Book news, reviews and recommendations
A year ago I reviewed Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World is a Cul de Sac which taxed my usual picking of favourites short story review tactic because, without exception, they were all excellent. I was delighted, then, when her first novel, Trespasses, popped through my letter box. Set in early ‘70s County Down …
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy: The personal and the political Read More »
This is the second novel I’ve reviewed this year with a backdrop of The Troubles. Set in the 1979 on a tiny remote Irish island rather than in a 1993 Ulster village, Audrey Magee’s The Colony is very different from Jan Carson’s The Raptures. Two men make their way to the island, planning to spend …
The Colony by Audrey Magee: Two sides of the story Read More »
History, family and otherwise, is woven through the fabric of this accomplished first novel which seems appropriate given that Neil Hegarty’s previous books deal with the subject. Set in Derry against the background of the Troubles, Inch Levels is about a young man with only a few weeks to live, wrestling with a dilemma and …
I’m not a thriller kind of gal – well only the televised kind, usually with a Scandiland backdrop – but the setting of Annemarie Neary’s debut and the fact that I was still hauling myself out of my flu-induced reading slump before going on holiday made me reach for it. It’s the story of Róisín, …
Siren by Annemarie Neary: The past is a foreign country Read More »
Only four books into the year and two have already aroused strong feelings. David Vann’s Dirt was not a happy experience nor, I’m sure, was it meant to be given that it’s a study in what happens when parents smother their children in controlling affection, but the final section in which the mother gets her …
Ghost Moth by Michèle Forbes: A beautifully expressed debut Read More »