Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Small but good, 04 Oct 2003
Small one, cheap one. There are a couple of Irish authors in a series on sale at the moment in Australia. I chose this one as it offered to be about the time the main character went to Germany to see their national football (soccer for Americans and Australians) team. The book is the story told by the main person to his son, years later. His son being born in Hamburg, with a German mother. He knew he was about to become a father, the day the Irish had to play the Dutch, for a place in the semi-final. It is more the story of three friends growing up than about the sport itself. Quick read, the poems added in the book, to give it a bit more volume are superfluous in my opinion, but hey, who am I?

Dermot Bolger's Temptation is the kind of powerfully involving novel that comes along rarely and has as its central focus a family encountering an emotionally turbulent time on an annual holiday in a hotel on the beautiful Southeast coast of Ireland. Bolger's heroine, Alison Gill, is the mother of three children taking a much-anticipated annual family holiday at Fitzgeralds' Hotel, one of the most celebrated in Ireland. All is idyllic, but Alison is thrown into confused memories of the past when her husband is forced by a work crisis to return to Dublin and she encounters the attractive, disturbing Chris. He's a lover from 20 years ago, and soon Alison is forced to confront the choices she has made in her life. Is what she considered to be happiness really what she wanted? And if she gives in again to the sexual passion of her youth, will she find her real self--or destroy all that she has carefully built up?

The canny reader will soon spot the presence of one of the finest writers in the English language as an inspiration for Bolger's highly assured novel. The Irish setting; a middle aged woman dangerously attracted to a man who may be very bad news for her; the astonishingly sympathetic understanding of a female protagonist by a male writer: all of these are the hallmarks of the great William Trevor. But if the latter is an influence, Bolger is still very much his own man. This is an immensely understanding and perceptive novel, with all the characters richly and quirkily characterised. His pièce de résistance, though, is his heroine: Alison is that rarity in modern fiction: a woman about whom the reader is allowed to frequently change their opinion. We are alternately moved or irritated by her, but always we are firmly locked in her consciousness.

The writing, too, has an elegance that always ensures a rich experience for the reader, and reminds us that the author has edited The New Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction:

She could never have understood back then how there might be other kinds of loneliness when living inside a family...now at times their lovemaking felt like a habit without need of speech, an instinctive curling into safe, comfortable positions, his arms routinely around her as they slipped towards shared sleep.

--Barry ForshawThis is the kind of powerfully involving novel that comes along only rarely. Dermot Bolger's Temptation has as its central focus a family encountering an emotionally turbulent time on an annual holiday in a hotel on the beautiful Southeast coast of Ireland. Bolger's heroine, Alison Gill, is the mother of three children taking a much-anticipated annual family holiday at Fitzgeralds' Hotel, one of the most celebrated in Ireland. All seems idyllic until Alison is thrown into confused memories of the past when her husband is forced by a work crisis to return to Dublin and she encounters the attractive, disturbing Chris. He's a lover from 20 years ago, and soon Alison is forced to confront the choices she has made in her life. Is what she considered to be happiness really what she wanted? And if she gives in again to the sexual passion of her youth, will she find her real self--or destroy all that she has carefully built up? The canny reader will soon spot the presence of one of the finest writers in the English language as an inspiration for Bolger's highly assured novel. The Irish setting; a middle-aged woman dangerously attracted to a man who may be very bad news for her; the astonishingly sympathetic understanding of a female protagonist by a male writer: all of these are the hallmarks of the great William Trevor. But if the latter is an influence, Bolger is still very much his own man.

This is an immensely understanding and perceptive novel, with all the characters richly and quirkily characterised. His pièce de résistance, though, is his heroine: Alison is that rarity in modern fiction: a woman about whom the reader is allowed to frequently change their opinion. We are alternately moved or irritated by her, but always we are firmly locked in her consciousness. The writing, too, has an elegance that always ensures a rich experience for the reader and reminds us that the author has edited The New Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction

: She could never have understood back then how there might be other kinds of loneliness when living inside a family ... now at times their lovemaking felt like a habit without need of speech, an instinctive curling into safe, comfortable positions, his arms routinely around her as they slipped towards shared sleep.

