More praise for Booking Passage

“Those of us with Irish ancestry will find this an appealing account of family, faith, destiny, and why so many Americans wish they were Irish, too.”

—Dan R. Barber, Dallas Morning News

“A master of the contemplative amble. . . . There is enough poetry in the writing of it, both in verse and in prose, that a reader cannot come away from it without knowing what Lynch is about. . . . Hearing Lynch’s story . . . one can gain wisdom for one’s own journey, Irish or not.”

—Marta Salij, Detroit Free Press

“A thoughtful rumination on what it means to be Irish-American. Part memoir, part cultural study, always exquisitely written, Lynch introduces fascinating insights into the strong pull Ireland has on America.”

—Len Cowgill, BookSense Picks

“In Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans, [Lynch] draws an enticing picture of his home away from home: the dreamlike environs of Moveen, County Clare. . . . The book’s sentimentality cannot extinguish its lyricism and its appealing spiritual vigor.”

—Joseph O’Neill, New York Times Book Review

“He writes with grace, a questioning attitude and wry humor. . . . Booking Passage captured my imagination.”

—Irish American News

“Lynch’s book is full of incident, touching and hilarious, and repays serious attention. It is a good read even for those who have

not the least ancestral or national bias—for those who desire civilized entertainment along with brilliant narrative.”

—Clarence Brown, Seattle Times and Seattle Post

“Compelling. . . . This is a deeply thought-out book filled with poetry, pathos, triumph and lots of Irish laughter.”

—Publishers Weekly

“This book’s essays will appeal particularly to an owner of a longstanding family home, an Irish American drawn to the old country, a Catholic in crisis from the church’s scandals, and an appreciator of poetry. . . . Lynch’s perspective is both rhapsodic and real . . . throughout he offers wit and wisdom. . . .At the feet of such a well-spoken writer, many a listener/reader would sit happily.”

—Olive Mullet, Grand Rapids Press

“Lynch’s book is especially strong where he passionately analyzes contemporary Ireland, with a sharp-eyed focus on the transformation of the Catholic Church’s place in Irish life. . . . Lynch writes with perception and feeling about traditional Irish music . . . he is always interesting and authoritative on the subject of death.”

—Terence Winch,Wilson Quarterly

Booking Passage was chosen by the Library of Michigan as a 2006 Michigan Notable Book. “In Booking Passage, Thomas Lynch’s ‘romance with words,’ realized as an altar boy responding in Latin, becomes a full-blown love affair in his prose about Ireland and fellow poets and what he thinks of the Church. His style has energy that takes my breath away it’s so fresh and unexpected.”

—Elmore Leonard

“With Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans, Tom Lynch proves yet again why he is one of the most important writers in the English language. Whether writing of the wonders of indoor plumbing added to his ancestral home in County Clare, or of a solemn funeral procession in the American desert southwest, or of a young man’s quest for a job in Dublin, Mr. Lynch reveals time and again, in a voice riven with joy and sorrow and, above all, wisdom, what it means not just to be American or Irish, but human. I wish Tom Lynch wrote more books, because no matter what he writes—whether essays or poems—I am made better for it.”

—Bret Lott, author of A Song I Knew by Heart and Jewel

“Thomas Lynch is one of our indispensable essayists, a master of skeptical realism and tragicomic relief. The true subject of this generous, rowdy book is Lynch’s own wonderful mind, as it bobs and weaves, making connections between the personal and the tribal, history and the present moment, in language that is gorgeous and consistently apt.”

—Phillip Lopate, author of Getting Personal

and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan “Booking Passage touches on Irish-American themes which are so fundamental that one wonders why they haven’t been explored this revealingly until now. But, then, who else could match Thomas Lynch’s perfect balance of American buoyancy and deflating (not to mention self-disparaging) Irish wit, tempering Irish doom with American optimism, romantic Irishness with American realism? The result is a book precisely true to the temperament and temperature of Irish-American relations, the annals of a master.”

—Dennis O’Driscoll