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Yet another of the sff books with an Irish setting which I've had hanging around the shelves for a while, the second of a three-part YA series about a sassy American girl from Seattle who is in training to become a fairy godmother, and is sent to a mid-1990s Ireland for a learning experience involving legendary figures plucked both from the more respectable sources of lore and from Yeats and placed in the gritty tail end of the twntieth century. Scarborough's handling of Northern Ireland is not terribly adept and her geography elsewhere but she is clearly trying hard with the Dublin and Wicklow settings, and her attempts at dialect are not too excruciating. Not a particularly challenging book, but not too objectionable either.

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( 3 comments — Leave a comment )
daveon
Apr. 13th, 2012 05:16 pm (UTC)
Mid-1990s? Was there a reason for the setting? Or was that when it was written?

I actually find mid-1980s a slightly more interesting time for writing Ireland as the rural areas where in the middle of a huge transition. I think Cappamore (our home town) got magical things like direct dial phones and so forth around '85.
filigree10
Apr. 13th, 2012 07:45 pm (UTC)
It was the middle book of a series: The Godmother (1994), The Godmother's Apprentice (1995), and The Godmother's Web (1998). I remember reading it when it first came out, and I thought her portrayal of County Wicklow (where I live myself) was pretty good. But I certainly got the sense that a lot of it was filtered through Anne McCaffrey's perception - they'd been collaborators on some other books, and I assumed McCaffrey had hosted Scarborough during her stay in Ireland. The setting was not just County Wicklow but very much McCaffrey's stamping grounds in Newcastle/Kilquade.
daveon
Apr. 13th, 2012 09:41 pm (UTC)
Ah, ok, then that makes sense.

Nice piece of the world though. I have managed to get myself stupidly lost around there many times :)
( 3 comments — Leave a comment )

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    25 Jan 2023, 13:24
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    8 Dec 2022, 12:44
    UK mailboxes aren't waterproof?! That seems like an odd design.
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    Now I know that "psephologist" is a word.
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    That would make things less awkward.
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