Read Ireland Book Reviews
Issue 378 - 19 May 2007
Irish Fiction
The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories 2006-7 edited by David Marcus
Trade Paperback; 16 Euro / 21 USD / 13 UK; 312 pages
Following his acclaimed 2004-5 selection, David Marcus presents 24 new stories that once again show the vibrancy and relevance of the short story today. Featuring previously unpublished authors alongside established names, it is an important and timely collection that celebrates the place of the short story in Ireland’s literary heritage while looking forward to the new generation of writers emerging. Stories by: John Banville, Michael J. Farrell, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne, Joseph O’Neill, Dermot Bolger, Emma Donoghue, Philip MacCann, Patrick McCabe, Joseph O’Connor, Anne Enright, Aidan Mathews, Anthony Glavin, Breda Wall Ryan, Harry Clifton, Carlo Gebler, Desmond Hogan, Mary Leland, Frank McGuinness, Bridget O’Toole, Vincent Banville, Mary Dorcey, Eoin McNamee, Mary Byrne and Sebastian Barry.
Soft Voices Whispering by Adrienne Dines
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 9 UK; 376 pages [Add To Basket]
When Eleanor Morrissey leaves Kildoran on a dark September night in 1930, nobody is sorry to see her go and nobody expects to see her return. As far as the villagers are concerned, the Morrisseys have been shamed out of town forever. Fifty years later, some visitors attend the funeral of the convent's Mother Superior. When the funeral is over, one woman stays behind. Until she is free to leave again, she must struggle to understand her legacy - a legacy of voices. Threatening, angry, accusing voices that only she can hear, because they are soft voices - whispering.
Placements by Rose MacBride
Paperback; 12 Euro / 17 USD / 9 UK; 100 pages
This short novel is set in Montreal during 1978 shortly after Quebec elected its first Separatist Government. The story is written around an elderly woman, an immigrant of Eastern European origins. She is abandoned by her family, who are unable to care for her, in the emergency room of an Anglophone hospital. The story also articulates the plight of English-speakers and their flight from increasing hostility as the newly elected government sets about creating a ‘French’ society in Quebec.
American Girls by Susan Millar DuMars
Paperback; 12 Euro / 17 USD / 9 UK; 66 pages [Add To Basket]
In this collection the author performs eight deft illuminations of human loss and longing.
Available in Paperback
Nothing Happens in Carmincross by Benedict Kiely
Paperback; 12 Euro / 17 USD / 9 UK; 265 pages
Carmincross, where nothing happens, is a small town in Ulster. Mervyn Kavanagh, one of its wandering sons (Catholic as opposed to Protestant) has been teaching in America's 'semi-Deep South', where he has acquired - and lost - a wife. Now, in 1973, he is on his way home to attend the wedding of a favourite niece. As he sets off from Shannon toward tranquil Carmincross in the company of a former girlfriend, warm memories come flooding back. But one cloud proves impossible to dispel, for Mervyn is haunted by dark thoughts of bombs, rubber bullets, political murder, political mutilation, terrorism and counterterrorism - not only in Ireland, but with the Troubles, naturally enough, uppermost in his mind. For some, he meets en route, the perpetrators are gallant freedom fighters; for others, terrorist fanatics. Yet as the arguments bubble, another outrage is being prepared; and when at last it strikes, with a terrible inevitability, in Carmincross itself, the consequences are horrifyingly unpredictable. Tense, ironic, humane, horrifying and brutally funny, "Nothing Happens in Carmincross" is a masterpiece by one of Northern Ireland's greatest writers.
Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins
Paperback; 13 Euro / 17 USD / 10 UK; 260 pages
Imogen Langrishe, youngest of the four Langrishe sisters, whose name has long meant money, status and respect to the people of Celbridge, County Kildare, embarks on a reckless love affair. Set against the backdrop of a crumbling 1930s Europe, this classic Irish novel depicts the demise of the old order of power in Ireland, as Imogen’s loss of inhibition leads her deeper into the sensual yet lonely world of despair and heartbreak. A certified Irish masterpiece!
Black Cat Black Dog by John Creed
Paperback; 9 Euro / 12 USD / 7 UK; 288 pages [Add To Basket]
When a set of dog tags, supposedly belonging to a seaman missing since the early 1950s, is washed up on a beach in modern-day Co. Antrim, Jack Valentine 'deadbeat ex-spook' finds himself being pulled back towards his previous life once more. But what can the disturbance of an old North Sea arms dump, dating back to the end of the Second World War, have to do with a botched US mission to Iraq in the early 1990s?
The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8 UK; 280 pages [Add To Basket]
When Stella first meets Martyn, he's just a stranger on a train. She knows nothing at all about him. But very quickly she is won over by his charm and breathtaking illusions, and when he asks her to marry him, she agrees. However, as they begin their life together, Stella starts to feel uneasy. What exactly is the show-stopping illusion he claims to be working on, locked away in that room? Who are those men that visit the house at strange hours? And why are her questions never answered? As Stella realises that she barely knows the man she married, her thoughts turn to escape.
The Free and Easy by Anne Haverty
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8 UK; 280 pages [Add To Basket]
A wealthy American is burdened by a recurrent dream about his native Ireland, a country that had long ceased to interest or troubles him. Convinced that the Irish are asking him for help, he equips his errant grand-nephew, Tom Blessman, with a generous bank account, and dispatches him to the old country to offer assistance. In Dublin, Tom is bewildered to find a city thronged with glossy, happening people and an economy in overdrive. The Irish apparently want for nothing. As Tom attempts to make sense of it all - and to resolve his own personal history - he falls in with a fascinating gallery of characters, some of them super-rich, some trying to make their way in this opportunistic new world, and others pinning their hopes and ambitions to art, literature and 'heritage projects'. Central to this alluring scene is the sprawling Kinane family, especially Eileen, the lost soul of the family, whose waif-like beauty Tom pursues through the city's bars, art galleries and parties, becoming ever more entangled with the dangerous Irish merry-go-round. Teeming with brilliant characters, clamorous with the life of Dublin's pubs and cafes, and the atmosphere of its streets, "The Free And Easy" is a hugely entertaining and mordant take on Ireland past and present from one of Ireland's most stylish and interesting writers.
