The Hunting of the Snark
Ice Man
The Life of Emily Dickinson
Little Dorrit
Little Women
Maigret
Mrs. Jordan’s Profession
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Plague Dogs
The Secret Garden
Shoeless Joe
The Stones of Venice
The Story of the GAA
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
Ulysses
What Katy Did
The Wouldbegoods
Authors
Maeve Binchy
Barbara Cartland
Agatha Christie
Maria Edgeworth
Goethe
Homer
P. D. James
Rudyard Kipling
John McGahern
Saki (H. H. Munro)
Petrarch
Proust
Barbara Pym
Schiller
Stendhal
Have You Read? More by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
THE HOUSE ON AN IRISH HILLSIDE
* * *
“From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I’d ever seen. With the people I met there. And with a way of looking at life that was deeper, richer, and wiser than any I’d known before. When I left I dreamt of clouds on the mountain. I kept going back.”
We all lead very busy lives and sometimes it’s hard to find the time to be the people we want to be. Twelve years ago Felicity Hayes-McCoy left the hectic pace of the city and returned to Ireland to make a new life in a remarkable house on the stunning Dingle Peninsula. Having chosen to live in a community that, previously, she’d only known as a visitor, she finds herself reengaging with values and experiences, and reevaluating a sense of identity that she’d thought she’d left behind.
Beautifully written, this is a life-affirming tale of “a house of music and memory,” and of being reminded of the things that really matter.
“Hayes-McCoy is a lovely writer, far superior to the average memoirist. . . . She has a style that’s poetic but not showy; finely honed but easy and unforced; descriptive and evocative without seeming to try too hard.”
—The Irish Independent
“Wise, funny, and blazingly beautiful.”
—Joanna Lumley, actor, author, and television presenter
ENOUGH IS PLENTY
* * *
An emigrant to England in the 1970s, Felicity Hayes-McCoy knew she’d return to Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, a place she’d fallen in love with at seventeen. Now she and her English husband have restored a stone house there, the focus for this chronicle in response to reader requests for an illustrated sequel to her memoir, The House on an Irish Hillside.
The Celts celebrated the cycle of the seasons as a vibrant expression of eternity, endlessly turning from darkness to light and back again. Enough Is Plenty, a book about the ordinary small pleasures in life that can easily go unnoticed, celebrates these seasonal rhythms, and offers the reader recipes from the author’s kitchen, and information on organic food production and gardening. It views the year from a place where a vibrant twenty-first-century lifestyle is still marked by Ireland’s Celtic past and the ancient rhythms of Samhain (winter), Imbolc (spring), Bealtaine (summer), and Lughnasa (autumn). In this way of life, health and happiness are rooted in awareness of nature and the environment, and nourishment comes from music, friendship, and storytelling as well as from good food.
“Magical.”
—Alice Taylor,
bestselling author of To School Through the Fields
“A gorgeous book.”
—Sunday Independent
A WOVEN SILENCE: MEMORY, HISTORY & REMEMBRANCE
* * *
How do we know that what we remember is the truth? Inspired by the story of her relative Marion Stokes, one of three women who raised the tricolor over Enniscorthy in Easter Week 1916, Felicity Hayes-McCoy explores the consequences for all of us when memories are manipulated or obliterated, intentionally or by chance. In the power struggle after Ireland’s Easter Rising involving, among others, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, the ideals for which Marion and her companions fought were eroded. As Felicity maps her own family stories onto the history of the state, her story moves from Washerwoman’s Hill in Dublin, to London, and back again; spans two world wars, a revolution, a civil war, and the development of a republic; and culminates in Ireland’s 2015 same-sex marriage referendum.
“A powerful piece of personal and political history.”
—The Sunday Times (Ireland)
“Questions are explored delicately and deftly.”
—Irish Examiner
“Writing of high order.”
—Frank McGuinness, author, poet, and playwright
* * *
The tip of the Dingle Peninsula, at the westernmost edge of Europe, is one of Ireland’s most isolated regions. But for millennia, it has also been a hub for foreign visitors: its position made it a medieval center for traders, and the wildness of its remote landscape has been the setting for spiritual pilgrimage. This seeming paradox is what makes Dingle and its western hinterland unique: the ancient, native culture has been preserved while also being influenced by the world at large. The rich heritage of the area is best understood by chatting with the people who live and work here. But how many visitors get that opportunity?
Working with her husband, Wilf Judd, Felicity Hayes-McCoy takes us on an insiders’ tour, illustrated by their own photographs, and interviews of locals along the way, ranging from farmers, postmasters, and boatmen to museum curators, radio presenters, and sean-nós singers. A resident for the last twenty years, she offers practical information and advice as well as cultural insights that will give any visitor a deeper understanding of this special place.
“For those of us who have long been under the spell of the Dingle Peninsula, and for those who have yet to discover it, this book is a brilliant guide to the land, the culture, the history, and especially its people.”
—Boris Weintraub, former senior writer, National Geographic
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
NONFICTION
A Woven Silence: Memory, History & Remembrance
Enough is Plenty: The Year on the Dingle Peninsula
The House on an Irish Hillside
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Hachette Books Ireland.
THE LIBRARY AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. Copyright © 2017 by Felicity Hayes-McCoy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
P.S.TM is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hayes-McCoy, Felicity, author.
Title: The library at the edge of the world : a novel / Felicity Hayes-McCoy.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Harper Perennial, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016058762 (print) | LCCN 2017006255 (ebook) | ISBN
; 9780062663726 (paperback) | ISBN 9780062663733 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women.
Classification: LCC PR6108.A96755 L53 2017 (print) | LCC PR6108.A96755
(ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058762
Epub Edition November 2017 ISBN 9780062663733
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