An Irish doctor in peace and at war

Starred Review. The ninth book in the series that started with An Irish Country Doctor flashes back to a time before Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly became the medical mainstay in the village of Ballybucklebo. World War II has begun and Dr. Reilly is assigned the battleship HMS Warspite. Surgeon Lieutenant O'Reilly quickly learns the hardships of medicine at sea, tending to the thousand-man crew and casualties from other nearby ships. He serves under a seasoned naval doctor from whom he picks up much more than what was in his medical textbooks. He pines for his fiancee, midwife Deirdre Macwhinney, and has hopes of marrying her when he leaves the ship to attend a trauma medicine course in Scotland. In current-day Ballybucklebo, O'Reilly's life has turned out quite differently. He treats the odd outbreak of measles, encounters an exotic Mediterranean virus, and delivers the local babies when the village midwife is too busy. Married to Kitty, his long-ago love (before Deirdre), O'Reilly has settled into the comfortable life of a small-town doctor. As in the previous O'Reilly books, the story deftly shifts back and forth from the present to the past, weaving depth and texture into the lives of Dr. and Mrs. O'Reilly and the villagers around them. VERDICT This is a charming addition to the delightful series by Ulster doctor-turned-novelist Taylor. Deeply steeped in Irish country life and meticulous in detail, the story is the perfect companion for a comfy fire and a cup of tea or a pint of bitter. Think James Herriott without the animals. A totally wonderful read!-Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Taylor (Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor, 2013, etc.) reminds fans that even in the peaceable kingdom of County Antrim and County Down, good men shed blood when Hitler infected Europe. Taylor moves back and forth between 1960s Northern Ireland and the wartime travails of 1939-40, with minor emergencies and mysterious illnesses at home and terrifying adventures at sea. In 1966, Dr. Fingal O'Reilly is married to his first love, Kitty, but the book's passionate romance comes as Fingal recalls his wartime courtship of first wife Deirdre, a nurse midwife in training. Taylor's gift is dialect (there's a glossary)"a shmall little minute to toast and butter the bramback"and sentences end with "so" or "bye." When the war starts, Fingal is assigned to the battleship HMS Warspite as medical officer. Covering Royal Navy battles at Westfjord in Norway and later in the Mediterranean off Italy, Taylor's descriptive powers are as mighty as Warspite's 15-inch naval rifles"[h]e had to grab onto a handrail...the noise that surrounded him like an impenetrable wall and by its force seemed to be crushing his chest." At Warspite's new home port of Alexandria, Taylor offers a prcis on the last days of the gin-and-tonic empire as world war washed over ancient Egypt. There, lonely Fingal is tempted with a love affair. As Warspite sails, characters step aboard, most compelling the medical detachment's stalwart leader, Surgeon Cmdr. Wilcoxson, and Tom Laverty, ship's navigator and father of Fingal's future partner, each of whom support Fingal, wide-eyed country doctor, who shakily steps into operating theaters where emergency amputations and bloody trepanning are de rigueur. But Fingal's true domain is Ireland's green-drenched landscape, "coarse marram grass hillocks that lay between the glen and the shingly shore," with familiar Ballybucklebo characters like young partner Barry, medical student Jenny, and his newly married housekeeper, Kinky. With humor and pithy human insights, Taylor continues pleasing readers with the escapades of Dr. Fingal Flatherie O'Reilly. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The ninth book in the series that started with An Irish Country Doctor flashes back to a time before Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly became the medical mainstay in the village of Ballybucklebo. World War II has begun and Dr. Reilly is assigned the battleship HMS Warspite. Surgeon Lieutenant O'Reilly quickly learns the hardships of medicine at sea, tending to the thousand-man crew and casualties from other nearby ships. He serves under a seasoned naval doctor from whom he picks up much more than what was in his medical textbooks. He pines for his fiancée, midwife Deirdre Macwhinney, and has hopes of marrying her when he leaves the ship to attend a trauma medicine course in Scotland. In current-day Ballybucklebo, O'Reilly's life has turned out quite differently. He treats the odd outbreak of measles, encounters an exotic Mediterranean virus, and delivers the local babies when the village midwife is too busy. Married to Kitty, his long-ago love (before Deirdre), O'Reilly has settled into the comfortable life of a small-town doctor. As in the previous O'Reilly books, the story deftly shifts back and forth from the present to the past, weaving depth and texture into the lives of Dr. and Mrs. O'Reilly and the villagers around them. VERDICT This is a charming addition to the delightful series by Ulster doctor-turned-novelist Taylor. Deeply steeped in Irish country life and meticulous in detail, the story is the perfect companion for a comfy fire and a cup of tea or a pint of bitter. Think James Herriott without the animals. A totally wonderful read!—Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA