Neil Jordan: Works for the Page

Happy to report that my monograph Neil Jordan: Works for the Page is now available from Cork University Press!

Hailed in the Irish Times as a “great Irish novelist”, Neil Jordan is, in the words of Fintan O’Toole, “a peculiarly emblematic figure of cultural change”. Yet, while many people are familiar with Jordan’s filmmaking career, his most sustained interrogation of Ireland arguably occurs in his fiction. Neil Jordan: Works for the Page tackles this challenge, conducting a deep dive into Jordan’s legendary early volume of short fiction, his many novels, and several of his uncollected stories. The result is a work which enhances our understanding of contemporary Irish cultural studies while also suggesting future directions for the criticism of other artists operating in multiple creative disciplines.

A central strand of the book is examining Neil Jordan’s changing relationship to modern Irish history through novels such as The Past (1980) and Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994), as well as exploration the manner by which Jordan represents the War of Independence, the Civil War, the ‘Emergency’ (World War II), the 1960s, 1980s, and the present day. Neil Jordan: Works for the Page also offers detailed analysis of Jordan’s integration of the fantastic into his fiction, most obviously in The Dream of a Beast (1983), but also reframing the later novels such as Shade (2005) and Carnivalesque (2017) as more ambitious and speculative works than they were initially received as.

The significance of this book lies in its discussion of what kind of artist Neil Jordan really is, which is not necessarily the kind of artist that Irish Studies currently perceives him to be. He is neither just an Oscar-winning filmmaker nor a European novelist of the first rank, he is both, and the comprehensive introduction to the literary author provided by Neil Jordan: Works for the Page has been carefully structured to appeal to those familiar with only the filmmaker. This engaging study examines how, in an almost fifty-year writing career, Jordan has engaged with and expanded upon many core concerns of Irish literature: the struggle to define oneself against the weight of history, both political and artistic; the quest to understand the nation’s violent efforts to transcend and process its colonial past.

Neil Jordan: Works for the Page follows several well-received publications in the fields of twentieth century and contemporary literature. My history of the John McGahern banning was published in Irish Studies Review, while articles on Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Alastair Reynolds, Flann O’Brien, and Grant Morrison have been published in Irish University Review, Science Fiction Studies, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Journal of Graphic Novels and Comic Books. Meanwhile, my own fiction has been anthologised in Year’s Best Science Fiction and Best of British Science Fiction, as well as regularly appearing in Interzone. My story ‘The Irish Astronaut’ was shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Award, while my essay ‘Science Fiction and the Pathways out of the COVID Crisis’ was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Association Awards. My next project is a writing guide, co-written with Tiffani Angus, titled Spec-Fic for Newbies: A Beginner’s Guide to Writing the Subgenres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror (Luna Press, 2023). I have lectured in genre fiction and creative writing at Aberystwyth University in Wales for eight years during which time I received accolades including the Innovative Teaching Award and Lecturer of the Year. I am currently an Aberystwyth Research Fellow in English and Creative Writing.