Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 445
New Irish Fiction and Poetry
28/29 March 2009
Chosen Lights: Poets on Poems by John Montague edited by Peter Fallon
Hardback; 20 Euro / 26 USD / 17 UK; 150 pages
Poets on poems by John Montague on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Edited by Peter Fallon.
Essays by: Sara Berkeley, Ciaran Berry, Eavan Boland, Rosita Boland, Ciaran Carson, Michael Coady, Gerald Dawe, Peter Fallon, Tom French, Alan Gillis, Eamon Grennan, Vona Groarke, Dermot Healy, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Seán Lysaght, Derek Mahon, John McAuliffe, Medbh McGuckian, Frank McGuinness , Paul Muldoon, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Conor O’Callaghan, Bernard O’Donoghue, Dennis O’Driscoll, Justin Quinn, Aidan Rooney, Peter Sirr, Gerard Smyth, David Wheatley.
The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart
Hardback; Publishers Recommended Price: 16.50 Euro; Read Ireland Special Price 13 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK; 247 pages [Add To Basket]
It's dangerous ...and that's the truth about love ...A young man shields his terrible wounds from his mother; a husband believes he can love his grief-stricken wife back to life; a young girl puts her own life on hold until her family can find their way back from blinding pain; a man surrenders to the helplessness of obsessive love. Set in Ireland, this brilliant, intense story is about a family named O'Hara who chose to remain in the place of their loss, and the stranger from Germany who has run from his. It's about love? for another, for a country, for family? and survival, and it's remarkable.
‘The Truth About Love’ is an ambitious and poetic weaving of a long-ago family tragedy into the tragic history, and histories, of our time. Josephine Hart has come home in triumph' from John Banville
The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh
Large Format Paperback; 14 Euro / 19 USD / 10 UK; 265 pages
Philip Ó Ceallaigh’s first collection of stories, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse, established him as one of the most vital and distinctive new voices in fiction. The Pleasant Light of Day confirms his enormous talent and presses brilliantly into new territory. Whether he is imagining a father and son walking the streets of Cairo or concocting a hilarious parody of a certain wildly popular inspirational writer from Brazil, Philip Ó Ceallaigh is a writer who demands to be read.
Counting Down by Gerard Stembridge
Large Format Paperback; 14 Euro / 19 Euro / 10 UK; 306 pages [Add To Basket]
Meet Joe Power, approaching forty and counting down . . . Counting down the days until he sees his son. Counting down the number of years he spent with his wife before it all fell apart. Counting down the inches he has to lose off his waist to be a babe magnet again. Counting down all the fools who want to tell him to get his act together. Counting the hours until he can take one of his exhilarating night walks and encounter . . . well, who knows what, but one thing is sure, he'll be the one to come out of it alive. Counting down every moment knowing that one day, it will be his last . . .
The Love of Sisters by Eugene McCabe
Hardback; 14 Euro / 20 USD / 10 UK; 112 pages
This is the new novella from renowned writer Eugene McCabe. With an introduction by Colm Toibin, this powerful work tells the story of Carmel, a former nun, who is attempting to come to terms with her new life. As her relationships with her sister, Tricia, and her new employer, the widower funeral director Desmond Grogan develop, she realises that life outside the confines of the cold convent walls is far more complicated than she could have imagined.
Big Parts by Shane Connaughton
Large Format Paperback; 10 Euro / 16 USD / 8 UK; 238 pages [Add To Basket]
A London house. A warren of rooms. A housing trust. The tenants refusing to budge. A genuinely comic novel about a tragic, grotesque and hilarious world, presided over by an elderly showman with delusional plans for the future. A Captain Ahab in an attic flat, caring for an unstable woman, he tries to enlist the help of another tenant who has time on his hands. This anarchic young man records his every move and the lives of everyone else he meets. Like England itself, their house is built on shifting foundations and shaky dreams.
40 Fights Between Husbands and Wives by Colm Liddy
Large Format Paperback; 13 Euro / 18 USD / 9 UK; 400 pages [Add To Basket]
Couples. Couples at war. Couples apparently at peace – with war simmering beneath the surface. Desire frustrated. Desire, satisfied – but in surprising ways. Revenge at its most creative. Reconciliation at its most tender. Love. Perhaps. Here is the story of how couples are forever tripped up by the missteps of love and sex. This delightfully playful and highly original work gets under the skin of relationships through the ages – showing the infinity of ways men and women drive each other crazy, yet remain essential to one another.
