remember or imagine the past, an interest trigged by becoming aware of early photography, particularly early colour photography. He also finds himself thinking more about his own past, including time spent holidaying in the north of Ireland as a child with his father's family. Over the years he has become distanced from them, and in the course of the novel this link is re-established and helps to bring him understanding and peace, although in a most unexpected way. Time Present and Time Past, Deirdre Madden's eighth novel for adults, is about time: about how not just daily life and one's own, or one's family's past, intersect with each other.

Time Present and Time Past

Dublin. Midsummer. While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly's, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox's Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.

When James proposes, it seems like an opportunity for Jane to leave her lonely past behind and become part of a family. But the presence of a woman in the cottage near their remote farmhouse threatens Jane's new-found happiness.

The Birds of the Innocent Wood

There's a wonderful emerald necklace called The Green Marvel hidden somewhere in Haverford-Snuffley Hall. Sneaky Jasper Jellit takes a job there as a gardener, hoping to get his hands on the jewels. But the house is haunted, his two pet rats Rags and Bags give him no end of trouble, and then there's Mrs Knutmegg the cook, who sees immediately that Jasper's up to no good . . . A sparkling sequel to the award winning 'Snakes' Elbows.'

Jasper and the Green Marvel

Written by one of Ireland's leading medical law academics, this practical book comprehensively covers case law and regulations regarding the healthcare system, the law relating to human reproduction, and the key issues of consent and treatment. Designed to be used by lawyers and healthcare professionals, Medicine, Ethics and the Law in Ireland provides an invaluable reference tool for anybody who requires accurate information and guidance on this area of Irish law. This new edition includes: Medical research and clinical trials; Organ donation and transportation; Patient safety and QA; and Biobanking.

Medicine, Ethics and the Law in Ireland

This Orange Prize Finalist novel is both a meditation on time and memory and “a deeply moving portrait of domestic and family life” in Ireland (The Sunday Telegraph). Ireland, 2006. The economic miracle known as the Celtic Tiger has swept the country into a euphoria of wealth and transformation. But for forty-seven-year-old Dubliner Fintan Buckley, the race toward progress is also a troubling purge of the past. His young daughter, Lucy, and teenage son, Niall, are growing up in an Ireland that is changing as fast as they are. More and more, Fintan feels the rush of time “like a kind of unholy wind”—so much so that he begins to experience strange, dreamlike visions. Is that his own face he sees on another man? Is that his sister staring back at him from a late-Victorian photograph? A resonant portrait of a middle-class family in pre-crash Ireland, Deirdre Madden’s latest novel “is a reminder that we’d do best . . . to savor what we can of those passing moments Eliot called the ‘still point of the turning world’” (The New York Times Sunday Book Review). “An outstanding book.” —Irish Independent

Remembering Light and Stone is a moving study of a young woman coming to terms with herself in a changing world. 'Not only is Madden's book a joy to read: it is also a portrait of personal fulfilment, and a telling snapshot of our age.' The Times 'One of the most original and disturbing writers since Jean Rhys.' Independent on Sunday

Remembering Light and Stone

Jane's difficult childhood as an orphan shapes her life and indirectly influences the lives of her two daughters, Sarah and Catherine

Dans sa maison de pierre grise nichée sur les falaises rocheuses du comté de Donegal, Claire, un jeune peintre épris de perfection, accueille pour l'été sa cousine Nuala, kleptomane névrosée en pleine crise existentielle, sur qui pèse l'ombre douloureuse d'une mère récemment disparue. Dans la maison voisine, Anna, une ancienne décoratrice d'origine hollandaise qui partage son temps entre l'Irlande et son pays natal, tente secrètement de comprendre pourquoi sa relation avec sa fille Lili a échoué. Trois femmes en quête d'un peu de vérité, hantées par la peur de l'échec et de la mort et qui, en se rencontrant, vont apprendre à se dévoiler et à se réconcilier avec elles-mêmes. Roman de la difficulté d'être, du sentiment exacerbé de la faute, Rien n'est noir s'impose comme une oeuvre simple et directe, où tout est exorcisme, cheminement vers le silence et le néant, à l'image de cette terre d'Irlande, nordique et pluvieuse, qui lui sert de toile de fond.