--Barry Forshaw

Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Small but good, 04 Oct 2003
Small one, cheap one. There are a couple of Irish authors in a series on sale at the moment in Australia. I chose this one as it offered to be about the time the main character went to Germany to see their national football (soccer for Americans and Australians) team. The book is the story told by the main person to his son, years later. His son being born in Hamburg, with a German mother. He knew he was about to become a father, the day the Irish had to play the Dutch, for a place in the semi-final. It is more the story of three friends growing up than about the sport itself. Quick read, the poems added in the book, to give it a bit more volume are superfluous in my opinion, but hey, who am I?

Brilliant!, 16 Sep 2002
I read Father's Music as my first Bolger book and enjoyed it very much but Temptation far outstrips it in terms of enjoyment. What a fantastically tantalising read it is. You ached for each character in turn and felt so much part of the whole scene. You could smell the sea and feel the terror of Alison when her child was ill, the despair of her ex boy friend in his loss and loneliness, the concern of Peadar, the hurt of them all, the embarrassment, the confusion -I can't remember when I enjoyed a book more. Long live Bolger!

Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Small but good, 04 Oct 2003
Small one, cheap one. There are a couple of Irish authors in a series on sale at the moment in Australia. I chose this one as it offered to be about the time the main character went to Germany to see their national football (soccer for Americans and Australians) team. The book is the story told by the main person to his son, years later. His son being born in Hamburg, with a German mother. He knew he was about to become a father, the day the Irish had to play the Dutch, for a place in the semi-final. It is more the story of three friends growing up than about the sport itself. Quick read, the poems added in the book, to give it a bit more volume are superfluous in my opinion, but hey, who am I?

Brilliant!, 16 Sep 2002
I read Father's Music as my first Bolger book and enjoyed it very much but Temptation far outstrips it in terms of enjoyment. What a fantastically tantalising read it is. You ached for each character in turn and felt so much part of the whole scene. You could smell the sea and feel the terror of Alison when her child was ill, the despair of her ex boy friend in his loss and loneliness, the concern of Peadar, the hurt of them all, the embarrassment, the confusion -I can't remember when I enjoyed a book more. Long live Bolger!

Longing for love and lost memories in an old Dublin hotel., 30 Dec 2003
It's not exactly Dublin's first address, the old Finbar's Hotel on Victoria Quay, overlooking the River Liffey and opposite the palazzo structure of Heuston (erstwhile Kingsbridge) Railway Station - but it's a place with both character and history: It has survived a fire, among its guests over the years have been some of society's more colorful personalities, its back rooms used to be infamous for their use as a secret gathering place for everyone from politicians, gardai (policemen), members of the clergy and prostitutes, and it has that particular run-down and dubious charm of a place which has seen better days once upon a time. And now it is going to be torn down, to be replaced by a modern structure by the propety's new owner. But before the staff leaves, before night manager Johnny Farrell, whose family has served the hotel's owners since the place was opened in the 1920s by old Finbar and Johnny's grandfather, James "the Count" Farrell, goes off to open a bead and breakfast in the suburbs with his wife, and before the hotel's one true human institution, Simon the porter, checks into a hospital to nurse his cancer, a group of unusual guests assembles one last time, for one of the old hotel's very last nights.

Ben Winters, the guest staying in Room 101, is arguably not the most colorful character - far from that, actually, he is a subdued, timid middle-aged gentleman who for one night has escaped the dull routine of his suburban middle class routine and is looking for a taste of city life, without even really knowing what to do with himself when he is not watching TV. ("Benny Does Dublin.")

Rose and Ivy, the sisters who share Room 102, have come together to work out past difficulties that have been haunting them ever since Rose suddenly left their Galway family home many years earlier. ("White Lies.")

Ken Brogan, the guest in Room 103, firmly believes that he can get every lady's confidence if only he wants - unfortunately, he's just had a very bad row with his girlfriend, and now he is out for revenge, and he thinks he has found the perfect object for that revenge in her cat Moggi. ("No Pets Please.")

