Perhaps the most consistent weather comment in Ireland “There might be a drop of rain yet” and that’s the title of a new book, a memoir by Dublin author Brendan Lynch.
The tenth book by Brendan, this is a fable of flight and reconciliation, an engaging first-hand record of 1950s Ireland and the conflict between a young man and his mother, notably, his very Catholic and nationalistic mother!
He escapes her and the Irish censor and moves to a more liberal England, where he enjoys the freedom to read Brendan Behan, Edna O’Brien and other notable Irish writers, all banned at home.
Imprisoned for pacifist anti-bomb activities, his native country recedes as he achieves his dreams of journalism, travel and sport. Now in his 85th year, Lynch describes how, when he poised to voyage further abroad, he returns to a much changed Ireland to look after his recently-widowed mother, Siobhán.
A bond is established between them, she finally reveals the violent origin of her antipathy to all things British while he later learns to come to terms with death and the loss of his strong minded mother.
The subject of a television documentary when first published in 2006, the revised memoir records encounters such diverse characters as Brendan Behan, Bertrand Russell and Ayrton Senna.
Lynch writes fondly of the closing of an era which ended with the death of his mother, her favourite Irish Press newspaper and the literary landmark of Dublin’s Parsons Bookshop, whose history her son would later record.
The author now resides in Broadstone, D 7 with his wife Margie and hopes to officially launch the book by early November.
“It will be available from Hanna’s in Rathmines and Hodges Figgis in Dawson Street,” he said. A paperback, printed by Mountjoy Publishing, ‘There might be a drop of rain yet – a Memoir’ by Brendan Lynch will retail at €14.95.
The Irish Catholic wrote “A wonderful book for anyone who wishes to understand at the heart’s core, the pride and passion of being Irish in the twentieth century.”
The Author
Brendan Lynch is a former racing cyclist, driver and 1960s CND anti-war prisoner. As a journalist, he contributed to Irish media, also the Daily Mail, Observer, European and The Times. He criss-crossed Europe from France to the Peloponnese in his campervan, and lived for three years in SE Asia, where he commenced the first of his ten books.
These include three on literary and Bohemian Dublin, the award-winning Green Dust motorsport history, and the definitive account of the first non-stop Atlantic flight, which concluded in Clifden in June 1919. The late John le Carre wrote of Yesterday We Were in America: ”A cry of admiration for a thoroughly enjoyable book.”