Rien n'est noir

Nothing is Black is a beautifully told story of three women who find themselves in a remote part of Donegal at a defining moment in their lives. Wealthy and successful, Nuala has everything except the peace of mind she so desperately needs. She has come to stay with her cousin Claire, who leads a solitary life as a painter. Anna, Claire's neighbour, longs for a reconciliation with her estranged daughter. Through their stories, Deirdre Madden explores the themes of friendship, family and the nature of creativity, confirming her reputation as one of Ireland's most talented writers.

Nothing is Black

All Over Ireland, edited by Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox's Birthday, Time Present and Time Past), continues the tradition of featuring the work of both new and established writers, including Colm Tóibín, Mary Morrissy and Eoin McNamee. These diverse and accomplished stories, by turns dazzling, thoughtful and startling, bring new ideas and energy to the form and richly enhance the tradition of Irish fiction.

New Irish Short Stories

All Over Ireland

For Theresa and her student friends, Belfast can seem an urban nightmare - a city where violence can erupt at any moment, where secrecy and bitterness are nursed behind closed doors, and where Theresa's twin brother, Francis, has been murdered, Deirdre Madden carefully and movingly reveals the crisis of faith that confronts Theresa when her devout Catholicism provides no explanation for the tragedy. Hidden Symptoms was originally published in Faber's First Fictions anthology where it was highly praised and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1987.

Hidden Symptoms

After a brilliant youth, the painter Roderic Kennedy's life has been overtaken by a series of crises - alcoholism, the failure of his marriage to an Italian woman, and estrangement from his three daughters following his return to Ireland. When he meets Julia Fitzpatrick, twenty years younger than he and also an artist, it seems as if this period of turbulence and misfortune from which he has been struggling to emerge is at an end. But when Julia then meets William Armstrong, a middle-aged lawyer, it sets in motion a chain of events which, in the course of the following year, has dramatic and unforeseen consequences for all three of them. Deirdre Madden's ambitious novel is both a moving love story and a thought-provoking meditation upon the nature of painting. It is above all an exploration of what it means to be an artist in contemporary society.

Authenticity

Emily e gli animali parlanti

Als Keira beschließt, in der Zoohandlung ihrer Tante Emily auszuhelfen, ahnt sie nicht, was für ein aufregender Sommer ihr bevorsteht. Emilys Zooparadies beherbergt jede Menge außergewöhnliche Tiere, von denen Emily sich nur schwer trennen kann. Schon gar nicht, als die hochnäsige Henrietta Fysshe-Pye in das kleine Städtchen zieht und ihr neues Heim mit Haustieren ausstatten möchte. Aber zum Glück gibt es da noch Finbarr, der ein bisschen für Emily schwärmt, den erfahrenen Zauberhasen Simsal, die Schlange Noreen und viele andere, die wie Pech und Schwefel zusammenhalten.

Tierparadies Emily & Co.

" A travers l'histoire de quatre femmes - une mère, Emily, et ses trois filles, Cate l'élégante journaliste, Helen l'avocate austère et Sally l'institutrice discrète et réservée -, à travers l'histoire de leurs relations et, au-delà, de leur famille et des drames qui l'ont endeuillée, Deirdre Madden évoque l'Irlande tumultueuse depuis les années 70, une Irlande où la mort semble frapper aveuglément, atteindre plus d'innocents que de coupables, et semer dans les familles des blessures incurables. [...] Deirdre Madden, dans ce roman sombre et fragile, exprime surtout, semble-t-il, son ambivalence déchirante à l'égard de son pays natal auquel elle voue une immense tendresse, mais dont elle hait l'histoire sanglante et incompréhensible qui interdit d'inventer l'avenir. " Louise L. Lambrichs, La Croix

Deirdre Madden

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