Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 185
New Irish Fiction
Blah, Blah Black Sheep by Maggie Gibson
Paperback; 12.99 IEP / 15.50 USD / 10.99 UK / 16.50 EURO; Orion; 278 pages [Add To Basket]Journalist Drew Looney is in a rut, waiting for her job to get better. Then, while covering a mundane deportation, she accidentally stumbles on something far more sinister. Georgina Fitz-Simons has just overcome a flourishing cocaine habit, but not soon enough to stop her falling fowl of gangster Broylan Grillo. The two women find themselves thrown together by circumstance - and then drawn together in adversity as they become increasingly mired in a dark world of drugs, slave labour, money and murder. An ageing Glam rocker, an inconvenient corpse and a Serbia hit man with a face like a pineapple only add to their problems. This is a funny, quirky escapade through the backstreets of Dublin.
Minding Children by William Wall
Paperback; 9.80 IEP / 11.50 USD / 7.99 UK / 12.40 EURO; Sceptre, 288 pages [Add To Basket]Josephine Strane has never known a real family when as a teenager she goes to work for Dr. and Mrs. Casey, caring for Baby Jean. Soon she has made herself so indispensable that when things go wrong she is able to move on with a glowing reference. Then comes an American couple with their small son Robin, who charms everyone with his laughing blue eyes and cheeky ways - the perfect family. What they do not realise is that Josephine is anything by the perfect child-minder.
Retreat by Mary Stanley
Paperback; 9.80 IEP / 11.50 USD / 7.99 UK / 12.40 EURO; Headline, 312 pages [Add To Basket]Retreat: a period of withdrawal from the ordinary activities of daily life in order to meditate on the central truths of faith, to seek a closer union with god … but for the teenage borders at St. Martin's convent school in Dublin some rules are made to be broken - as sixteen year old Mary Oliver discovers to her horror during a confessional. With the help and support of her best friends, Mary survives - but only just. Mary, Kitty, Bernadette, Bridie, and Treasa are five girls from very different backgrounds, united by their need to break out from the often cruel constraints on convent life - and by an experience too awful to talk about until they are adults. Written with passion, insight and humour, this novel is an unforgettable story about friendship and the loss of innocence.
Abby O'Leary by Charlotte Hardy
Paperback; 8.50 IEP / 10.00 USD / 6.99 UK / 10.85 EURO; Piatkus, 537 pages [Add To Basket]This novel is set in 1870s Ireland. The country is gripped by the struggle between landlords and tenants. To save her family from being evicted from their farm, naïve seventeen-year-old Abby O'Leary hopes to talk their Anglo-Irish landlord into a postponement of the rent. Instead of their landlord, however, she meets his son - and what does he care for the tenants' problems with this beautiful girl before him? Her reputation in shreds, Abby flees to London, where no one knows her. There she meets a man who gives her a fresh start in life. Transformed from farm girl to respected lady, Abby feels content for the first time in a long while. Yet her troubles are only just beginning …
Water Sign by Kieron Connolly
Paperback; 7.99 IEP / 9.00 USD / 7.00 UK / 8.90 EURO; Marino [Add To Basket]Two years on and Paul Rooney is still hurting from the loss of his beloved Jenny, going through the motions at work and a home and, all the time, going slightly mad. Two years on and Mary Conroy is still grieving for her beloved David, taking photographs that no one wants to print and trailing around after her best friend, the dynamic Deirdre, who's determined to pull her out of her misery sometime soon. She wouldn't mind dreaming the same dream night after night if she could just work out what it means. Both looking for answers, but finding nothing but questions, Paul and Mary have a way to go before they realize what every else has know for a long while: some things are just meant to be. This is a hilarious black comedy about two Dubliners who are destined to be together however much they might fight it.
Sing! By Michael Curtin
Paperback; 13.50 IEP / 16.00 USD / 11.00 UK / 17.15 EURO; Fourth Estate, 207 pages [Add To Basket]Toots Books, the alias of James Imbusch, is plagued by an irrepressible friend, Jack Droney. Droney so wants the world to sing that he has written the word upside-down on his naked backside so that he can read it in the mirror when he finds himself with his head between his legs. As he does, daily. However, when Droney begins to behave even more oddly than usual, the slightly bedraggled members of a coffee circle, including a reluctant Toots, determine to stage an old-fashioned variety concert by way of distraction. To give Droney encouragement and a platform to sing from. But beneath the caper and the comedy lies a seam of tragedy. Toots, a reclusive bookseller, agrees to take part in the concert in pursuit of his own private dream. This novel is an authentic and touching blend of charm, wisdom and humanity.
Let's Twist Again by Leo Cullen
Paperback; 13.50 IEP / 16.00 USD / 11.00 UK / 17.15 EURO; Blackstaff, 390 pages [Add To Basket]This book is a vivid and heart-wrenching novel from one of Ireland's most original - and funniest - writers. Young Lally Connaughton has had a shock. His father has married Mam, a women Lally can't make head not tail of, and what's more has moved himself and his five children to live with Mam and her four children. Lally's next ten years, by turns side-splittingly funny and bitterly sad, are what this novel is about. The exuberance and territorial warfare of the children are brilliantly described, as is Lally's long grief over the death of his real mother. But at the core of the story is the developing relationship between the boy and Mam, at first seen by him as a wicked stepmother. Just as a more mature, understanding seems within reach, a new tragedy looms…
A Cut Above by Colette Caddle
Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 8.00 USD / 6.00 UK / 8.90 EURO; Poolbeg, 471 pages [Add To Basket]From the outside it looks like Toni Jordan has it all. A successful career as a director of a cosmetic surgery clinic, a husband who is an eminent surgeon, and a ready-made family in her adorable stepdaughter, Chloe. But her world is falling apart. Theo has become distant and cruel since he decided that Toni was not the wife he wanted. And she is alarmed by decisions being made at the clinic that may not be entirely ethical. Just as Tom decides to take action, Theo disappears!
Dead Cat Bounce by Damien Owens
Paperback; 9.80 IEP / 11.50 USD / 7.99 UK / 12.40 EURO; Flame, 311 pages [Add To Basket]Joe Flood is under no illusions - he knows that things can and do go wrong. They're generally small things though, and they usually have the decency to go wrong one at a time. No longer. Wisecracking but clueless, caring but confused, Joe is a man determined to do the right thing - just as soon as he works out what the right thing is. This is a fresh and funny debut novel from a truly remarkable new voice in Irish fiction.
Paddy Indian by Cauvery Madhavan
Paperback; 11.20 IEP / 13.50 USD / 9.50 UK / 14.40 EURO; Black Amber Press, 237 pages [Add To Basket]Padhman is a young Indian doctor who arrives in Ireland from an extremely wealthy and westernised medical family in Madras. When he joins the staff of a Dublin hospital as junior houseman to do his Fellowship exam, he finds he is just another 'foreign doctor'. Slowly and unconsciously, Padhman recreates the kind of lifestyle he is accustomed to in Madras while at the same time getting in deep waters when he falls in love with the Professor's daughter. This book is a sparkling cross-cultural social comedy combined with a touching love story.
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