SOURCE: Reale, Michelle. Review of Shamrock Tea, by Ciaran Carson. Review of Contemporary Fiction 22, no. 3 (fall 2002): 153-54.

In the following review, Reale lauds Carson's Shamrock Tea and points out that it is the novel's journey, not its destination, that matters.

Smoke it or drink it; the effects are the same. Shamrock tea induces magical flights of fancy and the ability to see colors, transcend time, consort with saints, and imagine worlds beyond reality. Belfast writer Ciaran Carson writes with a modernist's sensibility in the tradition of the greatest of the genre, such as Italo Calvino. The Arnolfini Portrait by the great Flemish artist van Eyck is the centerpiece of [Shamrock Tea,] this almost psychedelic adventure and the portal through which shamrock tea and untold adventures can be experienced. The young Carson, his uncle Celestine, and his cousin Berenice begin the journey and are joined by Ludwig Wittgenstein, a...