Australian Records His Irish Odyssey : UCI Prof. Thomas Keneally says his purpose in ‘Now and In Time to Be’ was to look at the land of his ancestors without sentimentality.

“If you only read one book on Ireland, please make sure that it is this one, it might even change your perception and attitudes.”

So says the Belfast Telegram about “Now and In Time to Be: Ireland and the Irish” (W. W. Norton & Company; $45), Australian novelist Thomas Keneally’s illustrated book chronicling his return to the land of his ancestors.

Keneally, the award-winning author of “Schindler’s List” and 11 other novels, is a distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at UC Irvine, where he is on the faculty of the nationally acclaimed graduate Program in Writing.

Illustrated with evocative color photographs by English photographer Patrick Prendergast, “Now and In Time to Be” offers Keneally’s observations on a range of subjects including Irish history, the present-day struggles in Ulster, the place of Catholicism in national life and “the state of the Irish narrative gift.”

“We had a wonderful launch (for the book) in New York a couple of weeks ago at the Irish Consulate General, and it was great fun,” Keneally said in his cheerful Down-Under accent. “Writing the book was a good experience because it gave me a mandate to go all ‘round Ireland to places that I’ve never had time to go to before.”

Donegal, for example.

“I have always tried to get to Donegal in the past,” Keneally said. “Ireland is just a small country, but you can’t cover much ground in a day because people talk to you, and there’s so much to see. There are prehistoric ruins and New Stone Age tombs, forts and structures of various kinds. . . . Basically, you’re doing well in Ireland if you can do 80 miles a day, constructively, with seeing what you want to see.”

Keneally said his purpose in writing the book was “to look at Ireland squarely and try to overcome the sentimentality that people who are of Irish descent feel toward Ireland. But still, even as you fight that sentimentality, you have to acknowledge that it is a remarkable place and these are remarkable people.”

For one thing, he said, “of all English-speaking countries it’s the only place where history is really important in the minds of the people, and it is the most eloquent English-speaking country on Earth. They can also snow you with their charm if they choose to. This has to be acknowledged, but Ireland also has the iron hand of the church and, of course, the savagery in the north.”

Like anyone of Irish descent, Keneally said, “I had some tales of the dispersed Irish that I wanted to tell. I just took all the mythology that we all get from our grandparents and matched it up against the charming and often brutal reality of Ireland. It is an extraordinarily wonderful and blighted country.”

Keneally, who has a daughter living in Dublin, said it’s “very easy to travel in Ireland.”

“The Irish, without sentimentalizing them, are natural narrators, and they spend a lot of time on narration--they go into side stories and subplots,” he said. “They don’t give it to you in 25 words--they can’t give it to you in 25 words. It means the breakfast might be late or you might miss your bus, but it’s very valuable for the travel writers.”

A few months ago, Simon & Schuster published Keneally’s examination of the American Southwest, “The Place Where Souls Are Born: A Journey Into the American Southwest.”

But despite this “spate” of travel books, Keneally doesn’t intend to forge a new career as a travel writer.

“I’ve got none planned at the moment,” he said, adding that he has a new novel due out early next year and is nearing completion on yet another novel.

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He’s gone from serving as associate pastor at St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in Tustin in the ‘60s to performing Hugh Hefner’s marriage ceremony at the Playboy Mansion in 1989.

Now former priest Charles D. Ara, a Cerritos marriage, family and child counselor, has written and self-published a book on happy relationships: “The Grass Is Greener . . . Where It’s Watered.” (E.J. Publishing; $12.95).

Included in the slim paperback, which is subtitled “All A’s for a Successful Relationship,” are 16 guidelines for positive communication with your mate, nine signs of a successful relationship, 10 steps to change fault-finding into love-finding and six steps in creative problem-solving.

The book is the result of Ara’s 36 years of experience in marriage counseling. But Ara, who has been married 21 years and has five children, says he got the idea for the book after officiating at the marriage of Hefner and Kimberly Faye Conrad on the grounds of Hefner’s Holmby Hills estate.

“A lot of people asked me if I thought the Hefner marriage would last,” Ara said. “I say like any marriage it’ll last if they take care of the relationship and their love. I wrote this book in response to those questions and to help every married couple make their marriage last by taking care of their love by practicing the A’s of successful marriages.”

During the Hefner wedding ceremony, Ara explained, “I had given Hefner and his wife four A’s to practice every day: appreciation, attention, affection and acceptance.” By following those guidelines, Ara believes, a successful marriage is virtually guaranteed.

“But they both have to do it; it can’t just be one,” he said. “It’s like you can’t clap with one hand and you can’t fly an airplane with one wing. If they both (practice the guidelines), they’re going to make it.”

Ara, who regards himself an ordained Catholic minister and thus empowered by the state to perform weddings, continues to perform nondenominational weddings throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties. He was asked to conduct the Hefner ceremony after the Playboy tycoon and his fiancee saw him marry another couple in Malibu.

In fact, the “The Grass Is Greener . . . Where It’s Watered” title also grew out of a phrase he used during the Hefner wedding ceremony.

He asked the high-profile couple, “How should you care for your love?” Then he answered for them: “Very carefully. You have to remember that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, the grass is greener where it is watered.”

“Which means, really, water your love,” Ara explained. “Like anything precious in life you can lose it if you don’t take care of it very carefully.”

Ara’s book is available by calling (714) 633-4132.

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“A Hundred Feelings,” a series of interconnected stories that explore the Chinese-American experience in California’s Central Valley, has been published by Pacific Writers Press of Tustin.

The paperback book ($12.95), by Ethel Quon of San Diego, is available at Courtyard Books in Tustin and also can be ordered through other bookstores.

“A Hundred Feelings” is the fifth title published by Pacific Writers Press, a small independent press founded in 1987 and devoted to publishing talented unknown writers.

The new book’s publication was made possible in part by grants from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Novelist Alejandro Morales, president of Pacific Writers Press and owner of Courtyard Books, said he was impressed by Quon’s “view of the Asian-American experience and the struggles of Chinese-Americans working toward assimilating (while) at the same time maintaining some of their culture.”

Morales, a UC Irvine professor of U.S. Latino and Latin American literature, describes Quon as “a long, longtime resident of California. She represents a voice that we don’t hear from very much. Most of the people that are published are younger writers.”