Night manager Johnny Farrell and Simon the porter have a final encounter with the last descendant of old Finbar, Alfie FitzSimons, a cheap lowlife who used to harass Johnny when they were children, and who has returned to stay in the hotel's Room 104 for one last time; only to find that his hold over Johnny has finally worn off. ("The Night Manager.")

Maureen Connolly has recently learned that she probably has no more than another year to live, and has since made it a habit to leave her family life behind whenever she has to a doctor's appointment in the city (and sometimes, also when she doesn't have an appointment). Freed from her daily bounds and from the bounds of accountability, she then assumes made-up identities on the spot and embarks on a new adventure whenever she takes off - this time, with American tour guide Ray Dempsey in Room 105 of Finbar's Hotel. ("The Test.")

May Brannock Americanized her name when leaving Dublin for the U.S., but after having moved around in the States and finally left her last boyfriend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has now returned to the place which her father, a firefighter, once helped to save from the flames - and while she is staying in the hotel's Room 106, she is trying to rekindle the connection with her childhood friend Kevin. ("An Old Flame.")

And last but not least, the art thief staying in Room 107 in anticipation of his meeting with two Dutchmen who have come to Dublin to buy his latest loot, grows restless and begins to stalk the hotel's corridors and other guest rooms, thinking that he may have been followed by someone he doesn't know and cannot trust. ("Portrait of a Lady.")

"Finbar's Hotel" is a collection of short stories written by seven Irish writers: Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Hugo Hamilton and Dermot Bolger (who also served as the book's editor); and while the stories are loosely connected by taking up each other's motifs and personalities here and there, and all together tell the story of the old Finbar's Hotel, its staff and its last guests, each story also stands on its own and presents its own world and cast of characters. The book thus provides great samples of the writing of some of Ireland's preeminent authors; be warned, however, that the authors chose not to reveal who wrote which installment; so ultimately you're left with the choice of either leaving the mystery of authorship unsolved, or relying on your prior knowledge of their style, or on what you have heard about them otherwise, to deduce the individual chapters' authors. The project was successful enough to spark two successor volumes; "Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel," which finds the hotel reopened in new splendor with a new set of unusual guests (written by seven of Ireland's best-known female writers and also edited by Dermot Bolger) and "Yeats Is Dead!", a hilarious spoof on the mystery genre, unlike the two "Finbar's Hotel" volumes pretending to follow a continuous storyline (actually, it's more like a very wild zigzag course) and reuniting some of the participants of this first "Finbar's Hotel" collection with Frank McCourt and a number of other popular Irish writers. Given their diverse authorship, all three volumes necessarily share a somewhat uneven quality, and not every reader will like every chapter equally well - but overall this is a very enjoyable collection, and if you are unfamiliar with contemporary Irish literature, this is as good a starting point as any.

Uneven hotel saga, 01 Feb 2003
Within any collection of short stories there are always weak and strong pieces and very rarely have the complete feel that a novel has. Bolger's idea was to make one long story by interconnecting short pieces by different Irish writers on the same thing (a formula that has been repeated with Yeats Is Dead). Unfortunately, Bolger and the other FH contributors never quite succeed in a flowing collage of stories.
Some of the short stories have wildly different tones from the cat kidnap farce of room 103 to the sad memories of room 106 and instead of creating a wider canvas for exploring contrasting styles in one book the lack of real interplay between the stories means that the collection doesn't build up any sense of momentum remaining higgledy-piggledy. As a reader will always be more attracted to one type of style and tone than another the mixed-bag style of FH means that although some stories will be spot on for people there will always be some that don't.
Where one story overlaps another it has little to do with the core plot and, in some places, feels almost too convenient and superficial. A real Shakespearean interplay between plot strands would have made the book much more enjoyable and consistent but would in all probability be impossible to write using more than one author.
FH is amusing, touching and sad in places and the stories for the most part stand up well in their own right. Regrettably a collection of short stories by different people writing on the same subject in an overlapping style can never have the cohesion that a collection written by the same person could have and it is in this respect that FH really lets the reader down. This is very good effort of an unworkable plan and probably best to read as nine unrelated stories than think about their connections.

