It would be easy to imagine a book with a title like the one this has, would be a dry and dull academic volume. It is anything but. The book does cover ‘2500 years of Irish history through the lives of some fifty people’, the author succeed in his stated goal of sharing this history as ‘a collection of stories that one might share across a kitchen table about people we once knew.’ The people in the stores range from characters in Irish mythology, to leaders in Ireland’s fight for independence, to the lead singer of the Irish rock group U2, Bono.
This was a very fast read, as each of the stories typically ran just a few pages, so it was always easy to keep on reading late and night and agree with myself to stop for the night after ‘just one more’. And by the end I was left feeling exactly as Malachy intended, as if I had spent a very late night, listening to him tell these stories across a kitchen table. This was a great read and one I’d recommend to anyone wo is interested in Irish history.