Undernose Farm Revisited

In this expanded edition of his original privately published book of twelve stories published in December 2020, Harry Crosbie adds a further sixteen tales from the Dublin of his youth. Begun during lockdown, Harry harvested his formidable memory and imagination to recreate city life during the early 1960s, told through tales of the Dublin and Dubliners who made up his hard-scrabble world. John Banville wrote of the original volume, 'These wonderfully direct and vivid tales catch the essence of Dublin life half a century ago. They are by turns rambunctious and touching, clear-eyed and accepting, warm though never sentimental, and frequently hilarious.' Richard Ford compared his work to the writings of Mark Twain, Ring Lardner and Nelson Algren. Crosbie has now fulfilled this promise with these fresh, sparkling stories, each propelled by character, ambition, need and greed, and suffused with humanity and wit. They are peopled by family, down-at-heel aristocrats, antique dealers and auctioneers, their background the river and streetlife of mid-century Dublin, its pubs and cafes, homes and institutions. Warm as coddle on a winter's night. Each tale is nuanced, spare and perfectly pitched. Part chamber music, part ballad and folktale, Undernose Farm Revisited bears the stamp of literature in the making.

Harry Crosbie is best known as the developer who transformed Dublin and its music scene during the 1990s with the Point and Bord Gáis theatres, Vicar Street and the docklands. Here he discovers a voice that will leave an equal mark on cultural memory.