Parsons Bookshop : at the heart of Bohemian Dublin, 1949-1989 /

Lynch (Triumph of the Red Devil) has written a scholarly book as addictive as an issue of Hello! She traces the creation in 1949 of the titular bookshop (which actually got its start as a general store stocking hardware) through its closure by owner Miss May Flaherty in 1988, using anecdotes and interviews with bookshop staff as well as writers and their friends and relations. Though she arranges the book in roughly chronological order, the chapters weave back and forth over the years tracing events in the lives of famous bookshop patrons: the rivalry between playwright Brendan Behan and poet Patrick Kavanagh; a drunken celebration of the anniversary of Bloomsday by (among others) novelist Flann O'Brien and Tom Joyce, James Joyce's cousin; and the heydays of the Pike Theater and the Palace Bar. This is neither a literary biography nor a history of 20th-century literary Dublin; rather, it is an intimate, eccentric, and loving look into a time and a place (Parsons) that are now gone. Recommended for large public and academic libraries with Anglo-Irish literature collections.-Felicity D. Walsh, Emory Univ., Decatur, GA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.