Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 389 - 1 Se[tember 2007
Irish Fiction
Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan
Trade Paperback with dustjacket; 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 210 pages
Julius Winsome lives in a cabin in the hunting heartland of the Maine woods, with only his books and his dog for company. That is until the morning he finds that his dog has been shot dead, and not by accident. From this starting point, Gerard Donovan weaves an extraordinary tale that explores ideas of revenge and the threat of the wild, but one that is also a tender and heartbreaking paean to lost love. Narrated by the unforgettable voice of Julius himself - at once compassionate, vulnerable and threatening - it reads like a timeless, lost classic.
I Predict a Riot by Colin Bateman
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 530 pages [Add To Basket]
Colin Bateman's hugely witty new novel will take you to the darker corners of a city bursting with intrigue, extortion, greed, love, murder, carrot cake and every twist, turn and outrage of human behaviour in between. A city moves in mysterious ways. Walter has a rubbish job but so has Margaret, a security guard at Primark, and when they meet through a dating agency, neither is who they seem. Margaret's married for a start and Walter's encounter with her husband Billy leaves him black and blue. Billy's a dodgy accountant for politician and racketeer (who can tell them apart?) Pink Harrison who has fingers in so many pies he's about to get them burnt. Superintendent James Mallow, CID, a hardened copper at the end of his career, is determined to nail Pink and when a dismembered body is discovered, Mallow thinks he's got his man. Meanwhile Redmond O'Boyle, professional terrorist and occasional birdwatcher, is languishing in a Columbian jail and his only way out is to kill himself and trust in reincarnation. The delicate threads of the city weave and interweave until its clear somebody's got something on somebody else.
12:23. Paris. 31st August 1997 by Eoin McNamee
Trade Paperback; 16 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 235 pages
It's August 1997. As the century grinds to a close, Diana Spencer and her Egyptian lover are visiting Paris. An international fixer puts a team in place to watch the Princess. Former Special Branch man John Harper is recruited as part of the team. Ritz Hotel Deputy Director of Security Henri Paul and paparazzo supreme James Andanson are their surveillance targets. But they are not the only ones watching Spencer, and soon much more sinister forces are on the move...
The Companion by Lorcan Roche
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 312 pages [Add To Basket]
In this subversive, comic extravaganza, Dublin-born Trevor washes up in New York as companion to Ed, an impossibly rich, terminally ill young man. A bizarre, twisted friendship develops between the co-dependents but we are also introduced to Ed's bed-ridden, morbidly obese, sexually perverse mother; his guilt-ridden father, the Judge, who rarely emerges from his dusty office; the cold-hearted physiotherapist on whom Trevor becomes fixated, and the pot-smoking Caribbean chef who becomes his confidante. In this tale of obsession, control and madness, the dynamics of love, patience and understanding are explored. Upbeat, defiant, dark and morally ambiguous, this effervescent narrative enters the mind of the film-school dropout whose story it tells. An Irish take on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "A Confederacy of Dunces", it announces an exciting new talent in Irish literature.
According to Luke by Gerard Stembridge
Paperback; 9 Euro / 15 USD / 7 UK; 236 pages
Now that their children are almost reared, Frank and Norma Reid can congratulate themselves on a job well done - the eldest married and settled in their second favourite city, New York; their first boy in a marvellous job in the National Museum, the younger girl with a truly inspiring (if exhausting) passion for social justice, and the baby - well, he may be young, but he shows every sign of being quite the performer, like his Dad. They could pat each other on the back - thirty-odd years of happy marriage is not to be sneezed at - if it wasn't for a vindictive investigation into Frank's legal career. Suddenly, their lovely family starts to behave very strangely, and the elder son, Luke, is worst of all: when it comes to his father's alleged misdemeanours, he appoints himself judge, jury and executioner. And it looks like he will stop at nothing to achieve his version of justice ...
