The Village

Taylor’s third volume of Irish reminiscence evokes the history, landscape, and sometimes dotty citizenry of tiny 1960’s Innishannon, where the author raised five children, opened a guest house and manned the local post office and grocery store. Set on the wooded banks of the Brandon River, Innishannon once served the grand estates of wealthy British and Irish families, but 20th-century uprisings and industrialisation had rendered it a small, sleepy hamlet whose residents knew every detail of each others’ lives. An entertaining and thoroughly charming memoir.