Fun Intro to Mod Irish Writers, 29 Nov 2001
In the tradition (but not awful quality) of the movie Four Rooms, editor Bolger brings together six of Ireland's top authors to each tell the tale of one room and the circumstances which bring its occupant there. He's managed to solicit a nice set of loosely related short stories although I didn't find "Room 102-White Lies" or "Room 106-An Old Flame" quite as compelling as the others. Once of the nice little twists is that the reader doesn't know which author wrote which story, and not being an expert on those represented, I'd hesitate to hazard any guesses. This is about as good an introduction as any to the six modern Irish writers represented: Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors), Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians, The Salesman), and Colm Toibin.

Diverting, but didn't add up to a satisfying novel, 31 May 1999
The South Croydon reading circle chose this for their April 99 read. The concept of seven authors picking up the thread of a novel and continuing it really appealed to us. However, when we read it we felt that no one had really taken advantage of it. The links between the chapters were tenuous - they could easily have been seven unconnected short stories. There were, however, some good laughs along the way, and one or two touching moments. A disappointment, but not a disaster.

Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Small but good, 04 Oct 2003
Small one, cheap one. There are a couple of Irish authors in a series on sale at the moment in Australia. I chose this one as it offered to be about the time the main character went to Germany to see their national football (soccer for Americans and Australians) team. The book is the story told by the main person to his son, years later. His son being born in Hamburg, with a German mother. He knew he was about to become a father, the day the Irish had to play the Dutch, for a place in the semi-final. It is more the story of three friends growing up than about the sport itself. Quick read, the poems added in the book, to give it a bit more volume are superfluous in my opinion, but hey, who am I?

Brilliant!, 16 Sep 2002
I read Father's Music as my first Bolger book and enjoyed it very much but Temptation far outstrips it in terms of enjoyment. What a fantastically tantalising read it is. You ached for each character in turn and felt so much part of the whole scene. You could smell the sea and feel the terror of Alison when her child was ill, the despair of her ex boy friend in his loss and loneliness, the concern of Peadar, the hurt of them all, the embarrassment, the confusion -I can't remember when I enjoyed a book more. Long live Bolger!

Longing for love and lost memories in an old Dublin hotel., 30 Dec 2003
It's not exactly Dublin's first address, the old Finbar's Hotel on Victoria Quay, overlooking the River Liffey and opposite the palazzo structure of Heuston (erstwhile Kingsbridge) Railway Station - but it's a place with both character and history: It has survived a fire, among its guests over the years have been some of society's more colorful personalities, its back rooms used to be infamous for their use as a secret gathering place for everyone from politicians, gardai (policemen), members of the clergy and prostitutes, and it has that particular run-down and dubious charm of a place which has seen better days once upon a time. And now it is going to be torn down, to be replaced by a modern structure by the propety's new owner. But before the staff leaves, before night manager Johnny Farrell, whose family has served the hotel's owners since the place was opened in the 1920s by old Finbar and Johnny's grandfather, James "the Count" Farrell, goes off to open a bead and breakfast in the suburbs with his wife, and before the hotel's one true human institution, Simon the porter, checks into a hospital to nurse his cancer, a group of unusual guests assembles one last time, for one of the old hotel's very last nights.

Ben Winters, the guest staying in Room 101, is arguably not the most colorful character - far from that, actually, he is a subdued, timid middle-aged gentleman who for one night has escaped the dull routine of his suburban middle class routine and is looking for a taste of city life, without even really knowing what to do with himself when he is not watching TV. ("Benny Does Dublin.")

Rose and Ivy, the sisters who share Room 102, have come together to work out past difficulties that have been haunting them ever since Rose suddenly left their Galway family home many years earlier. ("White Lies.")

Ken Brogan, the guest in Room 103, firmly believes that he can get every lady's confidence if only he wants - unfortunately, he's just had a very bad row with his girlfriend, and now he is out for revenge, and he thinks he has found the perfect object for that revenge in her cat Moggi. ("No Pets Please.")

