Read Ireland Book News
Issue 103
Irish Fiction
Beloved Stranger by Clare Boylan (Hardback; 16.99 IEP / 22.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Part love story, part thriller, this novel is also an analysis of marriage as the 20th century draws to a close - a changeless institution in a vastly altered world. Dick and Lily have been married for fifty years. He's turned into a sweet old man, and Lily finally believes that her marriage is like an old tune you take for granted but find yourself whistling when you're happy. Until the night she wakes to find her husband's pyjama'd bottom poking out from under the bed. He claims there's an intruder and he's got him in his sights. When she turns on the light he backs out, holding a shotgun and claiming the 'bugger got away when you created a diversion.' This comic incident marks the start of Dick's terrifying plunge into real insanity. For an old-fashioned wife who accepted her partner for better or worse, there is no where left to turn except to her only daughter, Ruth, who has turned her back on emotional commitment in favour of good sex with good friends. She is now forced to penetrate the conspiratorial and chaotic web of her parents' marriage.
The International by Glenn Patterson (9.99 IEP / 13.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
January 1967. In Belfast, an accidental fire in a shopping arcade is big news. There, the last Saturday of the month is much like any other Saturday in the Blue bar of the city's International Hotel. The bar is near empty as the day gets underway, becoming more crammed as people come in from the winter cold. From where he stands, arguing and joking with his fellow barmen, Danny sees a lot: a businessman sweetalking a famous footballer; a councillor being primed to accept a bribe; the lone vigil of Stanley, an aspiring children's entertainer; and Ingrid, mysteriously lingering on the fringes of a wedding party. Although no one realises it, the ordinary days in Belfast are almost over. The next day the International Hotel will host the inaugural meeting of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. Refreshing non-partisan, funny and humane, this timely and important novel takes the reader back to the essential character of Belfast and its people, and reimagines it as the place it once was and still might be.
It's What He Would Have Wanted by Sean Hughes (Paperback; 10.00 IEP / 13.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Shea and Orwell wish they were born to different parents. For a start they name their sons after radical icons of their youth: Shea after Che Guevara and Orwell as is George. But when Shea, now a disaffected, footloose, 30 year-old, discovered his father handing from a light-fitting in the study of their prim New Forest home one Boxing Day, he is determined to find out what caused him to quit. His family is quintessentially comfortable, Blairite and middle-class; his father was a BBC weatherman, who defied his working class routes to achieve celebrity. Who or what could possibly have cast so dark a cloud over their lives? Brutally funny, highly charged and compulsively readable, this novel follows one man's attempt to piece together a world fractured by alienation, paranoia, and conflict. Often moving, elegiac and deeply felt, this is the Irish comic at the height of his considerable humorous story-telling best.
Kneeling at the Alter by Jim Lusby (Paperback; 7.15 IEP / 9.30 USD) [Add To Basket]
This is the third novel in a crime series featuring Detective Inspector McCadden set in Dublin and the Southeast of Ireland. It commences on a Thursday night in October: DI McCadden is hanging around in casualty, waiting for his partner to be fixed up after she drove them into a lamp post to avoid a child. His attention is caught by the little man with the fruit and roses, who doesn't seem to be visiting or waiting for treatment, and is more interested in who comes is than in who leaves. What's he up to? Whatever is it, it is enough to get him beaten up in the hospital car park by a bunch of amateur vigilantes. And enough to involve McCadden in a case which leads ultimately to his discovery that the term 'kneeling at the altar' has more than one meaning.
More Mischief by Kate Thompson (Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 9.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Life is sweet for rising stage and TV soap star, Deirdre O'Dare. But jealous fears, spawned by arch-rival Sophie, that roguish boyfriend Rory is having a Hollywood fling threaten to ruin her happiness. Retreating from Dublin to the hauntingly beautiful west of Ireland to work on a screenplay and lick her wounds, she meets gorgeous Gabriel - straight out of the Diet Coke advert and squire of the local manor. How could a girl possibly refuse? In this moving and wickedly funny tale by the author of It Means Mischief, Deirdre O'Dare learns some painful, enlightening and hilarious lessons about the art of life and love as she comes face to face with the most difficult decision she's ever had to make.
Have Ye No Homes to Go To? By Neville Thompson (Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 9.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
What is going on in the minds of the regulars who line the bar in Paddy Mac's? Tonight all is not as it seems … John Michael is starting out on the road to fame. And he's in love - with another man's wife. Joe Dolan must choose between the two women in his life - his mother or his girlfriend. As for Davey Brady - if he's the stud he reckons he is, why isn't his wife pregnant? But Paul Simmo Simpson is a happy man. The local factory is closing down - music in the ears of a moneylender. Meanwhile, Debbie Collins is lying in the bath … How could she have been so stupid? Judging by what's going down, the sooner Paddy Mac calls 'Have ye no homes to go to?' the better.
Racing the Moon by Terry Prone (Paperback; 7.15 IEP / 9.30 USD) [Add To Basket]
Darcy and Sophia are twins, non-identical but equal, until their fourth birthday silences one and makes a leader of the other. From then on Darcy is conscious of the disadvantages of being a twin, as well as the benefits: it is easy to let Sophia speak - she is the small, pretty, polite one. But Darcy, bigger, lumpier, is locked in silence, defined by her relationship with her twin, taking refuge in rebellion. As the twins grow up in an Ireland that has changed utterly in one generation, they move from a cautious Dublin convent background to international careers, work on different continents, and grow closer through business triumph and family tragedy. Admiring and hating each other to the same degree, their differences always remain more obvious than their similarities. Until both fall for the same man …
Phoenix Irish Short Stories 1999 edited by David Marcus (Paperback; 8.40 IEP / 10.95 USD) [Add To Basket]
This fourth annual anthology of Irish short stories continues to reflect the wide landscape of contemporary Irish fiction. It showcases the best new stories coming out of Ireland - including stories by talented non-Irish writers resident in Ireland and acclaimed Irish writers living abroad. This excellent collection is proof of the healthy state of Irish writing. The complete list of contributors is: Marie Altzinger, John Evans, Judy Kravis, Orla Murphy, Briege Duffaud, Marie Hannigan, Jamie O'Neill, Colum McCann, Eithne Le Goff, Molly McCloskey, Eamon Sweeney, Shane Harrison, Tess Martin, Chuck Kruger, Arnold Fanning, Joseph O'Neill, Sean O'Reilly, Edel Moloney, William Hodder, Michael Taft and Jane S. Flynn.
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