SOURCE: Craig, Patricia. “The Reel World.” New Statesman and Society 9, no. 405 (31 May 1996): 37, 39.

In the following review, Craig describes how Carson writes about more than Irish traditional music in Last Night's Fun.

There is a traditional Irish tune called “Last Night's Fun”, and [Carson's Last Night's Fun] is a book about Irish traditional music. However, in the assured hands of Ciaran Carson, poet and flute-player, the narrative eases and teases its way into all kinds of nerve centres, sidetracks and fluent disquisitions.

What we get is a series of musings, not only on music but on innumerable fragments and figments retrieved from the past: anecdotes from musicians and singers, the dereliction on Arranmore island, the Irish fried egg, the manufacture of poitin, many mornings after the night before. One thing exuberantly leads to another: being in tune, for example, has some connection with being attuned to the spirit of...