Night manager Johnny Farrell and Simon the porter have a final encounter with the last descendant of old Finbar, Alfie FitzSimons, a cheap lowlife who used to harass Johnny when they were children, and who has returned to stay in the hotel's Room 104 for one last time; only to find that his hold over Johnny has finally worn off. ("The Night Manager.")

Maureen Connolly has recently learned that she probably has no more than another year to live, and has since made it a habit to leave her family life behind whenever she has to a doctor's appointment in the city (and sometimes, also when she doesn't have an appointment). Freed from her daily bounds and from the bounds of accountability, she then assumes made-up identities on the spot and embarks on a new adventure whenever she takes off - this time, with American tour guide Ray Dempsey in Room 105 of Finbar's Hotel. ("The Test.")

May Brannock Americanized her name when leaving Dublin for the U.S., but after having moved around in the States and finally left her last boyfriend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has now returned to the place which her father, a firefighter, once helped to save from the flames - and while she is staying in the hotel's Room 106, she is trying to rekindle the connection with her childhood friend Kevin. ("An Old Flame.")

And last but not least, the art thief staying in Room 107 in anticipation of his meeting with two Dutchmen who have come to Dublin to buy his latest loot, grows restless and begins to stalk the hotel's corridors and other guest rooms, thinking that he may have been followed by someone he doesn't know and cannot trust. ("Portrait of a Lady.")

"Finbar's Hotel" is a collection of short stories written by seven Irish writers: Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Hugo Hamilton and Dermot Bolger (who also served as the book's editor); and while the stories are loosely connected by taking up each other's motifs and personalities here and there, and all together tell the story of the old Finbar's Hotel, its staff and its last guests, each story also stands on its own and presents its own world and cast of characters. The book thus provides great samples of the writing of some of Ireland's preeminent authors; be warned, however, that the authors chose not to reveal who wrote which installment; so ultimately you're left with the choice of either leaving the mystery of authorship unsolved, or relying on your prior knowledge of their style, or on what you have heard about them otherwise, to deduce the individual chapters' authors. The project was successful enough to spark two successor volumes; "Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel," which finds the hotel reopened in new splendor with a new set of unusual guests (written by seven of Ireland's best-known female writers and also edited by Dermot Bolger) and "Yeats Is Dead!", a hilarious spoof on the mystery genre, unlike the two "Finbar's Hotel" volumes pretending to follow a continuous storyline (actually, it's more like a very wild zigzag course) and reuniting some of the participants of this first "Finbar's Hotel" collection with Frank McCourt and a number of other popular Irish writers. Given their diverse authorship, all three volumes necessarily share a somewhat uneven quality, and not every reader will like every chapter equally well - but overall this is a very enjoyable collection, and if you are unfamiliar with contemporary Irish literature, this is as good a starting point as any.

Uneven hotel saga, 01 Feb 2003
Within any collection of short stories there are always weak and strong pieces and very rarely have the complete feel that a novel has. Bolger's idea was to make one long story by interconnecting short pieces by different Irish writers on the same thing (a formula that has been repeated with Yeats Is Dead). Unfortunately, Bolger and the other FH contributors never quite succeed in a flowing collage of stories.
Some of the short stories have wildly different tones from the cat kidnap farce of room 103 to the sad memories of room 106 and instead of creating a wider canvas for exploring contrasting styles in one book the lack of real interplay between the stories means that the collection doesn't build up any sense of momentum remaining higgledy-piggledy. As a reader will always be more attracted to one type of style and tone than another the mixed-bag style of FH means that although some stories will be spot on for people there will always be some that don't.
Where one story overlaps another it has little to do with the core plot and, in some places, feels almost too convenient and superficial. A real Shakespearean interplay between plot strands would have made the book much more enjoyable and consistent but would in all probability be impossible to write using more than one author.
FH is amusing, touching and sad in places and the stories for the most part stand up well in their own right. Regrettably a collection of short stories by different people writing on the same subject in an overlapping style can never have the cohesion that a collection written by the same person could have and it is in this respect that FH really lets the reader down. This is very good effort of an unworkable plan and probably best to read as nine unrelated stories than think about their connections.

