Bernard MacLaverty: New Critical Readings [Hardcover]

The author of such works asLamb, Cal,andGrace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty is one of Northern Ireland's leadingand most prolificcontemporary writers. Bringing together leading scholars from a full range of critical perspectives, this is a comprehensive survey of contemporary scholarship on MacLaverty. Covering all of his novels and many of his short stories, the book explores the ways in which the author has grappled with such themes as The Troubles, the Holocaust, Catholicism, and music.Bernard MacLaverty: Critical Readingsalso includes coverage of the film adaptations of his work.

Richard Rankin Russellis Professor of English at Baylor University, USA. His previous publications includePoetry and Peace: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, and Northern Ireland(2010) andMartin McDonagh: A Casebook (2007).

Rankin Russells Parabolic Plots in Bernard MacLavertysLamb (pp. 2744) repurposes and explores the parables of the Good Samaritan and the lost sheep. Previous criticism onLambhas presented it as a critique of religion and Catholicism. Rankin Russell offers an alternative approach, suggesting that it is Lambs misreading and neglect of illustrative parables that leads to his degeneration. As such, Rankin Russell suggests thatLamb, and MacLavertys fiction more broadly, has an ethical imperativedemanding that readers take moral responsibility for their actions and development. - Hannah Sheed,Year's Work in English Studies

Foreword, Glenn Patterson \ Introduction, Richard Rankin Russell \ 1. Made-Up Truths': Themes,Tropes, and Narrative Technique in Bernard MacLaverty's Early Short Stories, Michael Parker \ 2. Parabolic Plots in MacLaverty'sLamb, Richard Rankin Russell \ 3. Join us': Musical Style and Identity in My Dear Palestrina,' Gerry Smyth \ 4. That orange and green dilemma': Violence and the Traumatised Subject in Bernard MacLaverty's Screenplays ofCal£ž