Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 218
Childrens Novels
Brush: A Tale of Two Foxes by Pierce Feiritear
Paperback; 5.99 Euro / 7.00 USD / 4.50 UK; Pixie Press, 95 pages [Add To Basket]
This exciting and fast-paced story tells of two hungry and mischievous young foxes who set out one snowy Christmas Eve to get food and - as one expects from foxes - 'bite off more than they can chew.' Trouble comes in the form of an ugly hound called Raptor and his nasty scheming owners, the MacLugs. Can our two heroes out-fox them? Children aged 6 to 10 will enjoy this book which is written by a practising teacher and is pitched at the appropriate reading level. Another attractive feature is the superb collection of drawings by 14-year-old artist Conor O Brien. A definite 'must' for that Christmas stocking!
War Children by Gerard Whelan
Paperback; 6.95 Euro / 8.50 USD / 5.00 UK; O'Brien Press, 190 pages [Add To Basket]
This is a compelling and powerful collection of stories set in the time of the War of Independence in Ireland. It includes six stories about children who get caught up in the War of Independence and suffer dire consequences. The young people in these stories, set in town and country, become sometimes willing and sometimes unwilling participants in situations they only vaguely understand. But neither innocence nor ignorance offers protection against Black and Tans, Auxillaries, rebels or police. These stories being to life on of the most dramatic periods in Irish history. For Age 10+.
Out of the Flames by Vincent McDonnell
Paperback; 6.95 Euro / 8.50 USD / 5.00 UK; O'Brien Press, 240 pages [Add To Basket]
This book is an action-packed story of conflict and danger set in Ireland and Africa. Maria witnesses the brutal murder of her mother by soldiers of the corrupt Malangan regime. Fearful that she will be the next target, her father ends her to Ireland for safety. But the refugee hostel in the village of Culduagh is not the safe haven she expected. Hostility to the strangers erupts into violence and Maria finds herself caught in a collision of cultures, fuelled by prejudice and fear. Despite this, a friendship blossoms between Maria and local boy David. But danger still threatens in the form of Jonah Kegale, a secret policeman from Malanga sent to Ireland to find Maria. For Age 10+
Five Alien Elves by Gregory Maguire
Paperback; 6.95 Euro / 8.50 USD / 5.00 UK; O'Brien Press, 160 pages [Add To Basket]
This novel is an intergalactic adventure with the Copycats and Tattletales. 'Tis the night before Christmas, and a strange vehicle appears in the sky above Vermont. Is it Santa's sleigh drawn by reindeer? No, it's five aliens from the planet Fixipuddle, caught in Earth's gravity and plummeting to the ground. The aliens tune into a movie about Santa Claus and get the wrong idea: Who is this evil tyrant who sneaks into people's houses and steals food? Disguised as elves, they set out to free Earth from this villain. For Age 10+
Gyrfalcom by Grace Wells
Paperback; 6.95 Euro / 8.50 USD / 5.00 UK; O'Brien Press, 160 pages [Add To Basket]
This book is a unique adventure story about warriors, spirits and a lonely, brave boy. Gyr's life used to be simple: there was Mum, Dad and his little sister Poppy. But now all that has changed and nothing makes sense anymore. Gyr is angry, lost and betrayed. Then into his shattered life comes an enchanting presence - a hero from another time, another world. His world is one of power, energy, truth and honour - could this be part of Gyr's world too? For Age 10+
The Love Bean by Siobhan Parkinson
Paperback; 6.95 Euro / 8.50 USD / 5.00 UK; O'Brien Press, 190 pages [Add To Basket]
This novel is full of romance, secrets and rivalries. It weaves two compelling stories of four teenage twin girls across time, location and race. Twins: they like the same things. But that can cause problems. Especially where boys are concerned. When Tito, a tall, handsome African, walks into Lydia and Julia's lives, it turns every relationship upside down. Then there's the 'twinny book' - The Curiosity Tree. It's about Sun'va and Eva: they are twins too. And a boy has just sailed into their lives, causing havoc. Romance mirrors romance, jealousy mirrors jealousy - it seems like history is repeating itself. Two compelling stories of love. For Age 10+
Walter Speazlebud by David Donohue
Paperback; 5.95 Euro / 8.00 USD / 4.50 UK; O'Brien Press, 107 pages [Add To Basket]
Walter Speazlebud is an ordinary boy - with extraordinary powers. Walter is a whizz at spelling backwards. He also has the power of Noitanigami (Imagination) - he can make people, and animals, go backwards in time - two skills he inherited from his favourite person, his grandfather. So when his horrible teacher, Mr. Strong, starts picking on Walter, he had better watch out. And so had the even more horrible class bully, Danny Biggles. For Age 8+.
New Irish Fiction for Adults
The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne EnrightHardback; 21.00 Euro / 27.00 USD / 13.00 UK; Jonathan Cape, 230 pages [Add To Basket]
An exquisitely written historical epic, this author's third novel is based on the true story of the beautiful Irishwoman Eliza Lynch, who, in the 1860s, became, briefly, the richest woman in the world. The book opens in Paris, with Eliza in bed with Francisco Solano Lopez - heir to the untild wealth of Paraguay. The fruit of their congress will be extrairdinary, and will send her across the Atlantic: leading a caravan of servants, clothes, jewellery and champagne on the regal voyage down the River Parana to claim her glorious future in Asuncion.
What she finds is a narrow, provincial town: a decayed nobility, contemptuous of this Irish courtesan, and the oppressed poor, yearning for self-determination. Together with Lopez, Eliza embarks on a series of disastrous wars that define the nation and demonstrates her power. She seems to carry all before her, until the moment when she discovers the true sweep of her own cruelty.
With the lavish imaginative richness of Marquez and the crazed panoramic sweep of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, this novel is a bold and brilliantly achieved story about sex, beauty and corruption and the end of the old world.
The Horse with My Name by Colin Bateman
Trade Paperback; 13.99 Euro / 18.00 USD / 9.99 UK; Headline, 281 pages [Add To Basket]
Dan Starkey - international man of inaction - rides again! How far can he fall this time? Ex-journalist Dan Starkey is stuck in a grimy Belfast bedsit. His life is a disaster, and his only solace is the pub round the corner (and the last can in his hand). He need to get our more (particularly since the sessions at Relate with his wife Patricia have been cancelled and she's hooked up with new man Clive). He really, really needs something to get his teeth into. Fellow ex-journalist Mark Corkery, whose secret passion is The Horse Whisperer, an internet horse-racing gossip, wants him to investigate Geordie McClean, the man behind Irish American Racing. Simple enough for a man with Dan's experience, surely? But trouble is Dan's middle name. And trouble is what he finds. This is a witty and fast-paced novel, throbbing with menace, and with a fine sense of the ridiculous.
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
Hardback; 25.00 Euro / 28.50 USD / 21.99 UK; Penguin Viking, 228 pages [Add To Basket]
Captain Gault had seen off the three intruders easily enough. They had come in the night with the intention of firing the house, but a single shot had sent them scuttling back into the darkness. One, though, had been wounded and for that the Gaults were not forgiven: sooner or later there would be trouble again. Other big-house families had been driven out - the Morells from Clashmore, the Gouvernets, the Priors, the Swifts. It was time to go.
But Lucy, soon to be nine, the only child of the household, could not bear the thought of leaving Lahardane. Her world was the old house itself, the woods of the glen, the farm animals, the walk along the seashore to school. All of that she loved and as the day of departure grew closer she determined that this exile should not take place. But chance changed everything, bringing about a calamity so terrible that it might have been a punishment, so vicious that it blighted the lives of all the Gaults for many years to come.
This novel by one of Ireland's finest writers begins in rural Cork in 1921, in a country still in turmoil. The old order has fragmented; a way of life is already over. Trevor brilliantly conveys the disquiet and confusion that colour the story of Lucy Gault as it's told while happens, in towns and countryside, and told again when passing time has made it different.
Just Between Us by Cathy Kelly
Trade Paperback; 14.99 Euro / 20.00 USD / 10.00 UK; HarperCollins, 515 pages [Add To Basket]
In the Irish country town of Kinvarra, the fabulous Miller girls are generally reckoned to have it all. There's Stella, with the looks of a Renaissance Madonna and a brilliant lawyer's mind. A single mum who has combined work and raising her daughter with aplomb, the only thing missing from her life is the right man. Now, at last, she's going to get a second chance. Tara is the sharp, cool one. At the top of her TV career, she's recently married the love of her life, the charming Finn, after a whirlwind romance of just six months. And shy, beautiful Holly is living a bohemian city life that all her old classmates envy, with artistic friends and a beautiful apartment where her creative talents find an outlet. At the centre of the family is there mother, Rose, calm, elegant and about to celebrate her fortieth wedding anniversary. But nothing in the lives of Rose and her daughters is as it seems, and as plans are made for the party of the decade, the secret heartaches the four women have kept hidden, even from each other, begin to emerge.
Shroud by John Banville
Hardback; 25.00 Euro / 28.50 USD / 21.99 UK; Picador, 407 pages [Add To Basket]
Axel Vander, celebrated academic and man of culture, is spending his twilight years on the west coast of America, when, out of the blue, a letter arrives hinting at secrets he has been hiding for fifty years.
To find out just how much the writer knows about his past, Vander arranges to meet her in Turin. But he is thrown into emotional turmoil by this encounter with Cass Cleave, a deeply troubled young woman desperate to discover a reason to continue living; and the meeting of the two leads inexorably towards disaster.
Written in faultless, almost painfully beautiful prose, this is a novel which is not afraid to ask deep questions, nor to answer them emphatically. It is a richly rewarding work from one of the most accomplished Irish novelists of his generation.
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