"In Belfast, in 1942, lived Belle, a mill girl with a gift. Every morning at work, she enthralled people with the story of the film she saw last night." Frank Delaney's novels seem to begin quietly - and then suddenly, within pages, the story has drawn you deep into its net. At last, Gone with the Wind has come to the Ritz, and the Rufus Street mill-women have taken up a collection to send their own storytelling star to the best seat. Next day, as Belle brings the gold and magic of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable to the grim rows of looms, a handsome newcomer watches silently from a doorway. Thus, Juliet meets her Romeo, Belle is a Protestant: the stranger, from the south, a Catholic. The Belfast Telegraph, reporting the courtroom sensations, said afterwards, "She could tell the pictures better than the silver screen itself - but then along came a man with a silver tongue..." In this, the second of five novels about Ireland, Frank Delaney provides the high drama, humour, sharply-observed dialogue and great poignancy that brought such acclaim to his first novel, The Sins of the Mothers. Once more, Delaney writes on several levels. Telling the Pictures is a powergful exhibition of sheer storytelling: but in its understanding of injustice, it also defines the prejudices - on both sides - that dominate and infect Belfast life fifty years on.

Fiction Saga Belfast 1942