Manchester University Press

The Irish writer, Deirdre Madden, has written key novels about the Northern Irish Troubles and about contemporary Ireland. In these works, she weighs up the aftermath of violence and the impact of the shift to a more open but materialist society in the country overall. Memory, trauma, and the abiding but elusive links between the past and the present are central concerns of her fiction. This pioneering set of essays by leading experts in Irish Studies explores the many dimensions of her novels from a wide variety of perspectives. Madden's skill at interweaving novels of ideas with artist novels that draw out the complex inner predicaments of her characters is highlighted. States of dislocation are concentrated on in her texts, but also the quest for a home in the world and a lasting set of values that allows for personal integrity and authenticity. These multifaceted explorations bear out the compelling and enduring aspects of Madden's highly regarded novels.

Reviews

'The essays gathered in this exemplary and fascinating collection analyse... many... themes woven through Deirdre Madden's work.'
The Irish Times

Preface: Deirdre Madden: a jagged symmetry - Frank McGuinness
Introduction - Anne Fogarty and Marisol Morales-Ladrón

Part I: Memory, trauma, and the Troubles
1 'Images . at the absolute edge of memory': memory and temporality in Hidden Symptoms, One by One in the Darkness, and Time Present and Time Past - Stefanie Lehner
2 'The horror of little details': remembering the Troubles in Hidden Symptoms and One by One in the Darkness - Elisabeth Chase
3 Journeying through loss: transcendence and healing in Deirdre Madden's Hidden Symptoms - Catriona Clutterbuck
4 Class and multiplicity in One by One in the Darkness - Brian Cliff

Part II: Art and objects
5 Objects in Deirdre Madden's artist novels - Sylvie Mikowski
6 Ageing and identity in Deirdre Madden's Authenticity - Heather Ingman
7 Sensing one's way forward: psychological aspects of creativity in Deirdre Madden's Authenticity - Hedwig Schwall
8 'What can we do, what does art do?': ethics and aesthetics in Deirdre Madden's Hidden Symptoms, One by One in the Darkness and Molly Fox's Birthday - Teresa Casal
9 Looking at animals and objects in Deirdre Madden's children's books and some adult fiction - Julie Anne Stevens

Part III: Home and place
10 Nothing is Black: the early Celtic Tiger and Europe - Jerry White
11 Imaginaries of home in Deirdre Madden's fiction - Elke D'hoker
12 The architectural uncanny: family secrets and the Gothic in The Birds of the Innocent Wood and Remembering Light and Stone - Anne Fogarty
13 Living lives: Deirdre Madden's Authenticity, Molly Fox's Birthday, Time Present and Time Past and the Irish Celtic Tiger novel - Derek Hand
14 In conversation with Deirdre Madden - Marisol Morales-Ladrón

Index

Editors

Anne Fogarty is Professor of James Joyce Studies at University College Dublin
Marisol Morales-Ladrón is Professor of English and Irish literature at the University of Alcalá