Alice Taylor lives in the village of Innishannon in County Cork, in a house attached to the local supermarket and post office. Since her eldest son has taken over responsibility for the shop, she has been able to devote more time to her writing. Alice Taylor worked as a telephonist in Killarney and Bandon. When she married, she moved to Innishannon where she ran a guesthouse at first, then the supermarket and post office. She and her husband, Gabriel Murphy, who sadly passed away in 2005, had four sons and one daughter. In 1984 she edited and published the first issue of Candlelight, a local magazine which has since appeared annually. In 1986 she published an illustrated collection of her own verse. To School Through the Fields was published in May 1988. It was an immediate success, launching Alice on a series of signing sessions, talks and readings the length and breadth of Ireland. Her first radio interview, forty two minutes long on RTE Radio's Gay Byrne Show, was the most talked about radio programme of 1988, and her first television interview, of the same length, was the highlight of the year on RTE television's Late Late Show. Since then she has appeared on radio programmes such as Woman's Hour, Midweek and The Gloria Hunniford Show, and she has been the subject of major profiles in the Observer and the Mail on Sunday. To School Through the Fields quickly became the biggest selling book ever published in Ireland, and her sequels, Quench the Lamp, The Village, Country Days and The Night Before Christmas, were also outstandingly successful. Since their initial publication these books of memoirs have also been translated and sold internationally. In 1997 her first novel, The Woman of the House, was an immediate bestseller in Ireland, topping the paperback fiction lists for many weeks. A moving story of land, love and family, it was followed by a sequel, Across the River in 2000, which was also a bestseller. One of Ireland's most popular authors, she has continued writing fiction, non-fiction and poetry since.
In this delightful puff pastry of a story, best-selling Irish author Taylor picks up her thread of memories (woven through To School Through the Fields , LJ 3/1/90, and Quench the Lamp , LJ 3/1/91) as a young bride newly arrived in her husband's village of Innishannon, Ireland. All life's joys and trials are here: births, deaths, triumphs, and hard times are played out against a backdrop of simpler times when change and history did not intrude. Much attention is lavished on the village folk, though more could perhaps have been made of those closest to the author: one comes away wishing for details not centering around the post office or church. But all in all, this is a sweet, kind story and a lively opportunity to go back to a time and place we will not likely see again. Recommended for general collections.-- Nancy L. Whitfield, Meriden P.L., Ct.
Taylor's warmly received chronicles of Irish rural life ( To School Through the Fields ; Quench the Lamp ) are extended in this reminiscence of the village of Innishannon in western Ireland. Taylor arrived there as a bride in the 1960s, when, she observes, ``an old world was slipping out the back door while a new way of life marched in the front.'' Her recollections commemorate the old gathering places--the post office and the small shop she and her husband inherited--and the rugged individualists of Innishannon. Recording the circumstances of her happy marriage, Taylor captures the little world that satisfied many: the doctors, the curate and the countrymen and women with their pawky humor. Progress arrives in Innishannon in the shape of a supermarket and guest house for tourists. Taylor's love affair with the village endures as her storytelling endears it to her readers. (Mar.)
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