Manchester University Press Deirdre Madden

This pioneering set of essays explores the key motifs and themes in the works of the Irish novelist, Deirdre Madden, about the Northern Irish Troubles and their aftermath and changing social values in contemporary Ireland. Deirdre Madden: New critical perspectives is a landmark study of this important and highly regarded Irish novelist. It underscores the range, imaginative complexity, and enduring relevance of Madden’s fictions. The essays collected in this volume explore her crucial Troubles and post-Troubles fictions, Hidden Symptoms, One by One in the Darkness, Molly Fox’s Birthday, and Time Present and Time Past and draw out their interconnected portrayals of violence, grief, time, trauma, and memory.Madden’s dexterous use of the novel form is highlighted, especially her bending of the conventions of realism to encompass searching philosophical and existential themes. Revealingly, she is shown to be a foremost practitioner of the artist novel or Künstlerroman. Through the figures of the writer, the painter, the photographer, and the actor, she examines the ability of art to remake and distil reality and to shed indirect light on emotional cruxes that cannot otherwise be fathomed. These essays provide an overview of all of Madden’s work, including her children’s novels, and uncover its inquiring and multidimensional qualities. Her overarching themes are drawn out, amongst them the familial, states of dislocation, resonant objects, the haunting aftermath of the past, the transnational, and the regenerative function of art.Making use of a wide variety of approaches, these essays persuasively elucidate the compelling subtleties of Madden’s fiction. Readers are invited to discover the work of this accomplished Irish writer who across all her novels engages thought-provokingly with contemporary life, politics, and art. The Irish writer, Deirdre Madden, has written key novels about the Northern Irish Troubles and about contemporary Ireland. In these works, she weighs up the aftermath of violence and the impact of the shift to a more open but materialist society in the country overall. Memory, trauma, and the abiding but elusive links between the past and the present are central concerns of her fiction. This pioneering set of essays by leading experts in Irish Studies explores the many dimensions of her novels from a wide variety of perspectives. Madden’s skill at interweaving novels of ideas with artist novels that draw out the complex inner predicaments of her characters is highlighted. States of dislocation are concentrated on in her texts, but also the quest for a home in the world and a lasting set of values that allows for personal integrity and authenticity. These multifaceted explorations bear out the compelling and enduring aspects of Madden’s highly regarded novels.