Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 170
New Irish Fiction
Dublin: A Novel by Sean Moncrieff
Paperback; 12.50 IEP / 1500 USD / 10.00 UK / 15.85 EURO; Doubleday; 269 pages [Add To Basket]Dublin was mucky and vulgar. Like a tourist who gets drunk and wakes up with a huge tattoo. This is what it is like for Sean Dillon. 35 years-old, a failure, too hung-over to go to work, and too lazy to get a new job. Then there is a mysterious Frenchwoman and cops banging on the door asking about a dead woman and Russian gangsters. This thriller is needle-sharp, funny and scathing. It is set in a Dublin most people don't read about - the real city of Dublin.
A Clouded Peace by John Cole
Hardback; 18.20 IEP / 22.50 USD / 15.99 UK / 23.20 EURO; 265 pages; Weidenfeld [Add To Basket]John Cole, the celebrated former political editor of the BBC, has returned to his Ulster roots to write a thoughtful and intriguing novel, part thriller, part love story, that is inspired by the 'troubles' of the 1970s. Cole draws on his own knowledge of Northern Ireland, its people and its politics. He also takes a mischievous side-swipe at the politics of television and televised politics. His hero, Alan Houston, is an Ulster-born journalist working in London, married with two sons - one at university, the other still at school. With sectarian violence growing, Alan is persuaded to quit journalism and become political adviser to the British government in Belfast. Absorbed by his new job, in which he makes contact with the hard men of the IRA, Alan neglects his wife, who is attracted to another man. The IRA, regarding leverage as a potent weapon in its negotiating armoury, targets one of the Houston's sons. With its twists and turns and its strong characterisation, this book marks an impressive fiction debut.
Out of Ireland by Christopher Koch
Paperback; 11.50 IEP / 14.00 USD / 10.00 UK / 14.40 EURO; 700 pages; Vintage [Add To Basket]This masterful novel tells the story of a man who suffers exile through fighting for the future of his people. A leader of the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848, Robert Devereux is an Irish gentleman who is prepared to hazard a life of privilege in the fight for his country's freedom. Transported to Van Diemen's Land as a political prisoner, he enters a life that greatly changes him, falling in love with a young Irish convict woman. Through Kathleen O'Rahilly he comes to know the people he's long romanticised; but his cause, and the life he has lost, will not let him go.
6 Days by Brendan Du Bois
Paperback; 11.50 IEP / 14.00 USD / 10.00 UK / 14.40 EURO; 488 pages; Little Brown [Add To Basket]A week is a long time in politics, but six days can destroy democracy. It should be the happiest days for former special forces agent Drew Connor. Out walking in New Hampshire's White Mountains with his girlfriend Sheila Cass, he has butterflies in his stomach and an engagement ring in his pocket. Then a thunderstorm hits, and they take shelter in what Sheila thinks is a relay station for a state utility. But when Drew enters the building, he realises they have stepped into something far more sinister. As Drew and Sheila discover, they have stumbled on a plot to kill the president and overthrow the American government, a plan that is to take place in just six days time. With the conspirators claiming they are terrorists on the run, Drew knows it is going to be hard enough just to stay alive, let alone put a stop to this most deadly of political schemes …
Irish Ice by W. Brian Perry
Paperback; 15.95 IEP / 20.00 USD / 14.00 UK / 20.25 EURO; 283 pages; Creative Arts Book Company [Add To Basket]Justin Flynn, a blue-collar Irish Catholic from the Bronx, arrives late for his own wedding to Manda, a beautiful Spanish immigrant. After a comical brawl at the wedding, a brief and bittersweet honeymoon, and a well-meaning marriage stuck in the starting gate, it becomes clear that Justin Flynn is arriving late to maturity. But once he survives an affair and a half, lands a good job, loses the job and his wife and his lover, and confronts his own past long with his misty Irish legacy, the possibility arises that he might just grow up after all. This novel is a rollicking tale of love, loss and redemption.
Consumed in Freedom's Flame: A Novel of Ireland's Struggle for Freedom 1916-1921 by Cathal Liam
Hardback; 25.00 IEP / 32.50 USD / 20.00 UK / 31.75 EURO; 444 pages; St. Padraic Press [Add To Basket]This historical novel is the story of fictional hero, Aran Roe O'Neill, and his resolute commitment to Ireland and its quest for independence. He personifies the courageous resistance of generations of Irishmen and women to English conquest, corruption and injustice. Together with a small group of other republicans, Aran fights for his nation's freedom during the early part of the twentieth century. The story weaves fact and fiction around the exploits of this youthful Irishman and his adventurous friends from Dublin's 1916 Easter Rising to the ensuing Irish War of Independence. The book provides both historical background and imaginative detail seen through the eyes of the romantic and brave young man as he seeks to free his homeland from the bonds of British entanglement.
Dyke Duffy and the Dog Days of Killarmon by Jo Belle Coffman
Paperback; 15.00 IEP / 20.00 USD / 13.50 UK / 19.05 EURO; 386 pages; Xlibris Corp [Add To Basket]When she left for Ireland, Sam thought she was running away from home, but soon discovered that's where she was running to. After six years in Killarmon, the world's largest open air asylum, she's looking forty right in the face and things have finally settled down. Until her cute young neighbour Danny kisses her and life has to go and get interesting again …
After Kafra by Martin Malone
Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 8.50 USD / 5.50 UK / 8.90 EURO; 262 pages; Poolbeg [Add To Basket]Harry Kyle dreams of the Lebanon, of lemon groves, sun-scorched walls, the shush of stormy waves, of a village called Kafra … of a woman's foot wrenched from her body - blue legging, shiny bone like chicken-bone and sinew - blown off at the feet. Sergeant Kyle, United Nations Peacekeeper, has always known that someday this would happen - that his eyes would be called upon to see such a sight. He hadn't believed he would handle it so badly. Back in Ireland, he struggles in silence to shake off the indelible images branded on his soul, a tough guy melting while his family disintegrates around him.
The House That Jack Built by Catherine Barry
Paperback; 5.99 IEP / 7.50 USD / 5.00 UK / 7.60 EURO; 340 pages; Town House [Add To Basket]When Jack loses her virginity at the age of sixteen, she finds the experience a crushing disappointment. But more than a decade on - living in a tiny flat in Dublin as a single mother and in a dead-end job - she still dreams of Matt, Thin Lizzy and those days of old … So bumping into her first love unexpectedly one Christmas, she feels she has met with her destiny. Okay, so Matt is married, he has a kid. When he invites her to join an evening class he's teaching, Jack's fantasies soar to a new height. Matt has set her on the first steps of a journey that will change her life … only it is not quite the journey she had in mind.
Planned Accidents by Sean Monaghan
Paperback; 6.99 IEP / 8.50 USD / 5.50 UK / 8.90 EURO; 225 pages; Poolbeg Press [Add To Basket]Shane is 23. His girlfriend has died in bizarre circumstances and his exorbitant hire-purchase lifestyle is about to implode. Andrew is 30. His fortified suburban comforts are threatened by the exposure of a squalid secret. Both seek advice from the carnal owner of a cosmetic shop, Nuala, but she has become disillusioned with making things smell sweet. Planned Accidents is a novel about veiled lives, decadent sex, clubbing, death threats, New Age spirituality, designer drugs and secrets … in other words, the Celtic Tiger.
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