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Praise for Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show
BOSTON GLOBE
"[It's] wonderful entertainment, a fat, discursive novel, written with style and humor by a masterful storyteller....The charm of this novel is in the digressions, which are many and entertaining, illuminating history, politics, myth, literature, and the mysteries of human nature."
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
"Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show scores another goal for Delaney. Delaney unleashes a cavalcade of memorable characters worthy of John Irving: a loyal housekeeper with an itchy bottom, a truth-talking ventriloquist's dummy, a master of ceremonies with a speech impediment, a learned folklore collector who counsels Ben....Teeming with life and a sprawling, chaotic energy."
BOOKLIST
"Delaney pulls out all the stops as he tips his hat to two great and all but indistinguishable Irish traditions: the theater and politics. Readers will be enchanted .... Set in Ireland in the politically tumultuous 1930s, this rollicking tale, chockfull of Irish wit, superstition, and sentiment, features a larger-than-life cast of suitably eccentric characters...against a backdrop of political corruption, personal greed, and high unexpected romance."
BOOKPAGE
"Delaney's interweaving of Ben's radical loss of innocence with Ireland's own maturation is a touch of brilliance... Delaney, once a judge for the Booker Prize, writes with a beauty, compassion and depth that reminds one of William Trevor... an inventive, amazing work."
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
"This hybrid quest saga, bildungsroman, and grassroots view of Ireland in its post-civil war era is immersive and enjoyable, and it showcases Delaney's talent for inventive metaphor, which he manipulates with an expert hand."
BOOK REPORTER
"It's a spectacular mystery, an engaging history, and a tragedy written with sometimes great humor and sometimes great humility. Once picked up, the only reason to put this book down is to keep it from ending."
LAS VEGAS JOURNAL-REVIEW
"Delaney...infuses the pages of his fiction with colorful characters, rich descriptions and illuminating insights on his homeland's history. Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show is no exception. ...[A]lways a joy to read."
AUDIOFILE MAGAZINE (the audiobook)
"Weaving Irish vaudeville and politics of the 1930s into a mix both delightful and astonishing, Frank Delaney devises an engaging saga that will captivate listeners. Delaney's success as both writer and narrator of earlier tales-well-told, Shannon and Ireland, soars to new heights with the story of Venetia Kelly. His double role is perfectly rendered as audio listening....Delight in Delaney's feast of hilarious, improbable details; side-story digression taken to a new art form; and memorable characters."
LIBRARY JOURNAL
"Delaney (Shannon) is a master storyteller, and this expansive tale of politics, tragedy, and revenge is Irish storytelling at its best. Full of vibrant, well-crafted characters and satisfyingly high drama."
Re:Joyce! A Podcast Exploring the World of James Joyce's Ulysses
Re: Joyce! On the international literary feast day of Bloomsday, June 16, we launched a podcast to commemorate James Joyce's mighty novel, "Ulysses", the action of which took place in 18 hours of June 16, 1904. Now, every week, here on the website, you'll find a five-minute mini-essay from me designed to take you through this extraordinary novel. Ulysses is on every list of the greatest books ever written and it's on every list of books that readers begin but never finish. Even though it runs to some 375,000 words,I mean to go through the text sentence by sentence if I have to, in order to convey the full brilliance of this novel - and the enjoyment to be had from it. So I'll be podcasting for some time to come! One follower has already called this exercise "the people's Ulysses." It's such an absorbing book, it's got diamond mines of references, it's so compassionate, so tender, so moving, so funny - and most of us never know that, because most of us have long been daunted by it. No need to be afraid any more - that is, if you make a habit of listening to these podcasts.
See the blog to hear past episodes and leave us a comment!
You can follow the RSS feed for the podcast here: http://rejoyce.libsyn.com/rss
News and Press
The Delaney Lectures:
Frank Delaney on Irish Literary Figures
In his series of four forty-minute talks, Frank Delaney examines three famous Irish writers, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and finally revisiting a lecture created for the National Archive of the Library of Congress, ties it all together in an examination of the universal ways that oral storytelling became the written literature of Joyce, Yeats and Beckett - and every other literary culture in the world.
Read More
Frank Delaney discusses his novel Shannon
In this video, Delaney talks about the work, the river, and the source of his inspiration. Shannon was released on February 10, 2009.
Delaney's latest novel...
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