Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 210
New Irish Fiction
Authenticity by Deirdre Madden
Trade Paperback with End-flaps; 15.99 Euro / 16.50 USD / 13.00 UK; Faber, 385 pages [Add To Basket]
After a brilliant youth, the painter Roderic Kennedy's life has been overtaken by a series of crises - alcoholism, the failure of his marriage to an Italian woman, and estrangement from his three daughters following his return to Ireland. When he meets Julia Fitzpatrick, twenty years younger and also an artist, it seems as if this period of turbulence and misfortune from which he has been struggling to emerge is at an end. But when Julia then meets William Armstrong, a middle-aged lawyer, it sets in motion a chain of events which, in the course of the following year, has dramatic and unforeseen consequences for all three of them.
Deirdre Madden's novel is her most ambitious to date; both a moving love story and a thought-provoking meditation upon the nature of painting. It is above all an exploration of what it means to be an artist in contemporary society.
Collected Stories by Benedict Kiely
Trade Paperback; 27.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 21.50 UK; Methuen; 762 pages [Add To Basket]
Benedict Kiely is a writer of national and international status. His writing is at once quintessentially Irish and marvelously universal, and a generation of younger writers owes him an enduring debt of inspiration.
This celebratory collection brings together for the first time Kiely's short fiction written between 1963 and 1987. The stories in this volume are rich in imagination and invention, their characters unforgettable, their humour at once affectionate and incisive. Written with apparently effortless style and craft, they amply demonstrate how Kiely's stories have become classics of the genre while at the same time expanding that genre's horizons.
This book was our Fiction Book of the Month for June 2001.
The Blue Tango by Eoin McNamee
Paperback; 9.99 Euro / 11.00 USD / 8.99 UK; Faber, 265 pages [Add To Basket]
At 2:20 am on the morning of the 13th November, 1952, the body of nineteen-year-old Patricia Curran was carried into the surgery belonging to the family doctor. At first Dr. Kenneth Wilson thought that she has been the victim of an accidental shooting. In fact, a subsequent post-mortem revealed that she had been stabbed thirty-seven times. This wonderful novel, which is based on one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent history, is at once a gripping thriller and a danse macabre through a shadowy world of corruption and sexual intrigue - a darkly lyric narrative of white mischief in post-war Ireland, of false accusation and savage murder, presided over by the haunted, tragic figure of Patricia Curran.
When the Bough Breaks by June Considine
Trade Paperback; 13.99 Euro / 15.50 USD / 11.50 UK; New Island, 387 pages [Add To Basket]
Under the shadow of a remote headland, a child is born and abandoned. Eva Frawley's birth is a mystery that remains unsolved, a media event that will soon fade from the headlines. Years later - her marriage in ruins, her future uncertain - Eva realises that to move forward with her life she must first understand her past. For Eva it is a time of discovery. As she returns to the headland that first cradled her, she begins a reckless and passionate affair with an older man, unaware that she is drawing ever nearer to the truth about her birth. This novel is a story of love and passion, of power, lost innocence and revenge. It weaves through the broken branches of a family tree, revealing scars that have never healed and a love that refuses to die.
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue
Paperback; 14.40 Euro / 15.90 USD / 12.00 UK; Virago, 212 pages [Add To Basket]
This wonderful book of fictions that are also true, is named for Mary Toft, who, in 1726, managed to convince half England that she'd laboured and had done just that, given birth to rabbits. Resurrecting buried scandals, audacious hoaxes and private tragedies, the Irish author has written a sequence of short stories about peculiar moments in the history of the British Isles. Here artists mix with poisoners and countesses rub shoulders with cross-dressers, vicars and revolutionaries. Fiery Irish poteen seduces a young English captain into a hasty marriage; the Second Coming is proclaimed in Scotland; and a miniature girl becomes a tiny skeleton in a London museum. This is a book of real treasures.
