The Islandman (Oxford Paperbacks)

The book was excellent and deplicted the life of the people in Ireland during that period. Highly recommended.

I read The Islandman after several visits to Ireland. This narrative or memoir gives readers a rare look at life off the coast of Kerry in the 19th Century. Relatively untouched by English influence, the lives of those living on the Great Blasket Island were different that most of the rest of Ireland. I was inspired by the book to travel to the Great Blasket Island in July 2007 and was inspired by the courage of those who made their living there throughout the 18th and 19th centuries

Americans have a romantic fixation with Irish culture and little cottages by the sea. (And there's nothing wrong with that.) But the next time you don your imported Aran sweater, hunt up this interesting book to get a first-person account of the Great Blasket Island off the coast of Ireland. The narrator can be as sharp as the cold Atlantic winds, but even if you wouldn't want to take tea with him, you'll admire the detailed portrait he draws of this isolated place lost in time. Just remember, like the island itself, this is not a cozy book, but a bracing one.

A fine book detailing the life of a native of the blasket island group off the southwest coast if Ireland. The author gives a detailed view of life in a remote 19th century Irish speaking culture that remained unchanged from the middle ages to the 2nd world war. Noted for it's poets and storytellers the blaskets remained one of the bastions of the irish language oral tradition.