Books by Irish writers I’ve enjoyed in recent years
Recent times have seen Ireland produce some superb fiction and I’m going to highlight some of my favourites here. I haven’t included Sally Rooney, as everyone has heard of Sally by now, but I’m going to list ten books I've enjoyed in the past couple of years.
Snowflake - Louise Nealon
Accomplished debut novel about a young woman from a rural background finding her way in university life in Dublin whist dealing with a mother who believes her dreams are prophecies. It’s about mental health, family and finding your way in life and I found it both moving and very readable. Full review here.
Eleven tales from one of the modern masters of the short form. Wendy Erskine puts you straight into the midst of the characters lives, often on the edge of tragedy or in an emotional crisis. The stories range from ‘Cell’ about a woman who loses twenty five years of her life to a political cult, to ‘Momento Mori’ about a woman who finds the front of her home becoming a shrine for a murder victim whilst she’s caring for her terminally ill partner. Review here.
The Raptures - Jan Carson
Jan Carson’s book is about a mysterious illness affecting a group of school children in the North of Ireland in the nineties. Sometimes dark, sometimes hilarious, it’s an incredibly readable book that looks at belief, family, community and trauma. Review here.
Small things like these - Claire keegan
This topped many ‘best of’ lists at the end of 2021 and it’s easy to see why. A short novella, it’s a thing of rare beauty, a truthful and heartbreaking book set around Bill Furlong, a coal Merchant making deliveries during a cold Christmas in Ireland, 1985. Shines a light on an claustrophobic and insular Ireland from not so long ago.
Lucy Caldwell’s book, set amidst the Belfast blitz of WW2, is an emotional, haunting and beautifully woven work of historical fiction that follows the two Bell sisters. It’s incredibly well researched and shines a light on the lives of the people devastated by the bombing.
Glorious heresies - Lisa McInerney
Blackly comic tale of life in post Celtic tiger Cork, centred around 15 year old drug dealer Ryan, determined not to turn out like his dad. This is a raw, visceral and angry book, not for the faint of heart, but the writing is intoxicating and the characters compelling.
Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell
Fairly well known but it’s one of my absolute favourites of recent years. It’s about Shakespeares wife Agnes and the death of his their son Hamnet. Using a few scant details O’Farrell has masterfully recreated a place and time, and I found this book a deeply affecting and moving meditation on grief.
Strange Flowers - Donal Ryan
Difficult to pick one of Donal Ryans books, as I’ve loved them all. I’ve gone for ‘Strange Flowers,’ about a young woman who goes missing from rural Tipperary in 1973. He writes so beautifully, about family, love and grief, exile and homecoming, and the rhythm and the cadence of his sentences is something to be savoured.
That old country music - Kevin Barry
Short stories are a favourite of mine and Barry is another of the masters. These tales are populated by the lonely, the sometimes unloved and the lost in the rural west of Ireland. Often darkly humorous, the storytelling is vibrant and the prose fairly crackles.
Trespasses - Louise Kennedy
I was only a child in the seventies in the North Of Ireland but this book feels like a vivid recreation of the period. It’s the story of Cushla, a teacher who starts an affair with an older man whilst befriending a local Catholic family suffering from sectarian abuse. The writing is razor sharp and the sentences sparse, and whilst there are some shocking scenes, there is tenderness there too. You can sense the melancholy and the tension that people lived under. This one really got under my skin and I find myself thinking about it a lot.
All the Broken Places - John Boyne
This is a follow up to the phenomenally successful ‘the boy in the striped pyjamas’, picking up where it left off. This book focuses on Bruno’s brother Gretal, and the turns her life takes. It asks difficult questions of the reader in terms of their feelings for their protagonist, and the prose and storytelling are of the highest order. I’d read ‘the heart’s invisible furies’ by the same author a few years ago and thought he couldn’t top that, but I think this does it. He’s an incredible storyteller, and creates such empathetic, complicated but believable characters, that I kept thinking of Dickens. Can’t praise him much more that that! Full review here
Close to Home - Michael Magee
‘Close to Home’ by Michael Magee is a debut novel that tells the story of Sean, 22 years old and recently graduated, who returns to live in Belfast. He soon finds himself getting pulled into old habits, before an altercation at a party threatens to send his life spiralling out of control.
Sean is such a strong male voice, authentic and complicated. I felt it was a book that accurately portrayed the problems young men face, and how they can’t give rise to their feelings and emotions, and how this leads to violence.
The dialogue cracks like a whip, and felt natural and integral to the characters, carrying meaning and emotion. For me, it’s so important when I’m reading a book that the conversations or internal dialogue sound natural to my ear, and Michael Magee has a real talent for this.
This is a strong debut, as shown by its presence on many of the best books of the year lists. I look forward to seeing what this author does next.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
In ‘The Bee Sting’ by Paul Murray we follow the rich inner lives of the Barnes family as they each grapple with tumultuous events in their lives. With the financial crisis hitting hard, the family car dealership business no longer provides the good times it previously did.
Father Dickie prefers to ignore his problems, whilst Unhappy wife Imelda is forced to sell her possessions on eBay. The story of how these two met, the tragic background to their courtship, is one of the strongest parts of the novel that stayed with me.
Teenage Daughter Cass is on the verge of university but going a bit wild, whilst twelve year old PJ is in danger because of his online life and feeling the strain of the family pulling apart.
This novel absolutely fizzes with energy, and I loved listening to the rich inner lives of these characters. Murray cracks up the tension with an wonderful crescendo, worthy of this dark, very fine tragic comedy of a book.
Kala by Colin Walsh
‘Kala’ by Colin Walsh is a thriller set in an Irish town about a group of friends who reunite after the events of 15 years previously, when their friend Kala vanished. This happens just as another double disappearance occurs, and human remains are found.
There are dual timelines in the book, with the author writing about the charismatic and magnetic character of Kala, and the current events. The two timelines eventually dovetail in a tense finale.
I really enjoyed the depiction of small town teenage life, and the tangled mess of relationships between friends and family. This is cracking slow burning thriller that marks the debut of yet another young Irish writer.
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
The ‘Wild Houses’ in the title of this cracking debut from Colin Barrett are the places in any small town where you know you’ll find drink, drugs, parties and the usual shenanigans. This is where we fell Doll English and his girlfriend Nicky, and unfortunately for Doll he’s about to run into a couple of characters that will see this weekend spiral out of control.
Meanwhile Dev Hendrick, dealing with isolation and grief, answers a knock on the door that he’ll end up wishing he hadn’t. He’s a likeable, ambling giant but he’s about to be pulled into a situation where he’s completely out of control, sending his mental health spiralling downwards.
This is book about the violence that lurks under the surface, and you’ll feel that it could erupt anytime on these pages. It’s about the people who just about exist on the margins, about dealing with demons in a small town where there’s no safety net.
This might sound like a bleak book but it’s not - it contains plenty of humour, and it’s a lean thriller with great dialogue and engaging characters that had me completely engrossed.