Place Too Small for Secrets

The fictional Kerry village of Knockore teems with a cast of characters worthy of Shakespeare: from the pub to the marriage bed and the football field, all human life is here. Through vivid characterisation and an often breathtaking turn of phrase, Paddy Kennelly brings to life the villages wayward youths, its adulterers, chancers and cuckolds, and even a few upstanding citizens. He casts a tender eye on both the heartbreak of loss and the thrill of love and the unforeseen consequences of lust. This tale of the village, told in the voices of its various inhabitants, is comic but unsentimental, and at all times the realities of life in rural Ireland lie just below the surface. In short, A Place Too Small for Secrets is an Irish Under Milk Wood.The poetic monologues are both casual and penetrating, lucid and mysterious. Paddy Kennelly creates a world where people reveal and conceal themselves, sometimes almost in the same breath. The reader becomes an explorer of this revealed-concealed world, and the discoveries are rich and memorable. A unique book.Brendan Kennelly