3 Review(s)

What's happening in Ireland? Behind the triumphalist headlines of the boom, there are changes going on - in the way people work, speak, eat, even the way they think - that cannot be quantified by statistics nor squared with the hollow cliche of the Celtic Tiger. She Moves through the Boom is a book about these intangible changes, and it paints a picture the newspapers and tourism propagandists are missing. Ann Marie Hourihane talks to working mothers, Mullingar wine importers, the organizer of a rural water scheme, shop assistants, a Nigerian preacher, teenaged removal men, and other exemplary - because ordinary - members of Irish society. These people aren't talking about the boom; they're living it, sometimes without even noticing, and they speak its languages - of social liberation, stubborn tradition, banal consumerism, and others. She Moves through the Boom presents a quirky, kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Ireland. By turns hilarious and dark, it is a fascinating snapshot of a singular moment in our history.