An Irish Christmas Feast: The Best of John B. Keane

This bountiful, first-time-ever omnibus collection of more than fifty tales by one of Ireland’s liveliest and most popular story writers offers holiday charm, human idiosyncrasy, and Gaelic humor by the Christmas stockingful. Drawing on the rich folk culture of County Kerry, John B. Keane brings new life to old custom in his portrayals of the special holiday dreams and everyday shortcomings of not-so-ordinary country people during the Christmas season. At the same time that he revels in the charms and eccentricities of the Irish, Keane also exposes the fallible souls that lie behind them. With enough good cheer to warm the heart throughout the holiday season and the long nights of winter, Keane’s congenial volume revisits the Christmases celebrated by characters like Dotie Tupper and Johnny Naile, the doughty Canon Doyle and deaf Canon Cornelius Coodle, the amiable spendthrift Aenias Mackson and Hiccups O’Reilly, who disappears one Christmas Eve for seven years. Whether recounting “The Miracle of Ballybradawn,” “The Great Christmas Raid at Balleybooley,” or “The Order of MacMoolamawn,” whether telling the tales of “The Magic Stoolin,” “A Tasmanian Backhander,” “The Fourth Wise Man,” or the “Last Christmas Eve of the Twentieth Century,” Keane bears delightful witness to the strengths and failings, the trials and triumphs, of the inhabitants in his eccentric corner of County Kerry, Ireland.