From Prosperity to Austerity

Eamon Maher is Director of the National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies at the Institute of Technology, Tallaght, where he also lectures in HumanitiesEugene O’Brien is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick

• Introduction – Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien1. Crisis, what crisis? The Catholic Church during the Celtic Tiger – Eamon Maher2. The Celtic Tiger and the new Irish religious market – Catherine Maignant3. Shattered assumptions: a tale of two traumas – Brendan O’Brien4.‘Tendency–Wit’: the cultural unconscious of the Celtic Tiger in the writings of Paul Howard – Eugene O’Brien5. Popular music and the Celtic Tiger – Gerry Smyth6. ‘What does a woman want?’: Irish contemporary women’s fiction and the expression of desire in an era of plenty – Sylvie Mikowski7. Topographies of terror: photography and the post-Celtic Tiger landscape – Justin Carville8. Immigration and Celtic Tiger – Bryan Fanning9. ‘What Rough Beast’? Monsters of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland – Kieran Keohane and Carmen Kuhling10. Women, fictional messages and a crucial decade – Mary Pierse11. ‘A hundred thousand welcomes’: food and wine as cultural signifiers – Brian Murphy12. Contemporary Irish fiction and the Indirect Gaze – Neil Murphy 13 ‘Holes in the Ground’: theatre as critic and conscience of Celtic Tiger Ireland – Vic Merriman14. ‘Ship of Fools’: The Celtic Tiger and poetry as social critique – Eóin Flannery15. Between modernity and marginality: Celtic Tiger cinema – Ruth BartonConclusionIndex

The book is full of wonderful insights. . . This book is invaluable, if only for the fact that it is the first serious attempt to cast a sociocultural net across what has happened. It is not always easy or comfortable reading, but it is rewarding. As we move towards the upswing, with the inevitable consequence that that also shall end, we need to reflect on what happened and on how we responded to it. This book helps us to do that.