Ireland Unhinged Tpb (FS)

"When David Monagan upped sticks and moved his family from rural Connecticut to Cork City in 2000, he landed in the middle of a boom, a bubble of success that was to infect them all. The reality of a prosperous Ireland, with all its excesses and its absurdities, put paid to the comfortable myths he had built up. But David felt he was lacking something, and so went in search of the lost soul of modern Ireland. Of course, he little expected the Celtic Tiger to go and die on him in the middle of his search Undaunted, David travelled the length and breadth of the country, and Ireland Unhinged recounts his remarkable encounters with Irish literary legends such as JP Donleavy, Pat McCabe and Seamus Heaney, as well as a Donegal witch, a peace-mongering Belfast monk and numerous other colourful characters. Running through the narrative is a yearning for attachment, something that David finally finds in an isolated cottage in a rural idyll, the Blackwater Valley in County Waterford. Finally, he has come home. Ireland Unhinged is both a humorous and evocative memoir of a family abroad, and an unflinching portrayal of Ireland today. Praise for David Monagan s Jaywalking with the Irish-