Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 195
New Irish Fiction
Dancing with Minnie the Twig by Mogue Doyle
Small Hardback; 13.50 Euro / 12.00 USD / 8.50 UK; Bantam, 253 pages [Add To Basket]
In rural Ireland in the 1960s: if you were a boy, you listened to Luxembourg on the wireless, went hurling up the fields with your friends, thought about what the big boys got up to with the girls, and in particular what your brother did with his girlfriend, Minnie. Your mam ruled the house, and you watched out for your father - the old lad - who as liable to fly into rages and give you a right ringer when you weren't expecting it. Most of all, you knew everything about the village where you lived, and everyone there. And Tony did; he was one smart boy, ready for anything - at least he thought he was, until the day he stumbled across a family secret that brought with it devastating consequences. In prose that is lyrical yet streetwise, haunting yet grimly comic, Tony conjures to life a rural community with such intimacy that you can smell the mountain air, hear the church bell call Mass, and watch Tony's family and friends as they arrive for the funeral service that will change everything. Very funny and achingly sad, this novel distils an essence of a departed Ireland that will linger long after the final page has been turned.
Trains and Boats and Planes by Killen McNeill
Paperback; 9.50 Euro / 8.50 USD / 5.90 UK; TownHouse/Pocket Books; 279 pages [Add To Basket]
Love for Harry Moore will be forever links with Marie, the beautiful girl from Alsace. Ever since his magical teenage encounter with her in a tiny holiday resort in Donegal, it has never lived up to his expectations. Thirty years later, Harry, middle-aged, but not quite disillusioned, travels to Stausbourg to take up the search for Marie and the innocence and longings of his youth. This is a haunting and evocative debut grappling with memory, conflict and tragedy and coming of age issues that may, in Harry's case, never be resolved.
Junk Male by Brian Gallagher
Trade Paperback; 16.50 Euro / 15.00 USD / 10.00 UK; Orion; 249 pages [Add To Basket]
Sometimes, no matter how hard a man tries, nothing will go right. When Joel's wife Ellen announces she's pregnant, he gulps but prepares to accept the challenges of fatherhood, even if it means trading in his precious saxophone for a steady job to provide for his offspring. But it is not that straightforward. Ellen has a little secret regarding the baby and she's got a race against time to make sure Joel doesn't find out. A blackly comic novel of love, misunderstanding and fatherhood.
Love and Sleep by Sean O'Reilly
Trade Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 13.50 USD / 9.00 UK ; Faber, 199 pages [Add To Basket]
This debut novel is a journey into the dark and uncomfortable psyche of Niall, a young man on the run from the past and denying himself a future. Arriving in Derry, years after he left for a wandering life - from city to city in Europe, from woman to woman - Niall finds the damaged city of his youth to have changed in all but character. His family too has fractured, and Niall's failure to show up at his father's funeral has encouraged a bitter response. Just as his memories, fears and desires threaten to consume him, Niall enters into a dangerous relationship with Lorna, a committed socialist with a dark side of her own. Haunted by a past that only gradually gives up its secrets and insensate for most of the time through a cocktail of booze and drugs, Niall lives his life to extremes, testing the limits of those around him and pushing himself ever closer to destruction.
A Waste of Shame by Jim Lusby
Trade Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 9.00 USD / 6.50 UK; Orion, 218 pages [Add To Basket]
On the first morning of a new millennium, Ireland wakes up to the brutal murder and sexual mutilation of a 93-year-old woman who had been living alone in a ramshackle house on the main street of a remote seaside village in West Cork. Local detectives are convinced that it was a bungled robbery and already have a pair of suspects in the frame. Detective Inspector Carl McCadden disagrees. Now attached to a roving unit of elite officers dedicated to cracking stubbornly unsolved cases, he is sent to investigate and quickly decides that the reason for the sickening mutilation of the old woman lies buried in her past.
Consumed in Freedom's Flame: A Novel of Ireland's Struggle for Freedom 1916-1921 by Cathal Liam
Paperback; 16.50 Euro / 14.00 USD / 10.00 UK ; 424 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.
Last Tango in Ibiza by Ardlea Writers' Group
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 9.00 USD / 7.00 UK; Ardlea Writers' Group; 398 pages [Add To Basket]
Dublin Airport on a hot July Saturday night, and a disparate group of holiday makers join the check-in queue. Destination Ibiza, the legendary fun-in-the-sun holiday island in the Med …This book with its cast of characters getting more than they bargained for from their holiday brochures, is funny, poignant and unputdownable - eminently suitable for a good read, whether you're relaxing on a beach in the sun or on a sofa at home. The novel is unique in that it is written by a mature all-female 6-member writers group from Dublin's Artane.
Smoke in the Wind: A Celtic Mystery by Peter Tremayne
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 9.00 USD / 6.50 UK; Headline, 358 pages [Add To Basket]
Enroute from Ireland to visit the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sister Fidelma and her faithful Saxon companion, Brother Eadulf, find themselves on the coast of the Welsh kingdom of Dyfed when their ship is blown off course by a storm. The elder King Gwlyddien is quick to offer hospitality, not least because the famous Irish 'dalaigh' may be the only person capable of solving the mystery which has baffled the wisest men - the entire monastic community of nearby Llanpedern, to which Gwlyddien's eldest son belongs, has vanished into thin air.
Miracle Woman by Marita Conlon-McKenna
Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 9.00 USD / 6.50 UK; Bantam, 464 pages [Add To Basket]
Martha McGill was an ordinary woman. Nothing extraordinary had ever happened to her, unless she counted her marriage to Mike and the birth of her three perfect, healthy children. Until the day of her accident, when she touched the Lucas boy as he lay dying on the tarmac, and they said she saved him. That was the start of it all. As word of her healing gift spreads, Martha's life and the lives of those around her are radically altered. Hounded by the media and those in desperate search of hope and miracles, Martha is forced to decide what is most important in her life.
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