Book review: Sunday Miscellany: a Selection 2018-2023 

This collection of essays, stories, and poems has at least one piece of work everyone can relate to

Sarah Binchy was the winner of 2023 Journal.ie Best Irish-Published Book of the Year for 'Sunday Miscellany: A Selection 2018 - 2023'.

• Sunday Miscellany: a Selection 2018-2023 
• Edited by Sarah Binchy 
• New Island Books, €19.95 

This collection of essays, stories, and poems includes 150 contributions which were broadcast on the RTÉ Radio 1 programme between 2018 and 2023. 

Among them are some by well-known writers, including Donal Ryan, Lisa McInerney, Joseph O’Connor, and Dermot Bolger. 

Some are by published authors whose work may not be as familiar, while others are written by members of the public.

The collection covers a huge variety of themes, everything from historical events to personal experiences. 

Among the latter is ‘Small Girl, Red Flowers’ by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, about that heart-stopping moment when you lose your child in a public place. 

My late friend Cork writer Jim McKeon contributed a personal tribute to Christy Ring, entitled ‘The First Superstar’.

Michael Hamell recalls the dreadful Heysel Stadium Disaster, while Mark Brennock remembers the end of the Sarajevo Lockdown, which took place in September 1995 when the siege was lifted after four years.

Susan McKay contributes a touching tribute to the late Pat Hume, written after the death of husband John, called ‘Phenomenal Grace’, who she describes as “an unsung hero who doesn’t want to be sung”.

'Sunday Miscellany' producer Sarah Binchy with sound engineer Noel Roberts recording a piece for the programme in the studio at RTÉ in Dublin. Picture: Moya Nolan

In ‘The Longest Embrace’, Antonia Gunko Karelina, a refugee from Ukraine, pays tribute to the Irish people who have made her welcome through an account of her experiences of tango dancing.

Zainab Boladale looks back at her time in primary school in Ennis in 2008-2009 when teachers organised for elderly locals to come in regularly to talk to children without grandparents in Ireland. 

In ‘Adopted Moments’ she describes Ennis as a town where “things are kept simple and sweet, locals have a sense of pride of place and most people are obliging when it comes to giving their time to school students”. 

A decade later she remembers the bond formed between her and Paddy Lynch, his adopted grandfather. 

“The things we experience as children and the people we meet never truly leave us. They shape us into who we are as adults. No moment is too small to matter to young minds.”

Irish Traveller Kathleen Murphy recounts how she really got to know her grandfather on her father’s side only after his wife died and she decided to visit him more often. 

In ‘Granddaddy’ she recalls that, at first, she “didn’t know how to talk to him. Despite the fact we both spoke English, we might as well have been speaking two different languages.” 

The breakthrough happened when she started investigating the family’s genealogy and her grandfather started asking her questions and recounting his own experiences.

Some pieces are more scholarly than personal, among them Grace Neville’s ‘Daniel O’Connell in Notre Dame’, which recounts how the Liberator’s death in 1848 was marked with a funeral oration delivered by Henri-Dominique Lacordaire “arguably the greatest preacher in nineteenth-century France”. 

Grace Neville is professor emeritus of French and a former vice president of UCC.

In ‘Teddy’s Irish Bards’, former Irish Ambassador to the US Daniel Mulhall recounts how President Theodore Roosevelt, despite no “ancestral connection with Ireland” was very interested in Irish sagas and published an essay on them in 1907. He also welcomed Irish writers to the White House, including Douglas Hyde and WB Yeats.

In her introduction, editor Sarah Binchy, who is also producer of Sunday Miscellany, describes the collection’s contents as “drawn from the small moments of everyday life, captured in rich and precise detail”. 

What is particularly enjoyable about the book is that you can dip in and out and find a contribution which suits your mood. It’s the kind of book which those who don’t read a lot will enjoy.