Reviews for Celtic Fairy Tales

The average rating for Celtic Fairy Tales based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-11-29 00:00:00 Patrick Hennessy I read this several years ago and my attention was brought back to it by the novel I'm currently reading. I'd say this is a good book to read if you are interested in some of the history of America's political past and paths that have brought us to the place we find ourselves today. This of course a fictional version of history but you get a relatively accurate look at some of the basic ideas of the groups discussed and of course the people involved. Of course these are subjective looks but still worth while if you're interested. In the book I'm reading now the heavily fictionalized version of history shows more of the author's ideas that it does history. Here we get at least an attempt to show how the movements involved in the story were not as far out or strange as many view them now. They did however (especially in the case of The John Birch Society) end up the victim of their own hard line views and tendency to run off in odd directions. So I'd say if you can open your mind and realize that this is fiction, I'd recommend it.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-23 00:00:00 Kathleen Mathis This novel was a clever idea. WFB portrayed two historical tangents from conventional conservatism by having the reader see them through the eyes of devotees who eventually are disillusioned by the shortcomings of these philosophies. One was a member of the John Birch Society and one was a staff member who worked for Ayn Rand and helped her in the promotion of Objectivism. Both characters were very likable and Buckley has them fall in love and grapple with each other's political and philosophical perspectives. It is anti-Communist and pro-Capitalist throughout, but shows how Robert Welch and Ayn Rand both threatened to ruin the gains being made by more mainline right-wingers like Barry Goldwater and Buckley himself. I'm sure the author had fun showing the ugly side of both of these extremists, because both had despised WFB as the embodiment of a conservatism that demanded that faith and reason both operate in unison without abandoning the other. (Which is the fault of each of these weird Uncle members of the conservative family.) The novel begins with the failed uprising to throw off Soviet influence in Hungary and ends shortly after Goldwater's defeat. The novel was strong and was a great story that kept me captivated until the Goldwater era when the history seems to out-shout the story. If the whole book had kept the pace and interest of the first two-thirds, I would have given it the full five stars.