None of My Affair by Fiona O’Brien
Paperback; 10 Euro / 15 USD / 7.50 UK; 440 pages [Add To Basket]
Jay and Frank O'Farrell's marriage works perfectly. So long as he shows up and she gets to show off -- Frank can do pretty much what he wants. Carrie, married to serial adulterer Don, with three beautiful daughters, is tired of living a lie and vows that it's finally over. But then Ali, their supermodel daughter, announces her plans for the society wedding of the decade and Carrie's thoughts of escape are put on hold. When the Excalibur, the notorious yacht moored in the south of Spain, owned by Jay and Frank, is chosen as the ideal venue for the wedding, Carrie jumps at the chance to go down there to oversee things. What she and Jay don't realise, however, is that Rudi Weiss, the troubled, sexy South African skipper of the Excalibur, has his own agenda. Not far away in a mansion on Marbella's Golden Mile, Frank's latest indiscretion threatens to upset the precarious balance of Jay's carefully structured life. As Frank is sucked in, Jay quickly realises that this time she isn't dealing with just another bimbo. As the wedding party descends on Puerto Banus, a tangled web of intrigue and deception is unveiled, and disaster strikes for the gilded guests.
Once in a Lifetime by Cathy Kelly
Large Format Paperback; 14 Euro / 20 USD // 10 UK; 440 pages [Add To Basket]
Kenny's Department Store, with its handsome Edwardian facade and unique cherry-picked goods, is the jewel in the Irish town of Ardagh's crown. Star Bluestone sells her beautifully crafted tapestries at Kenny's. Made with natural dyes, they embody her mother-earth spirit and creative vision. She has a special reason for caring about Kenny's beyond her sales. Meanwhile for Ingrid Fitzgerald, hotshot political interviewer and wife of David Kenny, the store is the 'other woman' in her marriage. With her children leaving home and her career blossoming, she is worried by the toll the store is taking on her husband. Charlie Fallon, one of David's staff, is one of the first to hear the rumour that Kenny's is facing with a takeover bid. As the threat of closure looms and with an owner who doesn't seem his usual self -- what does the future hold for the women who are bound together by its fortunes?
Cardigan Bay by John Kerr
Hardback; 25 Euro / 36 USD / 20 UK; 340 pages [Add To Basket]
1942. In a hospital south of London, Major Charles Davenport recovers from wounds received at Tobruk. In Whitehall, a top secret operation is underway. Britain's War Office is hard at work on a plan for the future invasion of the Continent - a plan destined to include Davenport. Across the Irish Sea, a young American widow seeks refuge on Ireland's eastern shore. Mary Katryn Kennedy has suffered her own wounds - the recent death of her husband and young child. Ireland remains steadfastly neutral in the War, but the island is a battleground nevertheless, home to desperate IRA plotters and German provocateurs. Two separate lives, swept up in a year of crisis, and brought together in Carigan Bay.
The Killing Snows by Charles Egan
Large Format Paperback; 16 Euro / 22 USD / 13 UK; 500 pages [Add To Basket]
December 12th, 1846. At the height of the Great Hunger - the Killing Snows. As the Irish Famine came towards its climax of starvation and disease, Ireland was hit by the worst snow storm in recent history. Nothing like it had been seen in living memory, nor has it in all the years since. In 1846, the potato crop had failed for the second time, and this time the failure was total. In a panic, the Government instituted road building works as a means of paying people to buy corn. By November half a million people were working at 7 and 8 pennies a day, dropping to 2 and 3 pennies as piecework was introduced. But the weather worsened and it began to snow. In 1990, a Famine Relief payroll was discovered in a farm building in County Mayo. It covered 4 weeks in November and December 1846 in the Ox Mountains in East Mayo. It clearly showed the evidence of the reduction in wages week after week. Most horrific of all, the payroll ends abruptly in the final week as the heaviest snowstorm hit Ireland on December 12th, and the people in the mountains were cut off to starve or freeze to death. 'The Killing Snows' was inspired by this document. It is also based on the true story of the man who wrote it, of the woman who loved him and of an impossible love story played out against a setting of famine, fever and death.
The Truth Commissioner by David Park
Paperback; 10 Euro / 15 USD / 7 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.
This Charming Man by Marian Keyes
Paperback; 10 Euro / 16 USD / 8 UK; 860 pages [Add To Basket]
Lola Daly has just found out that her boyfriend - gorgeous, charming and powerful politician Paddy de Courcy - is getting married. To someone else. Heartbroken, Lola flees Dublin to a cottage in the countryside. Can a new set of friends help her to get over him? Journalist Grace Gildee wants the inside story on Paddy de Courcy's engagement. Lola refuses to talk the press but Grace won't give up. She knew Paddy a long time ago and hasn't forgotten him ...Marnie Hunter is Grace's twin sister. With a loving husband and two gorgeous daughters, Marnie seems to have it all. But she's haunted by memories. Memories that began with her first love - Paddy de Courcy. Can Marnie leave the past behind once and for all and move on with her life? Alicia Thornton is Paddy's wife-to-be. Determined to be the perfect wife, Alicia would do anything for her fiance. But does she know the real Paddy? Four women. One man. And a secret that binds them all.
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
Large Format Trade Paperback; Publishers Recommended Price: 15 Euro, Read Ireland Price: 12 Euro / 17 USD / 10 UK; 452 pages [Add To Basket]
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...
Please note: Prices were correct at time of original posting but are subject to subsequent change without notice.
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