Shame the Devil by Mary McCarthy
Paperback; 8.99 Euro / 9.99 USD / 7.99 UK; Poolbeg, 454 pages [Add To Basket]
Amy Kennedy, partially dressed, lies on top of a creased duvet. Her eyes are half open. A year after her mother's death, her depression threatens to engulf her. Her mother's cruel and violent tones still rage in her head. 'No tears, no tears now or I'll give you something to cry about.' She is along. A letter arrives. It is addressed to her mother. Vague childhood memories are stirred. Desperate to emerge from the blackness, the contents of the letter fire Amy to embark on a dangerous journey that she hopes will uncover the awful secret that destroyed her mother's life … and ruined her childhood. But, the truth that begins to emerge is worse that she imagined.
Loving the Stars by Jaye Carroll
Paperback; 8.99 Euro / 9.99 USD / 7.99 UK; Poolbeg, 448 pages [Add To Basket]
Andi wants to be a stand-up comic but in the meantime she's got to hang on to the day job down at the pound shop. It's not exactly showbiz, but it helps to have a sense of humour when you're trying to sell badly painted ornamental cats and bright blue toilet brushes. Her love live is a bit of a joke too, but could be a lot better if only Dean, her best friend Ellen's twin brother, would just get the hint. 'I think we should just be friends.' Andi told him. But, it has been a year and a half and he still expects them to get back together. When Andi bumps into Tony, and up-and-coming comedian, who just happens to be good-looking. They hit if off immediately and now he wants her to write some material for him. Andi's sure that this will take her a step closer to her dream of becoming a comedian herself. But the road to stardom is not going to be easy, especially if her disapproving mother and paranoid and panicky older sister have any say in it.
Sign's On by Jacinta McDevitt
Paperback; 8.99 Euro / 9.99 USD / 7.99 UK; Poolbeg, 420 pages [Add To Basket]
'My darling, darling Linda …' Wow, what an opener … and how romantic! But as Linda reads on she discovers that the note is not a tender love-note but more or a buggered-off type note. It seems that Dick is sick of being a husband and father of their two, almost grown, children, so he as left to 'find himself' - not in the lost property office, but on the beautiful island of Crete. Well, her life had been in a bit of a rut before he left. And to add insult to injury, her 18-year-old hormone on legs, Carl, thinks he has found himself, in the arms of an older woman - in fact much older and with a child - while daughter Chloe wants to get her nose and God knows what else pierced. All out of love and with half of her life missing in action and the other half acting up, Linda's determined she's going to show them all. Linda's about to fight back.
Friends Indeed by Rose Doyle
Paperback; 9.99 Euro / 10.99 USD / 8.99 UK; Coronet, 472 pages [Add To Basket]
Alicia Buckley and Sarah Rooney have been friends since childhood. Allie, whose coldly disapproving mother has social ambitions her daughter doesn't share, comes from a prosperous Dublin family; Sarah is a child of the tenements. But the girls enjoy a loving closeness that belies their different backgrounds, so when Sarah gets pregnant and is thrown out by her father, Allie doesn't think twice about joining her friend in exile. Neither woman, however, is prepared for the hardship and deprivations she will face. This novel is moving portrait of friendship.
Evening Class / Copper Beach / Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
Large Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 12.50 UK; Orion, 904 pages [Add To Basket]
For the first time in one volume, three wonderful novels from the much-loved, internationally-bestselling Irish author. Evening Class: The Italian evening class at Mountainview School is like hundreds of others all over Dublin. But this class has its own special quality - as the focus for the varied hopes and dreams of teacher and pupil alike. By the time the pupils set off on a grand trip of Italy, a surprising number of them have found more than the Italian language in the evening class. The Copper Beach: Shancarrig School stands in the shade of a glorious old copper beach whose colours tell the passing of the seasons and the years: a tree that has watched over many young lives. Eight children once carved their names on the trunk of the copper beach. Now those children are gown and have become very different - but in each life, there are hidden secrets and extraordinary stories to be told ... Tara Road: Ria and Marilyn have never met - they live thousands of miles apart, one in Tara Road, Dublin, the other in New England. They are two unlikely friends but when each needs a place to escape to, a house exchange seems an ideal solution. Along with the borrowed houses comes gossip and speculation as Ria and Marilyn swap lives for the summer …
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