Books to Look Out For in March 2026: Part Two

Several Irish authors in this second instalment of March’s preview, including one of my favourites, but I’m kicking off with a writer I’ve not read for a while.

I enjoyed John Lanchester’s Capital, soapy though it was which is perhaps why it made such good TV. Look What You Made Me Do is set in North rather than South London where Kate is unnerved by some of the details portrayed in Cheating, a new hit TV show created by a young scriptwriter, which mirrors intimacies in her own apparently happy thirty-year marriage. ‘A black comedy of resentment and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the story of two very different women from two very different generations, heading toward a battle only one of them can win’ says the blurb promising some entertainment.

David Annand’s The Dice Was Loaded from the Start follows Max who’s been failing at filmmaking in Berlin for a decade. With a generous relocation package, thanks to his wife’s successful career, the family has moved to a rented North London house on a street full of couples who’ve lived there since the ‘70s, sitting pretty on their fortunes, and keen to tell their stories to Max. When a group of Millennials move in, an intergenerational battle breaks out with Gen-Z Max caught in the middle. ‘With wit and a propulsive pace, David Annand spins the battleground of the housing crisis into a brilliantly crafted study in intergenerational difference. The Dice Was Loaded from the Start asks: what does the good life look like? And how might we make meaning in an exhausted world?’ says the blurb which sounds entertaining and relevant.

I was doubtful about the premise of Kenan Orhan’s The Renovation but sufficiently intrigued to give it a try. Dilara is renovating her ensuite bathroom in the Salerno apartment she and her husband have lived in for seven years. Her builders won’t allow her to view their work until they’ve finished when she’s shocked to find a replica of a Turkish prison cell. A child psychologist in her homeland, Dilara is a housewife and caregiver for her demented father, an academic, vocal against Erdoğan’s increasingly repressive regime, lucky to escape prison or worse before they fled Turkey. Both she and her husband have tried to make a life in Italy but while he feels at home, she still yearns for a Turkey that she knows no longer exists, depicted in evocative descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells of Istanbul in this slim, poignant and inventive novel. Review to follow…

Djamel White’s All Them Dogs is set in West Dublin’s gangland to which Tony Ward has returned keen to re-establish himself after five years of keeping his distance. Spotting an opportunity, Tony eyes up an association with a notorious gangster’s enforcer which may be based on more than a working partnership, complicating things somewhat.  It’s described by Anne Enright as ‘A stylish, adroit and gritty debut’, raising hopes for yet another talented Irish writer.

Set in in June 1963, the month of President Kennedy’s visit to his ancestral County Wexford homestead, Neil Tully’s The Visit follows Sergeant Jim Field whose concern for a young man ostracised by his community is increasingly pressing. The Garda have their hands full with all the brouhaha surrounding JFK’s imminent visit. Peter Casey’s provocation of Patrick Hatten in a seemingly unstoppable bid to buy more land for his stud, is an unwelcome addition to their load. Tully portrays ’60s small town Ireland struggling with poverty, prejudice and the loss of its bright young people in this cleverly structured debut which leads to a page-turning denouement. Review shortly…

I loved Mary Costello’s Academy Street, The River Capture not so much. Her new one, A Beautiful Loan, follows forty-five-year-old Anna as she looks back to 1985, when she was nineteen, and her obsessive infatuation with Peter, an older, worldly man. Peter’s glittering circle of friends and wide experience lead the shy, naïve young woman into marriage and, eventually, a terrible betrayal. ‘As Anna’s life becomes less predictable, she uncovers deeper layers of herself. Her journey gives an intimate portrait of a woman embracing herself as she is, claiming the life she yearns for’ says the blurb raising my expectations.

March’s second short story collection is Colm Tóibín’s The News from Dublin for which, unsurprisingly, I have high hopes. From an undocumented worker forced to leave his San Francisco home and the child he fathered there to three sisters who decide to return to Catalonia from Argentina where they’ve lived for many years, these are stories of lives lived far from home, often filled with longing and homesickness.

That’s it for March’s new fiction. As ever, a click on a title will take you to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. Paperbacks to follow when I’m back from a short, and I hope dry, break in Copenhagen…