By Stephen Holland The Mole Agent is a 2020 documentary directed by Maite Alberdi. It tells the story of an 84-year-old man named Sergio who is hired by a private investigator to go undercover in a nursing home in Chile. What starts as a quirky take on hardboiled detective fiction turns into a profound meditation on isolation and loneliness. The private investigator has … [Read more...] about The Mole Agent review
Anti-Traveller Racism: It’s Time to Take a Stand
The news that the Pontins campsite chain in the UK had a blacklist of Irish surnames which they labelled “undesirable guests” came as a shock to many, who saw it as discriminatory, racist, and unjust. This was the initial reaction as all the headlines said was, “Irish surnames”. But upon further investigation you learn that this policy was designed to exclude Gypsies and … [Read more...] about Anti-Traveller Racism: It’s Time to Take a Stand
My Shakesyear
We all have those books, novels, and plays that we wish we could read if only we had the time. While the idea of finally reading Don Quixote, War and Peace, or the Iliad sounds so enticing, life inevitably gets in the way and as the years go on it gets less and less likely that you are ever going to tackle these behemoths of literature. This is how I was for a long time and a … [Read more...] about My Shakesyear
Acts of Desperation review – A new voice in Irish literature
In Megan Nolan’s debut novel, Acts of Desperation, we get a glimpse into the interior romantic life of an unnamed narrator, her co-dependent relationship with a boy named Ciaran, and the consequences of obsessive love. Romantic attachments can be so frustratingly complicated. Sometimes from the outside it is easy to look at a relationship and see everything that is wrong with … [Read more...] about Acts of Desperation review – A new voice in Irish literature
Has the virus crushed our spirit?
Gautama Buddha once said, ““the past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There's only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment”. People have always tended to either live in a rose-tinted recollection of an Ill remembered past, or with an over-exaggeration estimation on the possibilities of the future. Never has this been truer than under the gaze … [Read more...] about Has the virus crushed our spirit?