The Glass Room by Kate Holmquist
Paperback; 9 Euro / 15 USD / 7 UK; 333 pages
On the morning of her thirty-seventh birthday, Louisa Maguire takes a long hard look at her life and doesn't much like what she sees. Her mother didn't want her. Her husband is a womanizer. Her best friend keeps trying to seduce her. All she has left are her two beloved children, a hectic career photographing Dublin's beautiful people...and a longing to turn back time and start all over again. When two long-forgotten faces turn up in her studio, Louisa's mind is flooded with memories of her bohemian childhood in New York and of a summer in the Hamptons when she was seventeen. When her first love also arrives in Dublin, Louisa's life is turned upside-down and she is forced to confront the devastating truth about why she has always put security before passion and sex before love.
The Midnight Choir by Gene Kerrigan
Paperback; 10 Euro / 14 USD / 7 UK; 340 pages [Add To Basket]
Tense and expertly plotted, "The Midnight Choir" is a stunning portrayal of life on the edge of society. This title is set in Dublin. Joshua Boyce watches jewellers from a rented flat across the road, noting the comings and goings as he plans a job; Dixie Peyton, desperate for cash, attempts to mug an American tourist, threatening him with a syringe purporting to contain HIV-infected blood; Detective Inspector Synott calls on an alleged rape suspect, already convinced of the boy's guilt; gangland leader Lar MacKendrick is working out, getting back in shape after brother Jo-Jo was viciously murdered. Meanwhile in Galway, Garda Joe Mills apprehends a jumper from a pub roof and discovers that the man is covered in dried blood. In "Little Criminals", Kerrigan gave a small insight into a previously unseen underworld. In "The Midnight Choir", that world explodes. We enter a gritty landscape of characters with questionable and contrary ideals; all struggling to survive in a time and place that's constantly knocking them back. Everyone has an axe to grind; criminals and police alike live by their own code, with both sides resorting to desperate measures as a means to an end. Law enforcement is often murky, and getting away with it is everything, no matter which side you're on. "The Midnight Choir" is a magnificent accomplishment, a powerful and intricate novel, driven to the last page at a tremendous pace by an original voice.
Zoli by Colm McCann
Paperback; 10 Euro / 14 USD / 7 UK; 364 pages [Add To Basket]
The novel begins in Czechoslovakia in the early 1930s when Zoli, a young Roma girl, is six years old. The fascist Hlinka guards had driven most of her people out onto the frozen lake and forced them to stay there until the spring, when the ice cracked and everyone drowned - Zoli's parents, brothers and sisters. Now she and her grandfather head off in search of a 'company'. Zoli teaches herself to read and write and becomes a singer, a privileged position in a gypsy company as they are viewed as the guardians of gypsy tradition. But Zoli is different because she secretly writes down some of her songs. With the rise of the Nazis, the suppression of the gypsies intensifies. The war ends when Zoli is 16 and with the spread of socialism, the Roma are suddenly regarded as 'comrades' again. Zoli meets Stephen Swann, a man with whom she will have a passionate affair, but who will also betray her. He persuades Zoli to publish some of her work. But when the government try to use Zoli to help them in their plan to 'settle' gypsies, her community turns against her. They condemn her to 'Pollution for Life', which means she is exiled forever. She begins a journey that will eventually lead her to Italy and a new life. Zoli is based very loosely on the true story of the Gypsy poet, Papsuza, who was sentenced to a Life of Pollution by her fellow Roma when a Polish intellectual published her poems. But Colum has turned this into so much more - it's a brilliantly written work that brings the culture and the time to life.
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry
Paperback; 12 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK [Add To Basket]
Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, however, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when, having witnessed the murder of a fellow RIC policeman, he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, his friends, family and beloved girl, Viv. What follows is the story of this flight, his subsequent wanderings, and the haunting pull of home that always afflicts him. Tender, witty, troubling and tragic, "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty" tells the secret history of a lost man.
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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