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Irony, style and clever wordplay
The witty and conceptually cogent, if incessantly referential
work of US artist Jack Pierson - including the word sculptures he
is best known for - is brought together in an Imma exhibition that
spans 20 years, writes
Aidan Dunne . p
Wanted: an audience for sparkling Irish pop
You won't see Thomas Walsh's Pugwash traipsing around the country any time soon. Alas, the Irish public just doesn't seem to get the talented songsmith's classic Beatles- and XTC-inflected power pop, writes Tony Clayton-Lea . p
Strange guests at Strauss's party
Opera Ireland's version of Strauss's stubbornly impressionistic 'Ariadne auf Naxos' transplants the action to a 1980s house party, expressing the characters' idiosyncrasies through music, costumes, props - and even shoes, writes Arminta Wallace . p
Arts
Moments of music-hall in Mozart's magical, Masonic opera
A new production, in English, of 'The Magic Flute' places Viennese farce in an ancient desert setting and mixes the zany with the serious as it plays the theme of love and morality, writes Eileen Battersby . pI just don't like the screaming
In a new short story, novelist Colum McCann responds to Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a continuing series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration. pOne way of packing them into the stalls
ARTSCAPE: MOST NEW YORKERS would rather move to New Jersey than enter the public conveniences in Central Park, writes Belinda McKeon , but Semper Fi's production of Paul Walker's noirish thriller Ladies and Gents has been packing them into the stalls and the shadows of the Bethesda Terrace restrooms for the past two weeks, and earning itself some very excited local press in the process. p
The virus that waged its own war
Despite the misery wreaked in Ireland by the Spanish flu virus towards the end of the first World War, the tragedy has largely been forgotten, writes Claire O'Connell . pChanging shades in the image of the green isle
ANOTHER LIFE: WHEN GRASS is drowned by the sea for a tide or two, it takes on a tarnished, ochreous look for quite a while, writes Michael Viney . pHorizons
Specs and the city: A conference in Dublin on Friday will explore better ways in which to plan cities, writes Sylvia Thompson .
pEye on Nature
We saw a bundle of feathers on a road outside Ballindrait, Co Donegal which turned out to be a merlin and a thrush, the former trying to kill the latter but, being the same size, having problems. p
Where's the passion?
MEMOIR: Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist, By Simon Armitage, Viking, 303pp. £16.99 A popular English poet revisits his music-fan youth, but the end result is frustrating and disappointing, writes Keith Ridgway . pA remarkable narrator shines in a savage setting
FICTION: God's Own Country, By Ross Raisin, Penguin/Viking, 210pp, £16.99 A PLACE can make a story; a place can shape a character. The rugged terrain of the magnificent Yorkshire Moors, a most savage and inspiring setting, is all important in Ross Raisin's outstanding debut, writes Eileen Battersby .
pA bloodline with a fairytale ending
FICTION: Thanks for the Memories, By Cecelia Ahern, HarperCollins, 373pp, £12.99 CECELIA AHERN is queen of the modern fairytale. She has not only cornered a market in magic, she created it. Thanks for the Memories , her fifth novel, is long-awaited, not only by her millions of fans, but by the book trade, because the one non-fairytale fact about Ahern's novels is: they sell, writes Denise Deegan .
pMaking a life out of art
INTERVIEW: Debut novelist Rebecca Miller can't subtract her family from her life. But the daughter of Arthur Miller and wife of Daniel Day-Lewis tells Fiona McCann that not everything she writes is culled from her own experience. pMoving on to a new paragraph
FICTION: Pilcrow, By Adam Mars-Jones, Faber & Faber, 525pp. £18.99 ADAM MARS-JONES holds a peculiar place among contemporary English writers, writes John Boyne .
pHall of distorted mirrors
SECOND READING: The Trial, By Franz Kafka 'SOMEONE MUST have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." The opening sentences of Kafka's surreal, symbolist parable set the scene and the tone for a vividly developed nightmare about life in an increasingly inhuman modern society, writes Eileen Battersby.
pLove letters from the past
MEMOIR: He That Is Down Need Fear No Fall, By Bruce Arnold, Ashfield Press, 256pp. €17.99
Bruce Arnold's narrative sense prevents the reader being bamboozled by the pace of events and the succession of women through his father's life, writes John S Doyle . pJust one book can do the trick
TEENAGE FICTION: Once one is finished, the others will follow, writes Niall MacMonagle . pLOOSE LEAVES
Legacy of Bisto shortlisted author Not surprisingly, the late Siobhan Dowd's The London Eye Mystery was this week shortlisted for the 18th Bisto Book of the Year Awards, writes Caroline Walsh . pA global frenzy of felony
CRIME: McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers, By Misha Glenny, The Bodley Head, 426pp. £20
Gangs throughout the world are interacting in a nexus of crime, politics and money, labelled the McMafia, writes Conor O'Clery . pExamining Croatia's troubled birth
HISTORY: Croatia Through History: The Making of a European State, By Branka Magasv Saqi, 743pp. £45 THE RECENTLY deceased great American anthropologist Clifford Geertz commented once that it is only in a country unfamiliar emotionally and topographically that one needs poems and road maps, writes Sinisva Malevsevic pPAPERBACKS
A selection of paperbacks reviewed p
Sex and the city centre
TV REVIEW: Bittersweet RTÉ1, Sunday, Marry Me RTÉ1, Monday Diary of a Model TV3, Tuesday The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, BBC1, Sunday pMedium wave of nostalgia
RADIO REVIEW: ALTHOUGH I had been looking forward to it all week, I almost missed it. With the four-day bank holiday weekend, Monday becomes Sunday. Sunday is like Saturday, Saturday turns into Friday, Friday doesn't know what it is. Thursday is like . . . Actually, Thursday pretty much stays as Thursday, writes Quentin Fottrell .
p'It's the old familiar story. A stage with a pole on it. A man so mashed he thinks he can climb. Two Czech girls with slipped discs'
You know it's a good stag when even the groom's leg gets plastered. But exactly when do we tell the poor goy the truth?, asks Ross O'Carroll-Kelly . p
