Best Irish Novels of 2003

In her mansion in the Dublin Mountains, Delly Roche, widow of pharmaceuticals millionaire Daniel Gilmore, is getting ready for death. Keeping her company are her companions of many years, Kitty Flood and the discreetly insane Dr. George Addison-Blake. Why is Delly so keen to die? What exactly is in the letter discovered by Kitty? What is Dr. George doing in the shed by the overgrown tennis court? And does any of it have anything to do with the conspiracy theories hinted at on Joe Kavanagh's radio show? Down in the city, Barry Joe's producer, is getting caught up in something and he's not quite sure what. Meanwhile Joe is trying desperately to lose his foothold on life and is succeeding only in annoying his neighbours. And all the time, conducting business down by the river, doing his best to keep out of this, is Kez.

This is a simple story of a complex desire - the story of a relentless quest for a place called home which exists in a spiritual landscape located somewhere between Ireland and Iowa. A breath-taking novel which spans Ireland's last thirty turbulent years and confirms Patrick McCabe as one of the finest and most original and exciting Irish novelists writing today.

In the bitter winter of 1847, from an Ireland torn by injustice and natural disaster, the 'Star of the Sea' sets sail for New York. On board are hundreds of fleeing refugees, some brimming with optimism, many more desperate. Among them are a maidservant with a devastating secret, bankrupt Lord Merridith and his wife and children, an aspiring novelist, a maker of revolutionary ballads, all braving the Atlantic in search of a new home. Each is connected more deeply than they can possibly know. But a camoflauged killer is stalking the decks, hungry for the vengeance that will bring absolution.

The twenty-six-day journey will see many lives end, other begin afresh. Passionate loves are tenderly recalled, ducked responsibilities regretted too late; profound relationships shockingly unearthed where once it seemed there were none. In a spellbinding story of tragedy and mercy, love and healing, the further the ship sails towards the Promised Land, the more her passengers seem moored to a past which will never let them go. A novel as urgently contemporary in its preoccupations as it is historically revealing, this gripping and compassionate tale builds with the pace of a thriller to an unforgettable conclusion.

One afternoon - in a certain European village, in the middle of a civil war- one man digs while another watches over him. Gradually, they begin to talk. As the snow falls and truck-loads of villagers are corralled in the next field, we discover why the two men are there - not just who they are and how specific, sinister events in their country have led them to be separated by a deepening grave, but why the history of civilization is inseparable from the history of mass violence. As the sky darkens and the temperature drops, the novel reaches its gripping, terrifying conclusion: that our most fixed certainties can disappear at the point of a gun.

Beautifully written, with a poet's eyes for detail, coupled to a chilling narrative drive, this novel is current in the best sense - grounded in recent European history and attempting to create art out of brutal life. This debut novel from the Ireland-born writer was Long-Listed for the Man Booker Prize 2003.

When McBride, a young Irishman, leaves County Monaghan for the building sites of London, and the Germany, he is confronted by a harsh new world and the volatile men who have mastered and mythologised it. Quickly overwhelmed by the unrelenting quest for work and love, he soon finds himself enslaved to the road ahead, embittered by the cold comforts of its hard shoulder. But when he eventually returns to London, the limits of the heavy digger's life, its quixotic pursuit of the Big Money, its illusory horizons, are brought shockingly and suddenly home. This novel is the story of countless unheard voices, transfiguring the haunting experiences of Ireland's unconsidered exiles into a tale of intense colour and vibrancy.

The nuns at the convent of the Good Shepherd in Dublin's North Wall certainly are not ready for Philo. And on a quiet Sunday evening they find their peace shattered by an insistent knocking on the heavy front door - and there she is - feeling like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music with nowhere else to go. Weighing in at 240 pounds and covered in tattoos, Philo doesn't look much like Julie Andrews. And with her penchant for smoking, swearing and eating, she's hardly an ideal candidate for the sisterhood. But Philo is desperate. She's on the run from her husband, Tommo, and she needs refuge. The good sisters take her under their wing, and before long she finds a new self-confidence, and a new role at the centre of the beleaguered community. With a heart as big as her waistband, there's plenty of love to go round, but Philo knows that, sooner or later, she will need to face up to the cracks in her own life - her wayward husband and son, the dark secret she's been running from for as long as she can remember. At the core of this warm-hearted and poignant novel is the once-thriving docks community where the author grew up. This story is a celebration of the people who once lived there, and a protest at the official neglect that led to its demise.

One house, five families, four and a half decades; from the 1950s to the present. In this compelling, engaging and deeply moving novel, the successive occupants of a three-bedroomeed terraced house go about the complicated business of keeping themselves and a home together in a place that the rest of the world knows as Belfast, but to them is just 'the town'. Things happen that might happen anywhere, and things happen that could happen nowhere else, sometimes as noises off, and sometimes on the front doorstep. But whatever happens, they get up the next day, like everyone else, and carry on.

There is Stella, haunted by the thought that she will die young, like her mother, and unfulfilled; Rodney, clinging to the dream of a cosmopolitan life; young Tan, faced with the dilemma of where he begins and friendship ends; Catriona, watching her husband and children undergo a strange transformation; Mel, pushing thirty, living with Toni, wondering whether they will ever share more than ownership of an industrial vacuum cleaner. And always, across the street, there is Ivy. One family moves out, another moves in. This novel is about continuity and renewal in the face of life's disruptions. It is about the traces that, sometimes without our knowing, we leave behind.

From the documented facts of a real life, the acclaimed Irish writer Colum McCann has created an extraordinary work of fiction. This history of life gets under the skin of its hero, and into his head, under the skin of the people around him, into the heart of the era he came to represent, into the truth of what it means to dance. It is ambitious. It is also incredibly controlled, passionate and extravagant - perfectly matched in style to the personality of its central character, the dancer Rudolf Nureyev.