A sobering read. Famine also gives an interesting perspective on Irish history. It misses 5 stars only for the ending in which the means of escape from the horrors of their daily life for the 'hero' and 'heroine' of the story seemsed altoghether too easy and at odds with the pain and difficulty of the rest of the book. The ending was a little too neat and easy in a book portraying a reality that was anything but this. ( )

I first read this book when I was touring Ireland and was in Westport on the coast of the west of Ireland, it brought real meaning to what I saw and the recent history in Ireland. A really good read truely believeable, genuine reality. ( )

A panoramic story of the Great Famine in Ireland during the 1840s. Like the Holocaust, immensely difficult subject matter to treat as fiction, but O'Flaherty brings it off. ( )