Charles Simic conjures up this interior cast of characters from a lifetime of crafting poems. These ten populate a single stanza near the end of his most recent book, “New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012.” They’re a scant handful of the roles he and his characters play in this 50-year compendium. The collection samples broadly from more than 13 of his 20-plus poetry volumes. Including memoirs and translations, Simic has published over 60 books.

Putnam, 2010: “Zero History” sees the return of a number of characters from recent Gibson books: Hollis Henry, the Aimee Mann-esque rock star turned writer who is drawn into the world of Hubertus Bigend, a wealthy Dutch marketing magnate and seeker of hidden things. Back also is Milgrim, once a junkie, now a person so clean and new he’s like a Martian on 21st century Earth. All are drawn toward each other by invisible patterns in a post-economic collapse global economy, and spend a great deal of time doing things with their iPhones.

{moszoomthumb imgid=1101 itemid=74 style_m=2}‘The Secret Scripture’ by Sebastian Barry

Poet, playwright and novelist Sebastian Barry continues with the story of the Sligo-born McNultys in his latest novel, “The Secret Scripture.” Barry first introduced the family in his 1999 novel “The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty.” This latest novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and recently came out in paperback, tells the tale of Roseanne Clear with all the poignancy and lyricism we’ve come to expect from the best of Ireland’s writers.

Roseanne resides in the soon-to-be-demolished Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, where all patients are being evaluated to determine whether they need continued institutionalization or can return to society. Approaching her 100th year, Roseanne has been at the hospital longer than the staff or any other patient, and no one seems to remember why she is there. When the assigned psychiatrist Dr. Grene looks back through her records and finds several discrepancies, he sets out to discover her story through his evaluation.

Barry structures the novel between written texts and conversations: Roseanne’s personal memoirs (which she writes and hides beneath her floorboards), Dr. Grene’s written evaluations, and conversations between the two. As their relationship develops, Roseanne’s version of her road to commitment begins to unfold. It began one evening when Father Gaunt, a Catholic priest, is asked to issue last rights to a Protestant boy felled during the Irish Civil War. Roseanne’s Protestant father Joseph Clear is the cemetery caretaker and is asked against protocol to bury the man. 

When it’s later discovered that the grave contains guns and not the body of Willie Lavelle, Joseph is suspected of sympathizing with the Irish resistance. This leads to his brutal murder, which the 12-year-old Roseanne witnesses. Father Gaunt becomes a continued presence in her life, subsequently trying to force Roseanne into marrying the Protestant grave keeper who took her father’s position. When she refuses, Gaunt does not disappear and instead interferes in her later marriage to Tom McNulty—a union frowned upon by both McNulty’s parents and the priest himself. 

‘Brooklyn’
by Colm Tóibín
262 pages, 2009 Scribner
 
and

‘Let the Great World Spin’
by Colum McCann
350 pages, 2009 Random House

The City that Never Sleeps. Gotham. The Big Apple. The Capital of the World. The Empire City. Whatever you call it, New York is one of the most historically and culturally important cities on the planet. Every year, dozens of movies and television shows and hundreds of books are based in NYC. And while it was beginning to seem like an old hat to use NYC as a setting, two Irish authors have recently written such remarkable novels about a particular time in the city’s history that it seems impossible to doubt that it will ever go out of fashion. Both bring NYC to life not only as a place but as a character itself.

“Brooklyn,” by Colm Tóibín, takes place in the 1950s. It’s the story of Eilis, a young Dubliner who is sent by her family to live in America. Brooklyn, specifically. Across the ocean is the promise of work, something scarce in Ireland at the time. Eilis is a no frills, modest young woman, with a head for numbers and a life devoid of the drama and romance seemingly experienced by other girls her age. She loves her simple life at home with her mother and sister and is (inwardly) outraged when it is arranged for her to travel to New York. But Eilis’s family members are proud, stoic people, and so off she silently goes on a harrowing journey across the sea.