Sep. 15th, 2015 10:57 am
Mo dhóthain le léamh agam
I just counted up the chapter subsections in Dialann deoraí and found that I've read nine out of eighty-eight. So keeping with my original plan of reading one on each leg of my daily commute, it will take me until the end of October to read them all. Hopefully I'll be able to knock off some bigger chunks on weekends and I'll be reading at a faster rate as I near the end. What gives me hope is that, like most authors, Mac Amhlaigh has a lot of consecrated phrases he falls back on frequently. Some of these were baffling to me at first (I don't think I've ever seen a dhath [lit. "its colour"] used to mean "nothing" before), but now I only need to pause and recall them. Hopefully I'll soon be passing over them without a second thought.
Another thing which helps is that the setting could not be more straightforward: Ordinary Irish bloke goes to England to find work in the 50s. This avoids one of the issues I've been having with Ó Flaitheartaigh's short stories, which is that each one concerns a different set of actors (sometimes none of them human) in a different context. Combine that with his somewhat laconic descriptions and it can be a struggle sometimes to determine just what the hell is going on. The downside, of course, is that unless your man has some hella interesting stories to tell from his various building sites and what-not, I might be getting bored sooner rather than later.
Another thing which helps is that the setting could not be more straightforward: Ordinary Irish bloke goes to England to find work in the 50s. This avoids one of the issues I've been having with Ó Flaitheartaigh's short stories, which is that each one concerns a different set of actors (sometimes none of them human) in a different context. Combine that with his somewhat laconic descriptions and it can be a struggle sometimes to determine just what the hell is going on. The downside, of course, is that unless your man has some hella interesting stories to tell from his various building sites and what-not, I might be getting bored sooner rather than later.