Joseph O'Neill.
By Irish Echo Staff
Award-winning novelist Joseph O’Neill returns to the Irish Arts Center to read from his latest novel “The Dog” on Wednesday, Dec. 2, at 7:30 p.m. Afterwards, Kevin Holohan, author of a critically acclaimed first novel “The Brothers’ Lot,” will join O’Neill for a conversation about books, literature and writing.
“I am really looking forward to meeting Joseph O'Neill,” Holohan, a native of Dublin, told the Echo. “I very much enjoyed ‘Netherland,’ which was a completely immersive experience and so carefully observed and constructed that I felt I had lived through the world of the book.
“‘The Dog,’ though a very different kind of book, is the product of the same ability to create a voice and weave a world that works on its own terms yet reflects ourselves back at us as we read, a challenging and thoroughly satisfying reading experience.”
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The Cork-born O’Neill is best known for “Netherland,” which won the 2009 PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Kerry Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Asked in a 2009 Newsweek interview about what he was reading for pleasure, President Obama said “Netherland,” which he described as “fascinating” and “wonderful.”
And Holohan, who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son, said about his own writing when asked: “I am still trying to wrangle the second novel into shape while taking the time to nurture the short stories that insist on jotting themselves down in the margins while I am otherwise engaged.”
Tickets are $12 for the general public, $10 for IAC members. Call the IAC box office at 866-811-4111 or visit the IAC website (irishartscenter.org) to purchase tickets.