Fun Intro to Mod Irish Writers, 29 Nov 2001
In the tradition (but not awful quality) of the movie Four Rooms, editor Bolger brings together six of Ireland's top authors to each tell the tale of one room and the circumstances which bring its occupant there. He's managed to solicit a nice set of loosely related short stories although I didn't find "Room 102-White Lies" or "Room 106-An Old Flame" quite as compelling as the others. Once of the nice little twists is that the reader doesn't know which author wrote which story, and not being an expert on those represented, I'd hesitate to hazard any guesses. This is about as good an introduction as any to the six modern Irish writers represented: Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors), Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians, The Salesman), and Colm Toibin.

Diverting, but didn't add up to a satisfying novel, 31 May 1999
The South Croydon reading circle chose this for their April 99 read. The concept of seven authors picking up the thread of a novel and continuing it really appealed to us. However, when we read it we felt that no one had really taken advantage of it. The links between the chapters were tenuous - they could easily have been seven unconnected short stories. There were, however, some good laughs along the way, and one or two touching moments. A disappointment, but not a disaster.

utterly excellent, 04 Feb 2001
This book must be read a.s.a.p. by anyone who loves what? God, the plot is masterfully crafted, the characters are revealed through a series of some of the most skilful handlings of time I've ever read, it's all credible and yes, as Declan says, it'll bring tears.

WOW!

This book is amazing, 16 Dec 1999
I can't believe that nobody has reviewed this book yet!! To say that this is one of the finest novels to be written in the 90's would be an understatement. I couldn't put this book down when I started to read it and recommend to anybody who enjoys good fiction. The plot has plenty of twists, the writing is wonderfully emotive and I almost cried in places. This is adult fiction at its finest-warm, gritty, heart-warming and shocking. Buy this book and enhance your life!

Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Small but good, 04 Oct 2003
Small one, cheap one. There are a couple of Irish authors in a series on sale at the moment in Australia. I chose this one as it offered to be about the time the main character went to Germany to see their national football (soccer for Americans and Australians) team. The book is the story told by the main person to his son, years later. His son being born in Hamburg, with a German mother. He knew he was about to become a father, the day the Irish had to play the Dutch, for a place in the semi-final. It is more the story of three friends growing up than about the sport itself. Quick read, the poems added in the book, to give it a bit more volume are superfluous in my opinion, but hey, who am I?

Brilliant!, 16 Sep 2002
I read Father's Music as my first Bolger book and enjoyed it very much but Temptation far outstrips it in terms of enjoyment. What a fantastically tantalising read it is. You ached for each character in turn and felt so much part of the whole scene. You could smell the sea and feel the terror of Alison when her child was ill, the despair of her ex boy friend in his loss and loneliness, the concern of Peadar, the hurt of them all, the embarrassment, the confusion -I can't remember when I enjoyed a book more. Long live Bolger!

Longing for love and lost memories in an old Dublin hotel., 30 Dec 2003
It's not exactly Dublin's first address, the old Finbar's Hotel on Victoria Quay, overlooking the River Liffey and opposite the palazzo structure of Heuston (erstwhile Kingsbridge) Railway Station - but it's a place with both character and history: It has survived a fire, among its guests over the years have been some of society's more colorful personalities, its back rooms used to be infamous for their use as a secret gathering place for everyone from politicians, gardai (policemen), members of the clergy and prostitutes, and it has that particular run-down and dubious charm of a place which has seen better days once upon a time. And now it is going to be torn down, to be replaced by a modern structure by the propety's new owner. But before the staff leaves, before night manager Johnny Farrell, whose family has served the hotel's owners since the place was opened in the 1920s by old Finbar and Johnny's grandfather, James "the Count" Farrell, goes off to open a bead and breakfast in the suburbs with his wife, and before the hotel's one true human institution, Simon the porter, checks into a hospital to nurse his cancer, a group of unusual guests assembles one last time, for one of the old hotel's very last nights.

