Description
Our lives, it may be argued, are but a collection of moments, ranging from the significant to the trivial, from the bright to the dark, from the heartening to the heartbreaking. These moments are often fleeting but it can be rewarding to catch them, hold them and ponder them. Reflecting on them will trigger a variety of emotions that will help give meaning to our lives.
In ‘Stolen Moments’ former RTE broadcaster and prolific author John Quinn has followed on from the success of his collection ‘Moments’ (2011) with a second volume of brief memories, thoughts and reflections from the contemplation of a spider’s web on the wing mirror of his car which survived a fierce overnight storm to the potential for embarrassment or pride of a child in the presence of a slurry trailer outside a village school as parents collected their children at the end of the school day. The all too short ‘moments’ – nearly a hundred altogether – provide a vivid and as with the slurry trailer, a sometimes-pungent sense of life’s daily insights and revelations which so frequently arise from seemingly mundane and everyday experiences. One poignant encounter the author relates concerns the hug he received from a homeless man whom the author had told of his beloved wife’s Olive’s death six weeks earlier; ‘The seed in your heart shall blossom,’ the man whispered to him and so it has proved to be. The present fine volume is evidence of the continuing fecundity and resilience of the author’s heart.
