Read Ireland Book News - Issue 86 - New Irish Fiction
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Tara Road by Maeve Binchy (Paperback; 6.99 IRP / 11.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Tara Road is set in contemporary Dublin and on the Northeast coast of the United States. It is the interlocking story of two women, Ria Lynch and Marilyn Vine, who have never met. Their lives have almost nothing in common. Ria lives in a big ramshackle house in Tara Road, Dublin, which is filled day and night with the family and friends on whom she depends. Marilyn lives in a college town in Connecticut, New England, absorbed in her career, an independent and private woman who is very much her own person. Two more unlikely friends would be hard to find. Yet a chance phone call brings them together and they decide to exchange homes for the summer. Ria goes to America in the hope that the change will give her space and courage to sort out the huge crisis in her life that is threatening to destroy her. Marilyn goes to Ireland to recover in peace and quiet from the tragedy that she keeps secret from the world, little realising that Tara Road will prove to be the least quiet place on earth. They borrow each other's houses, and during the course of that magical summer they find themselves borrowing something of each other's lives and suffering grows into a story of discovery, unexpected friendships and new hope. By the time Ria and Marilyn eventually meet, they find that they have altered the course of each other's lives forever.
Wayward Angel by Elaine Crowley (Hardback; 20.00 IRP / 30.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Growing up in a village outside Dublin, Angel is aware of the way men have started to look at her. But she's not interested in Danny with his lame leg. Nor is she taken with Tommy Maguire in his soldier's uniform, for all his good looks. The boy she loves is Johnny Quinn - but Johnny is training to be a boxer, and he doesn't even seem to have noticed her. When Angel's pursuit of Johnny ends in disaster and disgrace, and she goes to Dublin, she thinks that her life cannot become much worse. But Fortune has only just begun to turn her wheel, and Angel soon finds that she has a lot further to fall before she discovers lasting happiness.
Writing in prose that is as visual as it is evocative, Elaine Crowley conjures early 20th century Dublin with such intimacy that the reader feels as if walking its streets.
Too Little, Too Late by Colette Caddle (Paperback; 6.99 IRP / 11.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Stephenie West is fed up! She has a job in a successful restaurant that she loves but a boss she hates. The only answer seems to be to leave. Amazingly, an opportunity arises to buy him out and she jumps at it. So when her boyfriend Sean lands a job with a software company in Phoenix, Arizona and wants her to go with him, Stephanie is clear about where her loyalties lie … But ghosts from the past have influenced her decision. Can she come to terms with them? And if she does, will it be too little, too late?
Light in the Head by Brian Langan (Paperback; 6.99 IRP / 11.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Luke is born the possessor of heart-stalling magic. He has no words. His is a new language: the dazzling colours and patterns of his imagination made visible. As his bewildered, love-struck parents gradually come to terms with his powers, Luke learns to harness and use his gift. To the media he is literally a godsend. But reporter Jimmy McGinnity and the world of mundane greed are not the only threats to Luke and his unique powers. As he grows, darker forces lurk outside the circle of light his magic creates.
Miss Harrie Elliott by Marian O'Neill (Paperback; 7.99 IRP / 12.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
It's 1937. It feels like a black-and-white movie. Two young girls. Mary, or Em as she now calls herself: just up from the country, shy and rather plain, all at sea in the big city. Harrie: sparkling, worldly wise, full of fun and very beautiful. Em is entranced, and Harrie is generous. Generous with her friendship, her clothes, her lipstick, her confidences … Soon they are meeting at the bandstand for daring lunches, waiting up for each other coming home from dates, and sharing a world of private jokes. Gradually, and very painfully, this apparently sweet and innocent friendship develops into something approaching horror, as Em's obsession with Harrie tears a perfect world apart. Written with great elegance and delicacy.
Mary, Mary by Julie Parsons (Paperback; 6.99 IRP / 11.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book is a gripping psychological thriller set in contemporary Dublin. A phone call late on a hot Dublin evening. An anxious mother, enquiring about her daughter. It she'd said she wasn't coming home … If she'd rung … Then, a week later, the full dreadful story beginning to unfold. The policeman, McLoughlin, watching as the green cover is pulled back from the mortuary slab. The young woman's battered and mutilated body exposed. And for Margaret, the dull, aching realisation that his is not - can never be allowed to be - the end. Margaret is a psychiatrist, recently returned to Dublin after many years abroad. To a city where she once loved and shone. She came back to nurse her dying mother and now her daughter Mary is dead …
The House by the Shore by Mary Joyce (Paperback; 5.99 IRP / 10.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Carrigrua: the scene of Caroline Tremain's troubled Irish childhood thirty years ago. A Georgian mansion on the shore of Lough Derg, where the motherless girl grew up in an atmosphere of half-forgotten memories and half-hidden secrets. Sent back to England under an unexplained cloud, Caroline has been haunted by Carrigrua all her life. Now, returning as an adult, she is determined to resolve a lifetime of suppressed questions. But when she stumbles into a sealed bedroom, Caroline is faced with even more disturbing truths. Written in a wonderfully rich, evocative style, the characters are strongly and vividly drawn and the mystery intriguing in this hugely readable romantic thriller.
The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett (paperback; 8.00 IRP / 12.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is a novel of love and desire and thie blinding effect, set in the Congo at a turning point for Africa. Expatriates loll about their pools in a colonial paradise soon to erupt into chaos; huge crowds are drawn to the charismatic independence leader, Patrice Lumumba - and his rivals; one man sees the cracks appearing around him and struggles to hold on to his lover, his sanity, and ultimately his life.
Gillespie, the outsider, is in Leopoldville for the beautiful Italian, Iries. He is desperate for her love; she is obsessed with the unfolding drama. In a world slipping out of control, gripped by disgust, fear and incomprehension, events threaten to overwhelm him - as does his friendship with the amiable American, Stipe, with his canny driver, Auguste, and through everything Iries, always Iries.
As the mess of corruption and injustice gives way to brutality and murder, Gillespie is finally forced to confront what is happening before his eyes. In subtle, haunting prose, the author captures the complex ricochet between the personal and the political, cruelty, lust and the erotic. This is a courageous novel; it achieves a refined sensibility which leaves the reader emotionally riven.
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