Past glories
Returning to the classics to make sense of the present is a master strategy of modern Irish writing. In Ulysses, James Joyce deploys the template of the Odyssey to cast an epic grandeur on his bumbling Dublin everyman. Patrick Kavanagh's poems about squabbling Monaghan farmers are underwritten by the words of Homer's ghost: "I made the Iliad from such a local row." More recently, the poets of the Northern Troubles have found in Troy a mirror of their own "local row". We think of Seamus Heaney's ominous Mycenae Lookout, or Michael Longley's hopeful Ceasefire, written in the wake of the paramilitary cessations of 1994, with its clipped and devastating final couplet spoken by King Priam: "I get down on my knees, and do what must be done/And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son."
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A hint of mermaids
Erin Palmisano's latest novel once again has food and romance at the heart of its well-plotted story.
Execution over innovation
Big and bold ideas are fine, but being the best beats being first.
Something's wrong with all of them
Engaging dissection of the 20th-century novel likely to send the reader in search for the book under discussion.
Cell warfare
A NZ trial using immunotherapy to beat a form of blood cancer is expanding after promising results – and it's hoped the 'gold standard' treatment will soon be widely available.
The virus that stole all the smells
In this edited extract from The Forgotten Sense, Jonas Olofsson traces the rise in anosmia as a result of Covid-19 infections.
When caring is ‘woke'
Some years ago, I sat in a small plane circling over Punta del Este in Uruguay. There was a delay and we sat in tense silence until we began our descent. Outside the tiny airport, a taxi ferried us past private Lear jets; these had been the cause of the hold-up. The driver pointed to two planes side by side. \"This one is a Trump plane.\"
Getting along swimmingly
The presenters of Endangered Species Aotearoa spend a fair bit of time on and in the water in the second season.
That clingy feeling
Our pets display the same types of attachment behaviours as we do, or so it seems.
The famous furred
A peaceful little spot in LA is the final resting place for the pets of some of Hollywood's biggest names.
Gone girl
She wandered in on Thursday morning looking very wan, and climbed into her bed. I sat on the edge and stroked her back.
