This new edition of Ian Cochrane’s F for Ferg was launched with a panel discussion of Cochrane’s work at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace. Maurice Leitch, Ian Cochrane’s friend and fellow novelist, explains the difference when he pointed out that in their youth he and Ian would have worked for farmers such as the Heaneys. Cochrane’s characters live among the factories, mills and housing estates of small Ulster villages. Cochrane’s characters do not overlook the absurd conformity around them nor, above all, do they accept the hypocrisies of Ulster’s religion. Cochrane’s fictional villages are in Ulster’s Bible belt and he was most influenced by writers of another Bible belt, the American south.

Source: The Irish Times March 31, 2018 05:03 UTC