Tenderwire by Claire Kilroy
Paperback; 1Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8 UK; 266 pages [Add To Basket]
Eva Tyne, an Irish violinist living and working in New York, collapses after her solo debut and is rushed to hospital. Still dazed after the incident, she finds herself embarked on a chaotic and dangerous odyssey. Leaving her steady partner, she quickly falls in love with a mysterious man, and shortly thereafter comes across a rare violin of dubious provenance, for which she must raise the required payment in cash in less than a week. But, haunted by the ghost of her father, racked with jealousy, and unsure whom she can trust around her, Eva soon finds herself playing a desperate psychological game as her desires threaten to destroy her. Narrated in Eva's unforgettable voice - at once passionate and unreliable - "Tenderwire" is a novel of immense pace and skill, a guessing game and a whodunnit that surprises at every turn.
Pretending by Caroline Williams
Paperback; 9 Euro / 12 USD / 7 UK; 388 pages [Add To Basket]
Cuan - twentysomething but an eternal adolescent - enchants everyone he meets. So he has Martina, nearly a decade older, distracted with longing, and his first love, Eleanor, haunted by questions. Oddly, despite his powers of attraction, Cuan connects with no one. However, everything changes when Cuan's seven-year-old daughter comes back into his life and he realizes that it's time to grow up and to face up to who he really is and where love fits into his life. As Martina, Eleanor and Cuan try to figure out the meaning of love, commitment and family - how to live in families and how to grow up despite them - they stagger towards maturity and alternative new families of their own. Pretending is a tender and addictive story of love, desire, secrets, confused identities and learning to be who you really are - not what you pretend to be.
Animals by Keith Ridgway
Paperback; 11 Euro / 15 USD / 8 UK; 265 pages [Add To Basket]
A novel of confusion and paranoia, love and doubt, fear and hysteria: unsettling, unhinged, provocative and bestially funny, 'Animals' is for human beings everywhere. Keith Ridgway's third novel is a psychological menagerie of confusion, paranoia, searching and love. Narrated by an illustrator who can no longer draw, it tells of the sudden and inexplicable collapse of a private life, and the subsequent stubborn search for a place from which to take stock. We are surrounded here -- by unsafe or haunted buildings, by artists and capitalists who flirt with terror, by writers and actresses and the deals they have made with unreality, and by the artificial, utterly constructed, scripted city in which we have agreed to live out a version of living. But there are cracks in the facade, and there are stirrings under the floorboards, and there are animals everywhere you look, if only you'd dare to look for them. Unsettling, unhinged, provocative and richly funny, 'Animals' is for human beings everywhere.
Where the Rain Gets In by Adrian White
Paperback; 9 Euro / 12 USD / 7 UK; 275 pages [Add To Basket]
Katie McGuire has a perfect life. She has looks, brains, a great career and an exciting media profile. Her life is ordered and controlled and far removed from her chaotic childhood. It is a life she is determined never to let go or share. One day Katie's rigid routine is shattered by a voice from the past - Mike Maguire, the only man she ever let close to her heart, insisting that he has to see her after twenty years. She knows that 'Nice Guy Mike' could always under her skin. Even worse, his appearance brings with it the threat that events she thought long dead and buried - a daring sting in a Las Vegas casino and a nerve-racking road trip through the Arizona desert - will land her in jail. Katie realises that to restore her peace of mind she has to meet Mike. But when she does she finds herself on a surprising emotional and physical journey, one that may change her perfect life forever. If she lets it!
All Because of You by Melissa Hill
Mass Market Paperback; 10 Euro / 13 USD / 7 UK; 450 pages [Add To Basket]
Tara Harrington’s life seems perfect – a successful career as a life coach, the flashy sports car to match, and a happy home with Glenn. But when Tara’s difficult younger sister Emma announces she’s pregnant, and refuses to divulge who the father is, suspicions are aroused all round. Best-friend Liz’s fairytale husband, Eric, suddenly doesn’t seem so Prince Charming any more, and their move from the city to the country isn’t working out as planned. Can Tara help her friend through it? Glamorous London PR girl Natalie has everything she ever wanted – except a husband. And when Tara agrees to coach her in landing the latest ‘man of her dreams’, the two women soon find they have more in common than either had imagined
Cinderella’s Sister by Anne Dunlop
Trade Paperback; 14 Euro / 18 USD / 10 UK; 340 pages [Add To Basket]
Francesca and Camilla are identical twins. Camilla is the brighter variation on the theme and Francesca has her nose stuck in a book. After a holiday romance, Francesca marries Will, a middle aged African builder. At their wedding, Aunt Grace wears black and announces: "Francesca's life is going to change utterly when she's forty. Mark my words Francesca..." Everyone laughed at the time, even Francesca. "She shouldn't be allowed anything stronger than cooking sherry", they said. Now Francesca is forty. She has three small children under the age of three and she's pregnant again. Aunt Grace's eccentric prediction has come back to haunt her because there is a whisper on the dusty streets of Botswana - Wendy Smith, the large breasted dentist has taken a lover. He is a married man with children and he hates his family and cannot bear to live with them a minute longer. Can it only be coincidence that Will is in Jo'burg on business and cannot be contacted at the same timer as Wendy is in Jo'burg at a dental conference?
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