Read Ireland Book News - Issue 4
<-- [Back To Main Menu] Five New Novels
1. Empire State by Colin Bateman (hardback; 16.99 Irish pounds/27 US dollars approximately) [Add To Basket]
Possibly because it's been tough living with the same name as a Supremes song, possibly because of the indelible horror of one night in his Northern Irish past, Nathan Jones is a man with a temper.
When his girlfriend Lisa decides she has had enough of him and his moods, Nathan is left on his own in the liveliest, loneliest city in the world - New York - with just his new job for company.
The job, however, is about to get interesting. Nathan is a security guard at the Empire State Building, recently acquired by the world's richest man, Michael Tate, and about to the visited by the world's (second) most powerful man, President of the United States, Michael Keneally.
Also converging on the Empire are an army of FBI men and one George Burley of Alabama, a white supremacist with the President at the top of his assassination Top Ten.
Will Empire veterans Sam McClintock get to meet the President? Will Tate wear a tie? Will Burley's blowpipe work? Will the First Lady find a way to get her first baby? Will Lisa find happiness with drag queen Alexis Mascara?
The stage is set for a vintage Bateman adventure, which takes the world of politics - international, racial and sexual - and holds it hostage atop the most famous building on Earth.
Colin Bateman's previous novels - Divorcing Jack, Cycle of Violence, and Off Wee Sweetie Mice and Men - are all available in paperback editions priced around 6.99 Irish pounds each (11 US dollars aprox).
2. Father's Music by Dermot Bolger (hardback; 16.99 Irish pounds/27 US aprox) [Add To Basket]
Music is the pulse of Tracey Evans's life, its beat luring her through dance clubs and rave parties. A twenty-two year-old London college drop-our, she laps up the late night, Ecstasy-induced pleasures the city offers the free-spirited. Yet behind her tough street-wisdom and promiscuity, there are layers of vulnerability and self-loathing. Her spirit is still in thrall to a past she cannot quit and to memories she cannon obliterate, even by living her life on a knife-edge of risk.
That risk has never been greater than when she enters into an uninhibited world of sexual games and fantasies with Luke Duggan, a married Irish businessman, based in London. At once loathsome and tender, the chamelion-like Luke is torn apart by the alternating currents of his infamous Dublin criminal family, from whom he has tired to distance himself.
When family responsibilities force Luke to return to Dublin, taking Tracey with him, the thrilling games of risk and chance take a sinister turn. It is her first visit to Ireland, except for a brief childhood excursion with her mother to seek her father, a wandering traditional musician from Donegal who vanished after Tracey's birth. The traumatic memories of that journey now return, even stronger, as Tracey tries to thread a path through the dangerous criminal netherworld of a drug-ridden city, primed to explode.
In this masterful psychological thriller, the author has fashioned a compelling portrait of a young woman's search for truth is a sea of moral ambiguity, where she can be certain of nothing, least of all her own feelings.
Dermot Bolger's previous novels - Night Shift, The Woman's Daughter, The Journey Home, Emily's Shoes and A Second Life - are all available in paperback priced around 6.99 Irish pounds each (11 US aprox).
3. Headbanger by Hugo Hamilton (hardback; 12.99 Irish pounds/20 US dollars aprox) [Add To Basket]
His views on golf were well known. It was for whackos. Golf cars, DIY, crime and culture were all signs of social and ecological disaster. The world was committing suicide with MTV droning in the background. And as for art, it was nothing but pollution. There was too much junk being created already. Now that his wife, Carmel, had decided to take up painting, it looked like everything had to be trapped on canvas. Why did they have to keep improving things? Why couldn't people just leave the world alone?
The city was out of control. Crime was Ireland's biggest growth industry. But Pat Coyne was the cop who was going to sort the place out. He was a crusader. And it was no accident that he was nicknamed "Mr Suicide", because he would leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of Drummer Cunningham, the notorious crime king of Dublin. Coyne was going to deal with them all, even if it meant disaster for himself and his family.
Hugo Hamilton's collection of short stories - Dublin Where the Palm Trees Grow - is available in paperback priced at 9.99 Irish pounds (16 US aprox).
4. Down by the River by Edna O'Brien (hardback; 15.99 Irish pounds/25 US dollars aprox) [Add To Basket]
'The road silent, somnolent yet with a speech of its own, speaking back to them, father and child, through trappings of sun and fretted verdure, speaking of the old mutinies and a fresh crime mounting in the blood.'
So begins Edna O'Brien's new novel. The consequences of that crime are far reaching. For the girl, her family and the conflicting mores of the land. The novel explores the dark and umbilical aspects of family ties. As Mary, the young heroine, tries to conceal, then escape her fate, she finds herself driven into the emotional styx. As her private = and redeemable - tragedy is dragged into the public realm, her power of decision is usurped by militant factions on all sides.
In this novel, the author is at the peak of her narrative powers. Her gift for describing extremes of emotional conflict is at its most searing and poetic. Her prose churns the heart with its potent rhythms as she demonstrates how one's person's history can be subsumed by church and state.
Here at once is a story relevant to the times of Ireland today while encompassing age-old and primal themes.
Many of Edna O'Brien's previous works - too numerous to list here - remain available in paperback editions priced between 5 and 10 Irish pounds. They are all listed on the Web Site.
5. Waiting for the Healer by Eamonn Sweeney (hardback; 14.99 Irish pounds/24 US dollars aprox) [Add To Basket]
Paul Kelly is the manager of a successful pub in Brixton who has escaped his home in Ireland and has attempted to build a new life for himself in London. But his life has become a constant drunken binge as he grapples with the tragedy of his wife's death and tries to bring up his daughter, Kaya. When Paul's brother, Johnny, is murdered, he is forced to return with Kaya to Rathbawn, the town where he grew up.
Bumper Reilly, whose brother has also been killed, drags Paul with him through the dark side of Rathbawn's small town underworld in order to discover the truth behind the murders. They undertake an extraordinary and often comic investigation, which forces Paul to confront the legacy of his past and the become implicated in Bumper's, and Rathbawn's dangerous notions of revenge.
But all Paul is waiting for is the hour when the pubs open and he can get his healer ... Told is a wild, drunken narrative, this first novel is a potent brew of the comic and the tragic, written with irresistible energy and humour. It introduces a fine and exciting new talent.
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