Martina Evans: Now We Can Talk Openly About Men
£9.99
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N.B. As one of our Litfest 2022 titles this book is being offered at £2 off the Publisher’s RRP until 31st March 2022.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Irish Times Poetry Now Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Pigott Poetry Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Roehampton Poetry Prize
Featured in the TLS & Irish Times Books of the Year 2018
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Description
Synopsis: Now We Can Talk Openly About Men is made up of dramatic monologues, in two parts, the first at the time of the Irish War of Independence, the second at the time of the Civil War. Martina Evans uses two distinct narrative voices. First comes Mrs Kathleen (Kitty) Donovan, a dressmaker who is given to taking laudanum. She is followed by Miss Babe Cronin, a stenographer who has fallen in love with a young revolutionary.
The speaking, musing, narrating voices create a dream-like compulsion, a sense in retrospect of inevitability, as the two older women talk of how the young women they were are pulled into events which lead to betrayal. The older women have left illusions behind. Standing back, they see the humour in what has happened, even as they remember the passion, vertigo and terror of the lived moments. The use of intense, almost psychedelic colour in the first half of the book contrasts with the flattened, monochrome language of the second half, which takes place in the shadow of the Civil War.
This is a book of vivid contrasts: age and youth, women and men, the Irish and the English: complementary stories of balance, imbalance, and transition. – Poetry Books
Author: Martina Evans
Title: Now We Can Talk Openly About Men
Publisher: Carcanet
ISBN: 9781784105785
Original Publication Date: 2018
This Edition Published: 2018
Binding: Paperback