Ben Winters, the guest staying in Room 101, is arguably not the most colorful character - far from that, actually, he is a subdued, timid middle-aged gentleman who for one night has escaped the dull routine of his suburban middle class routine and is looking for a taste of city life, without even really knowing what to do with himself when he is not watching TV. ("Benny Does Dublin.")

Rose and Ivy, the sisters who share Room 102, have come together to work out past difficulties that have been haunting them ever since Rose suddenly left their Galway family home many years earlier. ("White Lies.")

Ken Brogan, the guest in Room 103, firmly believes that he can get every lady's confidence if only he wants - unfortunately, he's just had a very bad row with his girlfriend, and now he is out for revenge, and he thinks he has found the perfect object for that revenge in her cat Moggi. ("No Pets Please.")

Night manager Johnny Farrell and Simon the porter have a final encounter with the last descendant of old Finbar, Alfie FitzSimons, a cheap lowlife who used to harass Johnny when they were children, and who has returned to stay in the hotel's Room 104 for one last time; only to find that his hold over Johnny has finally worn off. ("The Night Manager.")

Maureen Connolly has recently learned that she probably has no more than another year to live, and has since made it a habit to leave her family life behind whenever she has to a doctor's appointment in the city (and sometimes, also when she doesn't have an appointment). Freed from her daily bounds and from the bounds of accountability, she then assumes made-up identities on the spot and embarks on a new adventure whenever she takes off - this time, with American tour guide Ray Dempsey in Room 105 of Finbar's Hotel. ("The Test.")

May Brannock Americanized her name when leaving Dublin for the U.S., but after having moved around in the States and finally left her last boyfriend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has now returned to the place which her father, a firefighter, once helped to save from the flames - and while she is staying in the hotel's Room 106, she is trying to rekindle the connection with her childhood friend Kevin. ("An Old Flame.")

And last but not least, the art thief staying in Room 107 in anticipation of his meeting with two Dutchmen who have come to Dublin to buy his latest loot, grows restless and begins to stalk the hotel's corridors and other guest rooms, thinking that he may have been followed by someone he doesn't know and cannot trust. ("Portrait of a Lady.")

"Finbar's Hotel" is a collection of short stories written by seven Irish writers: Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Hugo Hamilton and Dermot Bolger (who also served as the book's editor); and while the stories are loosely connected by taking up each other's motifs and personalities here and there, and all together tell the story of the old Finbar's Hotel, its staff and its last guests, each story also stands on its own and presents its own world and cast of characters. The book thus provides great samples of the writing of some of Ireland's preeminent authors; be warned, however, that the authors chose not to reveal who wrote which installment; so ultimately you're left with the choice of either leaving the mystery of authorship unsolved, or relying on your prior knowledge of their style, or on what you have heard about them otherwise, to deduce the individual chapters' authors. The project was successful enough to spark two successor volumes; "Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel," which finds the hotel reopened in new splendor with a new set of unusual guests (written by seven of Ireland's best-known female writers and also edited by Dermot Bolger) and "Yeats Is Dead!", a hilarious spoof on the mystery genre, unlike the two "Finbar's Hotel" volumes pretending to follow a continuous storyline (actually, it's more like a very wild zigzag course) and reuniting some of the participants of this first "Finbar's Hotel" collection with Frank McCourt and a number of other popular Irish writers. Given their diverse authorship, all three volumes necessarily share a somewhat uneven quality, and not every reader will like every chapter equally well - but overall this is a very enjoyable collection, and if you are unfamiliar with contemporary Irish literature, this is as good a starting point as any.

