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| | Reviews | | | | Hot Press
Hot Press 2006 Year Book – ‘Whos Who In Irish Music’ Listing.
“His intimate knowledge of music covers a phenomenal span of generations, from Irish traditional music to Rock, blues, gospel, world music and just about every noise in between made by mankind. His Award winning Radio programme “The House of R&B’ was the most inspiring music programme ever broadcast by RTE.”
| | | | The Lightning Tree
An elegiac novel charts the life seasons of an Irish healer who weathers hardship, profound loss and the encroachment of modernity. Mariah, born in the Burren, a wild corner of County Clare, lives in her native cottage until her death, at 96, in 1954. She never experiences electricity, running water, central heating, telephone, radio or movies. The novel is woven from Mariah's anecdotes and recollections as told to the author, her distant cousin. She comes from a family of healers who practice herbal cures derived from ancient Celtic lore-- not, as the priests accuse, Satan.
An ash tree near Mariah's house, charred and hollowed by lightning, becomes her sanctuary from childhood on. She sees ghosts, including that of a starveling, who becomes her playmate. Her only love, a young Scottish engineer whom she meets at the Anglo-Irish landlord's ball, drowns, the victim of a rejected suitor's jealous rage. She devotes herself to caring
for her parents and brothers and undertakes a seven-year stint as the manager of a village pub, where her no-nonsense attitude tames the rowdy regulars. Maria's memory is an omnium-gatherum of Irish superstition and legend, including the doom of a woman who hears the church bell of a mythical, submerged village. The family (except for the dog) narrowly
escapes the Black and Tans. Mariah outlives her bachelor brothers, Brian and Frank (a third brother, the only sibling to marry, emigrated to Australia), and, despite failing eyesight, Mariah continues to walk the fields, practice her cures and relish nature's poetic justice.
Of particular interest to aficionados of all things Irish, this unsentimental evocation of an ordinary life in forgotten times deserves a wider readership than it is likely to receive. 276 pages. Kirkus Reviews 2007
| | | | The Lightning Tree
Irish writer and musicologist Curtis interweaves personal reminiscence, local and national history, and storytelling into a tapestry richly illustrating a life spanning almost a century. Narrator Mariah--a healer from the sparse Burren region of north County Clare, Ireland-- bears witness to the progress that threatens the old ways and could lead to renewal.
Based on a woman (a friend Curtis made as a child) who was born in 1858 and died during the mid-1950s, she speaks to readers in a voice that is lyrical, haunting, and serene; it credibly conveys transcendent joy and tragedy in
equal measure. Gifted throughout life with second sight and the ability to cure the sick, Mariah experiences time and space as dimensions where spirits and specters coexist with the living, those who suffer and those restored to wholeness. Like his narrator, Curtis's work is uniquely liminal, neither memoir nor novel, and affirms the curative powers of stories, both for
those who tell them and those who hear and read them. The title refers to a tree rooting Mariah to her home, family, and community and becomes a symbol of time's ravages, illumination and inspiration, and the resilience of hope.
For literary fiction collections.--J.G. Matthews, Washington State Univ.
Libs., Pullman. 275pg. CAHNERS PUBLISHING, c2007. | | |
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