Hailed in the Irish Times as a 'great Irish novelist', Neil Jordan is,
in the words of Fintan O'Toole, 'a peculiarly emblematic figure of
cultural change'. Yet, extraordinarily, such critical acclaim has come
about without detailed scholarly engagement with Jordan's most sustained
interrogation of Ireland and notions of Irishness: his fiction. Neil
Jordan: Works for the Page fills this gap in contemporary Irish literary
criticism, and, while Jordan's filmmaking is often discussed, the focus
here is on his published work: his early volume of short fiction, his
many novels, and several of his uncollected stories. The result is a
work which will enhance understanding of contemporary Irish cultural
studies while also suggesting future directions for the criticism of
other artists operating in multiple creative disciplines. The
significance of this book lies in its discussion of what kind of artist
Neil Jordan really is, which is not necessarily the kind of artist that
Irish Studies currently perceives him to be. He is neither just an
Oscar-winning filmmaker nor a European novelist of the first rank, he is
both, and the comprehensive introduction to the literary author provided
by Neil Jordan: Works for the Page has been carefully structured to
appeal to those familiar with only the filmmaker. This engaging study
examines how, in a forty-year writing career, Jordan has engaged with
and expanded upon many core concerns of Irish literature: the struggle
to define oneself against the weight of history, both political and
artistic; the quest to understand the nation's violent efforts to
transcend and process its colonial past.
