The Street & Other Stories

This book is full of political commentary with good use of non political stories as well as in your face political stories. The use of everyday people who move through their own days and lives is positioned in direct opposition to the "Troubles" that are a part of their lives. Whether the story is about two men from different sides, or a grandmother waiting up for her grandson, you see that the people have a mission and it is to help each other understand or just get through the days. There is also social commentary on the lives of these Irish Catholics who are the poor class in Northern Ireland. These stories are wrapped around less obvious commentary that strikes one as just plain good story telling. It is the way the book is set up that may bring you to a greater understanding of the way things are seen in N. Ireland. Gerry Adams loves his country and you can see it and feel it in the descriptions of his surroundings and the simple people he knows. I loved these stories and am even more admiring of the man who wrote them. He is a man of his people.

If Gerry Adams had not decided to become one of the many who have fought for a united Ireland, and eventually head of the Sinn Fein, the political party engaged in joining the Six Counties with the rest of Ireland, he could have certainly found a place in the literary tradition of Ireland. "The Street" is an extremely well-written, insightful "insider's" view of the situation in Northern Ireland over the past few decades, since "The Troubles" escalated again in the 1970s. Not all of the stories are about the violence, however. Some of the best are about trying to get beyond the violence to understand why so many of Ireland's people have felt so strongly that it was worth fighting for so long. Some of the stories are simply astute character studies that are charming from beginning to end. It would not be too far a stretch to compare this book, in spirit at least, with another famous, slim book of stories by a master writer, James Joyce's "Dubliners." Indeed, Adams's stories do for the North what Joyce did for Dublin: they open a window on a fascinating, diverse group of people in a place that could fascinate all by itself. Adams's short stories are the kind that you can go back and read again and again. The book offers yet another reason to hope the situation in Northern Ireland can be resolved soon: so that Gerry Adams can spend more time writing.