Earthy memories of west Cork farm life

Damien Enright reviews a chronicle of an Ireland fast fading.

I HAVE just finished reading ‘Jack’s World’, published by Cork University Press, the story of the life and times of a west Cork farmer, a treasure of a book that held my attention from cover to cover.

In the hands of his nephew Seán Sheehan, a gifted and established writer, the diaries, notes, household bills and photographs which Jack Sheehan gathered and kept during his lifetime chronicle a world now gone, earthy and extraordinary to a reader in 21st century Ireland. Yet it was such a short time ago.