Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

An Irish Country Village

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Welcome to the Village of Ballybucklebo. Come and say hello to Dr. O'Reilly's odd-as-two-left feet patients, his housekeeper, Mrs. "Kinky" Kinkaid, and O'Reilly's pets, Arthur Guinness, the beer-swilling black Lab and Lady MacBeth, the demonically possessed white cat. And of course, to young Dr. Barry Laverty. After Barry's first month as an assistant to crusty Dr. O'Reilly, he has been offered a permanent spot. But Laverty's excitement is dashed when one of his patients unexpectedly dies. The damage to his reputation is enormous, and he and O'Reilly must work to resolve the question of Barry's responsibility for the death. They also have to figure out how to save the four-hundred-year-old village pub. Plans are afoot to not renew the hundred-year lease and instead transform the old pub into a sparkling new tourist trap. To make matters even worse, Patricia Spence, the love of Barry's life, announces she is trying to win a scholarship to distant Cambridge University, all the way in England.... Beautifully evocative of a gentler, simpler time, Patrick Taylor's An Irish Country Village magically captures the charm, wit, and ribald humor of a vanished Irish countryside and its people.

  • Creators

  • Series

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This warm story is a sequel to the popular AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR and offers listeners the same winsome yet troublesome villagers as the first novel. Narrator John Keating has a gift for presenting Irish accents that are both authentic and comprehensible. This vocal clarity matters because there is so much folksy humor one shouldn't miss. In this story Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly has a new assistant, who must prove his abilities to the people of Ballybucklebo--and to himself. Like the Herriot books, this is filled with the daily problems of patients, which are not always medical. The book was written by a doctor in Bangor, County Down, and is read flawlessly by Keating. D.L.G. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 12, 2007
      This highly readable sequel to An Irish Country Doctor
      follows the trials and exultations of Dr. Barry Laverty as he begins his assistantship to Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly in Balleybucklebo, a fictional Irish Ulster village of the 1960s. Barry loves his diverse work—conjunctivitis to obstetrics—and his provincial patients are keen on folk wisdom and proverbs. He grows fond and admiring of his gruff, imposing senior colleague, who heals bodies and also attacks social maladies, like the greedy local councilor who threatens to turn the Black Swan, a local pub, into a tourist trap. Meanwhile, Barry’s infatuation with plucky engineering student Patricia Spence thickens, though her ambition may land her a scholarship that would lure her to Cambridge. And then there’s the matter of a potential career-ending lawsuit by a recent widow whose husband died after Barry botched a diagnosis. Detailed medical procedures of the era are fascinating to a modern reader, though Taylor sometimes throws in too much play-by-play. The book, with its spot-on dialects (a glossary is included for those who don’t know what, say, “soft hand under a duck” means) and neatly tied endings, largely succeeds as light entertainment.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading