Read Ireland Book Reviews
'Best' Books of 2008 - Fiction
14 December 2008
Fiction
Bad Day in Blackrock by Kevin Power
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 234 pages
On a late August night in 2004 a young man is kicked to death by his teammates outside a Dublin nightclub and celebration turns to devastation. The reverberations of that event, its genesis and aftermath, is the subject of this extraordinary story, stripping away the veneer of a generation of Celtic cubs, whose social and sexual mores are chronicled and dissected in this tract for our times. The victim, Conor Harris, his killers - three of them are charged with manslaughter - and the trial judge share common childhoods and schooling in the privileged echelons of south Dublin suburbia. The intertwining of these lives leaves their afflicted families in moral freefall as public exposure merges with private anguish and imploded futures.This stark, elliptical tale tells of catharsis and self-examination through the eyes of the narrator and Laura Haines, girlfriend, confidante and catalyst. Akin to Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin", John Banville's "The Book of Evidence" and Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", it deals with the unacceptable, and the nature of truth. Like all good fiction, it illuminates a society and transcends its age with the searchlight of a sympathetic imagination. It is a significant debut by an intuitive writer.
Bird in the Snow by Michael Harding
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 23 USD / 12 UK; 197 pages [Add To Basket]
"Bird in the Snow" follows twenty-four hours in the life of Birdie Waters, an elderly widow living alone.On the eve of burying her only son, she stays awake all night, examining old photographs, cherishing warm memories, and sometimes disturbed by uneasy ghosts from the past. She remembers her son and his growing up, and her beloved husband - a vet who married her because she could dance, despite the difference in their social class - and their wonderful life together.She recalls her son's tragic death, his failed romance, and Louise, who for a short while looked like the partner that might make her son happy.She remembers Hughie Donoghue a flute player whom she has known since childhood, and for whom she still harbours a delicate flame of intense but unspoken affection.In the morning, she goes to the funeral. When it is over, and all the mourners have dined in the local hotel, she returns alone to her own house, where each day is a kind of triumph, because she has survived a little longer."Bird in the Snow" is the story of an old woman whose ordinary life is full of drama, love and passion, though perhaps nobody knows it but herself, because only she remembers everything.This beautifully rendered narrative evokes the rural past of an Irish matriarch looking back over the way-stations and men in her life, summoning memory to redress her bereavement through a series of poignant vignettes in a powerful act of retrieval.
The Gift by Cecelia Ahern
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 20 Euro. Read Ireland Special Price: 16 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK
Step into the magical world of Cecelia Ahern If you could wish for one gift this Christmas, what would it be? Everyday Lou Suffern battled with the clock. He always had two places to be at the same time. He always had two things to do at once. When asleep he dreamed. In between dreams, he ran through the events of the day while making plans for the next. When at home with his wife and family, his mind was always someplace else. On his way into work one early winter morning, Lou meets Gabe, a homeless man sitting outside the office building. Intrigued by him and on discovering that he could also be very useful to have around, Lou gets Gabe a job in the post room. But soon Lou begins to regret helping Gabe. His very presence unsettles Lou and how does Gabe appear to be in two places at the same time? As Christmas draws closer, Lou starts to understand the value of time. He sees what is truly important in life yet at the same time he learns the harshest lesson of all. This is a story about people who not unlike parcels, hide secrets.They cover themselves in layers until the right person unwraps them and discovers what's inside.Sometimes you have to be unravelled in order to find out who you really are. For Lou Suffern, that took time.
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 28 Euro. Read Ireland Special Sale Price: 20 Euro / 28 USD / 15 UK; 452 pages [Add To Basket]
A brand new novel from No.1 bestselling author Maeve Binchy - Clara Casey has more than enough on her plate. Her daughters Adi and Linda were no problem at all during the usually turbulent teens. Now in their twenties, Adi is always fighting for or against something: the environment or the whale or battery farming; while Linda lurches from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next. As if this wasn't enough, Clara, a senior cardiac specialist, has a new job to cope with...For Anya, meeting Clara Casey is a miracle: she had never intended to leave her beloved Poland, but after the love of her life has turned sour, her world seems rather empty. Perhaps a new job in a new country will mend her broken heart? Declan is looking forward to joining the clinic - but the six-month posting brings him much more than he expected. Then there's Father Brian Flynn, who finds his doubts about his calling are assuaged by work in his new parish. But when an acquaintance turns into a nightmare he needs help to rescue his reputation...
Disguise by Hugo Hamilton
Large Format Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 262 pages
Hugo Hamilton, the internationally acclaimed author of 'The Speckled People' and 'Sailor in the Wardrobe', turns his hand back to fiction with a compelling drama tracing Berlin's central historical importance throughout the twentieth century. Boris Opp is a young Berliner, born into the chaos and commotion of the Second World War. But when his absent father returns from the Eastern front and remarks upon the absence of a birthmark above Boris' right eye, the child is suddenly thrown into an identity crisis that has him questioning the story of his birth. He begins to wonder, in part because of his Semitic features, whether he is in fact an orphaned Ukrainian Jew, stolen away by the occupying SS to be given up for adoption to a childless family back in Germany. It is this suspicion, so damaging and dangerous under the Nazi government, that proves to be the breakdown of his relationship with his violent and unforgiving father. As his paternal relationship disintegrates, Boris turns to his kindly uncle, a once dutiful World War 1 veteran whose terrifying ordeals on the Russian front made him swear an oath against Hitler.But his uncle is loose with the truth, and his careless whispers fan the flames of Boris' now frenzied suspicions.
These unanswered questions about his heritage and the obscured truth of his childhood continue to stalk him throughout his life -- through his later career as a professor of linguistics at the University of Berlin -- and onward to his death. It is only then, at the very end of his life, when the truth of his lineage can finally emerge. Part literary investigation, part historical novel, Disguise is an intelligent, poignant and brilliantly crafted story about a man's lifelong search for the truth of himself, and an allegory about the many disguises that the city of Berlin wore -- from the decadence of the Weimar Republic, through the oppression of fascism and communism -- throughout the most turbulent period in its fascinating history.
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Trade Paperback; 14 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 250 pages [Add To Basket]
In early 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal. In London, a Dutch banker named Hans van den Broek hears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the off-kilter New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11, the powercut and the Iraq war. Those years were difficult for Hans - his English wife Rachel left with their son after the attack, as if that event revealed the cracks and silences in their marriage, and he spent two strange years in the Chelsea Hotel, passing stranger evenings with the eccentric residents. Lost in a country he'd regarded as his new home, Hans sought comfort in a most alien place - the thriving but almost invisible world of New York cricket, in which immigrants from Asia and the West Indies play a beautiful, mystifying game on the city's most marginal parks. It was during these games that Hans befriended Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreamed of establishing the city's first proper cricket field. Over the course of a summer, Hans grew to share Chuck's dream and Chuck's sense of American possibility - until he began to glimpse the darker meaning of his new friend's activities and ambitions...'
Netherland' is a novel of belonging and not belonging, and the uneasy state in between. It is a novel of a marriage foundering and recuperating, and of the shallows and depths of male friendship. With it, Joseph O'Neill has taken the anxieties and uncertainties of our new century and fashioned a work of extraordinary beauty and brilliance.
Boy & Man by Niall Williams
Large Format Trade Paperback; 14 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 296 pages [Add To Basket]
When a loved one disappears, you can never be sure whether they are alive or dead Jay once content with life in rural Ireland, left his childhood home and those who loved him to embark on the journey of his life in search of his father. Now Jay is fully grown and living in a mission hospital in Africa. Alone without his family or his roots, he has given up his quest. Back in Ireland, the man known as the master is recovering after a terrible accident. Sure that his missing grandson, the only person left of his family, is alive somewhere, he cannot rest untill he knows for sure. Both men are seeking, amid the human suffering they are surrounded by, to have their belief in life confirmed. And for both of them, its the kindness of strangers which brings comfort. From the travelling nun to the Polish builder, for the trusting truick driver to the released prisoner, it is these strangers who guide us on life's journey and who help bring the missing home to each other.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 300 pages [Add To Basket]
I once lived among humankind, and found them in their generality to be cruel and cold, and yet could mention the names of three or four that were like angels. I suppose we measure the importance of our days by those few angels we spy among us . . .’
Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her 100th birthday - no one is quite sure - faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital where she’s spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene. This relationship, guarded but trusting after so many years, intensifies and complicates as Dr Grene mourns the death of his wife.
Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges - of Roseanne’s family in 1930s Sligo - is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne’s story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland. Exquisitely written, it is the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.
Taking Pictures by Anne Enright
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 220 pages [Add To Basket]
The stories in "Taking Pictures" are snapshots of the body in trouble: in denial, in extremis, in love. Mapping the messy connections between people - and their failures to connect - the characters are captured in the grainy texture of real life: freshly palpable, sensuous and deeply flawed. From Dublin to Venice, from an American college dorm to a holiday caravan in France, these are stories about women stirred, bothered, or fascinated by men they cannot understand, or understand too well. Enright's women are haunted by children, and by the ghosts of the lives they might have led - lit by new flames, old flames, and flames that are guttering out.A woman's one night stand is illuminated by dreams of a young boy on a cliff road, another's is thwarted by a swarm of somnolent bees. A pregnant woman is stuck in a slow lift with a tactile American stranger, a naked mother changes a nappy in a hotel bedroom, and waits for her husband to come back from the bar.
These are sharp, vivid stories of loss and yearning, of surrender to responsibilities or to unexpected delight; all share the unsettling, dislocated reality, the subversive wit and awkward tenderness that have marked Anne Enright as one of our most thrillingly gifted writers. (Also available in hardback at 20 Euro)
Forgive & Forget by Patricia Scanlan
Large Format Paperback; 15 Euro / 22 USD / 11 UK; 394 pages [Add To Basket]
What happens when ex husbands start to fancy their first wives again? Can first wives forgive and forget when their husband has done the dirty on them? Connie Adams has to make choices. The lead up to her daughter's wedding has been utterly fraught. Debbie is absolutely adamant that she does not want her father, Barry, his glamorous second wife, Aimee or her stepsister, Melissa to attend. Barry is equally adamant that they will. But as Connie and Barry join forces to get things sorted sparks begin to fly...Few weddings go as planned especially when there is tension between families and the events that occur at this particular wedding will have far reaching repercussions that will leave their mark for years to come.
The Truth Commissioner by David Park
Trade Paperback; 15 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 372 pages [Add To Basket]
Henry Stanfield is pleased with his new title: "Truth Commissioner" has a pleasing ring to it. But his neutrality, as the product of an Irish Catholic mother and an English Protestant father, is about to be tested. Francis Gilroy, Minister for Children and Culture, has murky secrets that could leave him vulnerable, but his people have dealt with them; after all, it was a war they were fighting. James Fenton, retired RUC policeman, is haunted by the small, vulnerable white face of a boy who he could have saved, and failed to. Danny and Ramona flick through brochures, choosing a cot for their unborn child - but now the past is about to pull Danny back to Belfast and threaten everything beautiful and fragile that they have built together. Four very different men hold the secret between them of what happened to fifteen-year-old Conor Walshe on 10th May 1990. David Park tells each of their stories in prose that is insightful, direct and utterly involving. (Also available in hardback, priced at 22 Euro).
With My Lazy Eye by Julia Kelly
Trade Paperback; 10 Euro /14 USD / 7 UK; 224 pages [Add To Basket]
`Julia Kelly's is surely the freshest voice in Irish fiction since the wonderful early novels of Edna O'Brien. This is a future to watch.' - John Banville.
This remarkable first novel releases the voice of Lucy `Bunty' Bastonme as she makes her journey through adolescence in 1980s Ireland. Intensely focused, prismatic and delicately nuanced, the internal flight of the narrator finds expression in closely observed snapshots from a family album. At its core with my lazy eye is an exploration of father love in which the patriarch of a Dublin bourgeois Catholic household becomes ever more elusive and distant and his daughter ever more muddled, myopic and needy. Bunty makes discoveries about her father that free her from the prison and shelter of a protracted childhood. A new vision is won as she steps away from the past towards the light, metamorphosed. This is a quirky, poignant coming-of-age story like no other.
"With My Lazy Eye" tells the story of Bunty, a myopic, muddle-headed little girl and her relationship with her distant father. As she stumbles her way through childhood and teenage years - failing exams, losing tennis matches, fighting with her father, falling in and out of love, longing for his attention - her eyesight deteriorates and her father becomes ever more elusive. A chance discovery about her father's past changes the course of her life and her attitude towards him forever. A metamorphosis begins, but it's possibly too late… ( I have one signed first edition hardback of this book left in stock, priced at 30 Euro)
Cré Na Cille by Máirtín Ó Cadhain
Paperback 25 Euro, Hardback 40 Euro [Add To Basket]
Mairtin O Cadhain's novel Cre na Cille (Graveyard Soil) won the Oireachtas literary competition in 1947. Recognized almost immediately as a classic, the book, set among the dead in a Conamara graveyard, was serialized in the Irish Press between February and September of 1949, the same year it was published in Dublin. This book has been out of print for nearly 10 years. A small reprint has just become available. This book is in the Irish language. Order immediately to avoid waiting another ten years!
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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