Dún an Airgid

THE WORLD according to Ikea might look something like Dún an Airgid. In Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s new novel, the fastidiously arranged interiors of the houses and apartments in the model town are the inward signs of outward prosperity. The development is an Ireland that was dreamed of in a vision of serenely upward mobility. But the utopian promise, like the larger narrative of the Tiger years, is gradually undone by a past that cannot be bulldozed into oblivion and by a present which is blighted by the familiar demons of envy, dispossession and greed. Dún an Airgid, the planned paradise, takes on the colours of David Lynch’s suburban hell. The carefully tended lawns barely contain the human horror that lies close to the surface of this domesticated nature […] A published author in both English and Irish, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne has already ventured into detective fiction with Dunmharú sa Daingean (2000) in which Saoirse makes her first appearance. The tale in Dún an Airgid is briskly told in a style that is eminently accessible to young adult or adult learners of Irish. Connoisseurs of the whodunit may feel that more needed to be said about the circumstances of the murders and that some plot lines (the sale of artworks, for example) needed more development but Ní Dhuibhne excels in the art of persuasive storytelling. As an account of what goes wrong when the Celtic Cockaigne turns dark, it is very much a tale for our times. *Léirmheas ag Michael Cronin, © 2008 The Irish Times 15 November 2008*