SOURCE: “New Voices: The Contemporary Novel,” in The Irish Novel: A Critical History, Twayne Publishers, 1988, pp. 261-303.

In the following essay, Cahalan discusses the fiction of Benedict Kiely, Brian Moore, John McGahern, Aidan Higgins, John Banville, William Trevor, James Plunkett, Edna O'Brien, Janet McNeill, Iris Murdoch, Eilís Dillon, Julia O'Faolain, Jennifer Johnston, Michael Farrell, Walter Macken, Sam Hanna Bell, Anthony C. West, John Borderick, Richard Power, Thomas Kilroy, and Anthony Cronin, as well as several writers in the Irish language.

Improving Conditions

During the last thirty or so years, an impressive growth in the number of Irish novels and Irish novelists has occurred. In 1960 Stephen P. Ryan asked, “What has become of the Emerald Isle's once promising literary revival?” …, but today one is hard-pressed to know where to best begin a discussion of the embarrassment of riches in contemporary Irish literature. In this period more than thirty...