Where is Ireland's soul? This is the question that surface time and again in Ireland Unhinged, a searching, sometimes scathing, often hilarious journey through a country that in the space of a few years has fallen from the dizzy heights of the ''bouncy-castle'' boom to the bewildering depths of the crash.
Ireland Unhinged is a story of reverse emigration to Cork City and then rural Waterford, from cosy US confines to the true Wild West of these last years. David Monagan''s sharp eye pinpoints the excesses and absurdities of modern Ireland. But his real search is for the enduring essence of his adopted country, as revealed in his meetings with literary legends, with witches and monks, with property developers and gnomic farmers.
It is a riveting memoir of a family adapting to a strange land, and an unflinching portrait of Ireland today.