No News at Throat Lake : In Search of Ireland

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as it sounds
Review: In an attempt to escape the artificial and crazy life of modern life for a more simple way of living, Lawrence Donegan moves from Glasgow, Scotland to Creeslough, Ireland, a small rural community. The book details the year he spent living there, working for the small community newspaper and playing for the local Gaelic football team. Though it sounds like this might be an amusing book about a fish out of water, about a big-city guy adapting to small-town life, it's not really as amusing as it sounds. The author adjusts to his new life and learns the ways of small-town life. Period. And it's not really that entertaining or amusing. There's some funny anecdotes here and there, but not as many as you'd think, and it ultimately took me quite awhile to get through this book.

Rating:
Summary: Goods News for Lawrence Donegan
Review: Rural Ireland has never been funnier! This is a gem. Donegan captures Irish country life and the quirky Irish themselves. It's not a book that says, "READ ME," but you'll be awfully glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: Goods News for Lawrence Donegan
Review: Rural Ireland has never been funnier! This is a gem. Donegan captures Irish country life and the quirky Irish themselves. It's not a book that says, "READ ME," but you'll be awfully glad you did.

Rating:
Summary: a man who can laugh at himself
Review: This is a fun, enjoyable book. Donegan is a self effacing man, but one who has an an ecclectic, and noteworthy series of achievements for a young man -- rock musician, golf writer, and journalist for a internationally known newspaper. Having visited Donegal and been charmed, he decides to abandon his mainstream life in Britain and embrace bucolic rural Ireland.

Of Irish extraction, in typical Irish fashion, he mocks his own inadequacies and pitfalls. As his Irish period proceeds, he recognizes his naiviete in assuming that he would be embraced by and acclimate to Donegal society. He is such a likeable guy that you can't help smiling while reading of his daily struggle to make friends and to be seen as professionally credible. His descriptions of striving to make the team in Irish football are hysterical and endearing -- you both admire his persistence and his brutal honesty in sharing his mediocre performance. After a long period during which he is beginning to break into the local culture he recognizes that he is lonely -- not only for a companion, but also for the life he sought to escape.

Great descriptions of the laconic, iconoclastic locals. Having myself lived in a rural area where we only began to be accepted by the locals after seven years, I could identify with Donegan. However, he is kind spirited and not resentful -- he recognizes and appreciates the cohesiveness of Donegal society. Good stuff, with a solid underlying message.