Full Tide - a miscellany - Michael Coady PRICE: IRP£9.95 PUBLISHER: Relay

Thirty-seven prose pieces, 5 poems (not in previous collections), and 35 illustrations together make a rich miscellany. Michael Coady's perceptive, moving and humorous evocations of people, places and manners range from his native Carrick-on-Suir and the lower Suir valley to Co. Clare, Newfoundland, Britain, Chicago and Topeka, Kansas.

His social history is pithy and valuable - the local cinema's social division between balcony, parterre and pit; the penny catechism's 'What Else is Forbidden?'; 'Porridge, Prayer and Purgatives' in an all-male St. Patrick's training college; the student summer of washing dishes in 'Dreamland', Margate, Kent; 'Dancing in Time' to reel or jig, quickstep or tango; the Clancy Brothers and 'The Parting Glass' at Paddy Clancy's funeral. Witty reminiscence and reflection emerge from the writer's love of music and the warm confraternity of story, song and character. There are tides and human tidings of the river and valley as well as personal encounters with the natural world.

The range of empathy and style is remarkable, combining a poet's eye and insight with a natural feel for the rhythms of good writing. Many of the prose pieces began as columns by Michael Coady in the Clonmel weekly, The Nationalist. Here they are rigorously selected and reshaped within a book of diverse themes and textures.