Uneven hotel saga, 01 Feb 2003
Within any collection of short stories there are always weak and strong pieces and very rarely have the complete feel that a novel has. Bolger's idea was to make one long story by interconnecting short pieces by different Irish writers on the same thing (a formula that has been repeated with Yeats Is Dead). Unfortunately, Bolger and the other FH contributors never quite succeed in a flowing collage of stories.
Some of the short stories have wildly different tones from the cat kidnap farce of room 103 to the sad memories of room 106 and instead of creating a wider canvas for exploring contrasting styles in one book the lack of real interplay between the stories means that the collection doesn't build up any sense of momentum remaining higgledy-piggledy. As a reader will always be more attracted to one type of style and tone than another the mixed-bag style of FH means that although some stories will be spot on for people there will always be some that don't.
Where one story overlaps another it has little to do with the core plot and, in some places, feels almost too convenient and superficial. A real Shakespearean interplay between plot strands would have made the book much more enjoyable and consistent but would in all probability be impossible to write using more than one author.
FH is amusing, touching and sad in places and the stories for the most part stand up well in their own right. Regrettably a collection of short stories by different people writing on the same subject in an overlapping style can never have the cohesion that a collection written by the same person could have and it is in this respect that FH really lets the reader down. This is very good effort of an unworkable plan and probably best to read as nine unrelated stories than think about their connections.

Fun Intro to Mod Irish Writers, 29 Nov 2001
In the tradition (but not awful quality) of the movie Four Rooms, editor Bolger brings together six of Ireland's top authors to each tell the tale of one room and the circumstances which bring its occupant there. He's managed to solicit a nice set of loosely related short stories although I didn't find "Room 102-White Lies" or "Room 106-An Old Flame" quite as compelling as the others. Once of the nice little twists is that the reader doesn't know which author wrote which story, and not being an expert on those represented, I'd hesitate to hazard any guesses. This is about as good an introduction as any to the six modern Irish writers represented: Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors), Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O'Connor (Cowboys and Indians, The Salesman), and Colm Toibin.

Diverting, but didn't add up to a satisfying novel, 31 May 1999
The South Croydon reading circle chose this for their April 99 read. The concept of seven authors picking up the thread of a novel and continuing it really appealed to us. However, when we read it we felt that no one had really taken advantage of it. The links between the chapters were tenuous - they could easily have been seven unconnected short stories. There were, however, some good laughs along the way, and one or two touching moments. A disappointment, but not a disaster.

utterly excellent, 04 Feb 2001
This book must be read a.s.a.p. by anyone who loves what? God, the plot is masterfully crafted, the characters are revealed through a series of some of the most skilful handlings of time I've ever read, it's all credible and yes, as Declan says, it'll bring tears.

WOW!

This book is amazing, 16 Dec 1999
I can't believe that nobody has reviewed this book yet!! To say that this is one of the finest novels to be written in the 90's would be an understatement. I couldn't put this book down when I started to read it and recommend to anybody who enjoys good fiction. The plot has plenty of twists, the writing is wonderfully emotive and I almost cried in places. This is adult fiction at its finest-warm, gritty, heart-warming and shocking. Buy this book and enhance your life!

Awesome, a modern Irish classic, 18 Apr 2008
I read this back in 1994 (?) when I also has the good fortune to meet Dermot Bolger at the Irish Writer's Museum in Dublin (where I was on holiday, I'm from Sweden).

The novel is today getting a rave review in New York Times Book Review.

It's an amazing story of three young people.
I absolutely love it...


From the back cover...., 15 Jul 2007

IRISH INDEPENDENT: "Hano's initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay's fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity."

IRISH TIMES: "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs ... political corruption, all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

INDEPENDENT: "Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, John McGahern, a fistful of O'Brien's. This is a succulent Who's Who of Irish Writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk ... an exceptional literary gift."

TIME OUT: "Bolger's themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption ... the relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing."



Greatest modern Irish novel?, 05 Sep 2003
I read this many years ago and it had a tremendous effect on me. It's an outstanding novel about the complexity of modern Irish society. Beautifully drawn characters and scenerios, it skims along in an engaging and disturbing way.
Bolger, in my opinion has never topped this epic.
So get on Ryanair and read what is a sadly a very true depiction of the Ireland.
Glad to see that it has finally got the reprint that it fully deserves.

Heart wrenchingly excellent, 13 Aug 2001
This book is quite simply excellent. If you liked A Prayer for Owen Meany you wil love this. Bolger creates characters which take over your soul & demand to be listened to. He intertwines sorrow and joy so tighly that I was never sure whether my tears were from laughing or crying, and by the end of the book I had been though every emotion I thought possible. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.