The Irish Annals of New Zealand is essentially a Joycean tour-de-force through New Zealand's history from the Irish rather than the usual English point of view. However, as well as historical facts the novel incorporates many other linguistic and language conceits and concepts. The story begins with the main character falling from a train, having opened the wrong door because he is drunk. He lies dying alone in the falling snow of the central North Island. During the course of the novel he is visited by several of his ancestors, Irish and Maori, who tell him about his life. He also turns into other life forms. Straight was adapted for the theatre and reviews of the play are below the reviews of the book.

Responses to Michael O'Leary's novel The Irish Annals of New Zealand

The Irish Annals of New Zealand is from the other side of the fence, mixing the stories of the two rebel cultures in this country - the Irish and the Maori'.

Richard Langston, Dominion Sunday Times, 10 March 1991

'Both a long cry of social maladjustment and a virtuoso manipulation of word associations, this novel makes a tuneful medley out of ordinary everyday speech'.

David Eggleton, Otago Daily Times 1992

'The music was witty, inventive, altogether a piece with the other elements of a production crammed with physical and verbal jokes, wordplay in several languages, pratfalls and profundities, and passages of real pathos'.

Martyn Sanderson, Kapiti Observer, 12 February 2001

[review of the play Irish Annals of Aotearoa by Simon O'Connor based on O'Leary's The Irish Annals of New Zealand - the play was directed by David O'Donnell with music direction by Chris O'Connor, for which he won Best Original Music at the Chapman Tripp Awards 2001 for his work on the play Irish Annals of Aotearoa. The play was also nominated for several other Chapman Tripp Awards in 2001].

'a streamlined, sizzling, lunatic play'

Bernadette Hall in Theatre News 2001 [on Irish Annals of Aotearoa]