A Glassful of Letters

In `A Glassful of Letters' Conlon tackles emigration, working mothers, non-working mothers, Republican prisoners, the inhumanity of big business, adultery, and a lot more. Employing a dramatic narrative structure in which much of the story takes place in a series of letters, and set partly in Ireland, partly in New York, this is a very modern Irish novel, one which takes on the recent (and on-going) unprecedented self re-examination which has been going on in Ireland since the late 80's. Conlon skillfully interlinks the characters' stories to reflect the pressures-and pleasures-generated by rapidly changing social values. And at the heart of it all is the quiet bravery of one woman. ""[Conlon's] account of contemporary Ireland and the continuing Irish diaspora is sympathetic, well-measured and insightful.""-Publishers Weekly ""Quietly passionate, t e novel is romantic but no stock romance. Rather, Conlon unfolds the seemingly simple psyche of an ordinary married woman to display a rich and complex intellectual and emotional life.""-Booklist


Genre: Literary Fiction