#Essays Fintan O’Toole

 

• Author: Fintan O’Toole
  
• Title: We Don’t Know Ourselves
  
• Genre: essays  (570 pg)
• #ReadingIrelandMonth24 (…could not finish in March!)
  
• #20BooksOfSummer24

 

Conclusion:

Very good – 15
No – 8
Okay – 13
Excellent – 7

1. Well, I finally finished 43 essays by Fintan O’Toole.
2. The book won the 2021 Book of the Year award at the Irish Book Awards.
3. It was selected as one of The New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2022
4. I started in February – 6 essays
5. March – 7 essays
6. …and decided I  had to finish the book this month.
7. June – 30 essays.
   
8. Selections that I gave a ‘NO’ were mostly about Irish politics that I did not
9. completley understand and one selection about the scandal “The Kerry Babies”.
10. I did not even read that one….just skimmed the wikipedia page about it.
11. That was enough.
12. The book was an excellent read  to learn about “modern Ireland”.

 

Important subjects that Fintan O’Toole wrote about

1. The strangle-hold the Catholic Church had on all aspects of Irish life
2. political, social and economical and especially on personal lives
3. …contraception, abortion.
4. Scandals that the Irish just turned a blind eye to, the known unknowns.
5. Industrial school – “….the hinterland of dread”
6. Magdalene laundries
7. Mother and Babies Homes
8. The Kerry Babies
   
9. The Troubles
   
10. How political power had been working in Ireland.