The In-Laws
By Sinéad Moriarty
Amanda, Katie and Melanie are the daughters-in-law of the domineering and difficult Nancy. Melanie is in business with her, along with her husband and her two brothers-in-law. Katie knows she never stood a chance with snobby Nancy, having left school early to work as a hairdresser. Amanda and her husband have just moved back to Dublin and she is determined to stay on-side with Nancy, however challenging that might prove. Melanie, meanwhile, could run her mother-in-law’s literary agency with her eyes closed, but she knows she’ll never be fully accepted – being only an in-law. Nancy has a little more time for her grandchildren, one of them in particular, but she really does come across as the most impossible woman imaginable. Moriarty is strong on the casual chat at family get-togethers and the eventual realization of the three daughters-in-law that if they don’t start calling the shots soon, they run the risk of being completely ostracized. A must for fans.
Thirst Trap
By Gráinne O’Hare
The eye-catching cover of Gráinne O’Hare’s debut novel (a cigarette poised in a platform shoe) just enhances its appeal, as do the pink and purple – and glitter! – shades on the book cover. The inside (the most important part!) does not disappoint – it’s a fresh, fun and feisty story of female friendship and loss. Maggie, Harley and Róise have been more than a bit lost since the sudden death of their friend and roommate Lydia. They’re also approaching the age when they know they’ll have to think about proper living situations and proper jobs. But they are still caught up in nightclubbing and pill-popping and romantic situationships and if that all helps to keep the grief at bay, then so be it. O’Hare writes very well of the shorthand that develops with years of friendship and she is equally strong when it comes to the impossibility of coming to terms with the sudden loss of a close friend.
Our Song
By Anna Carey
Laura has been quite successful in the world of advertising but her heart has always been with music and songwriting. She hasn’t done anything with this since her college years. She doesn’t even really talk about the band she was in then, and very few people know that one of her bandmates was the musical superstar Tadhg Hennessy. When she gets an email asking if she can meet Tadhg to talk about a song they started writing together some 16 years previously, it just so happens that she’s between jobs. She hasn’t seen or spoken to him in all of that time, and never intended to again, but she’s being offered a sum that’s just too good to turn down. And if she’s a little curious about Tadhg and the man he grew into, who could blame her? Having done the college band thing herself, Anna Carey is very well-placed as the author of this entertaining rom-com and its intrinsically Irish setting.
Ordinary Saints
By Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin
Jay was only 16 when her beloved brother Ferdia dies suddenly while training to be a priest in Rome. Thirteen years later, she’s living in London, and doesn’t tend to travel home too often. Her father phones to let her know that the Church is considering Ferdia for sainthood. The priest who is doing the initial investigation arranges to meet Jay for her take on things, but the conversation comes to an end shortly after she indicates her difficulty with the proposition. From there, she realizes it’s high time she has a chat with her parents about certain aspects of her childhood. Ní Mhaoileoin drifts back and forth between the present and the past, and we begin to understand why Jay is not so keen on going home. It’s a very accomplished debut.
Long Story
By Vicki Notaro
Tara and Alex were best friends in Dublin as children and when they both fall for the same lad at stage school, they vow never to let a boy come between them. Years later, Tara is an instantly-recognizable Rom-Com queen and Alex has a podcast adored by fans. When Tara’s movie star husband suddenly abandons her for a younger co-star, she is devastated, and Alex arrives to take care of her. When their long-ago crush, now a famous rock star, steps back into the picture, both women are caught up in reliving those old feelings. Will they remember their promise to put their friendship first, above all else? Or is the desire to be happy just too strong for some friendships? This is a chatty, lively exploration of bonds between women in a fast-paced, celebrity world.
The Boy from the Sea
By Garrett Carr
It’s early 1970s Donegal and life is tough. But when a baby boy is found abandoned on the beach, local fisherman Ambrose Bonnar is determined to give him a home. His wife Christine is less enthusiastic, and their young son Declan is appalled. But Ambrose feels certain that adopting baby Brendan, as they call him, will be a very good thing for the family. Over the next twenty or so years, the Bonnar family will know hardship, division, and grief. Was taking in the abandoned baby the right thing to do? Ambrose is still absolutely sure about this, despite the fractured relationship between Brendan and Declan. Christine’s sister Phyllis, who lives next door with their aging and cranky father, really doesn’t help matters with her constant sly asides and her never-ending requests for money. They are a family who finds it difficult to share their feelings and emotions, but that wouldn’t have been unusual for the time. Carr’s novel is well worth spending time with, particularly for those who enjoy well-written Irish fiction set in the recent past.
The Marriage Vendetta
By Caroline Madden
On first glance, the premise of this book didn’t exactly sing to me – it’s a retelling of the story of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his soprano wife Eliza Linley. Indeed, the author originally wrote it as a historical novel but reframed it when it didn’t seem to be working. The modern version, dear reader, is simply delightful. It is clever, quirky, delightfully funny in spots, and thoroughly, gorgeously enjoyable. Eliza is a concert pianist of great accomplishment who can’t help resenting her husband Richard for not seeing her properly. He’s a playwright who has just moved them to Dublin where he is charged with overhauling a prestigious theatre. She runs their home and looks after their young daughter Mara, but she knows she is being greatly undervalued. The scenes where Eliza visits a therapist to talk about what’s really going on in her marriage are absolutely brilliant. A must must-read – don’t miss it!
Ghost Wedding
By David Park
David Park sets the scene beautifully in his new novel by describing the way those who have inhabited buildings before us are still there “in the emptiness, on dusty stairwells, in boarded-up back rooms”. It’s a fitting start to this ethereal novel which dips in and out of a century – from a family’s grand home and the labored addition of a manmade lake to the planned wedding almost a century later of a couple in the same location, now an impressive hotel. What the story reinforces, very powerfully, is the sense that humans change very little through the decades – even in a hundred years there are common themes of love, loyalty, guilt and despair. And, of course, the circle of life keeps turning and babies keep being brought into the world. A beautifully contemplative read.
Fun and Games
By John Patrick McHugh
The young lads in Achill are obsessed with sex and spare no blushes in filling their friends in on all the lurid details. That’s according to John Patrick McHugh’s second novel, a rip-roaring tale of love, lust and GAA set on the Mayo island. McHugh’s John Masterson is 17, he’s just done his Leaving Cert, and he knows he’ll more than likely be getting off the island after the summer is over. An intimate picture of his mother has gone viral, which leads to him receiving a very crude nickname. When he is called up to join the senior football team, along with a couple of his closest mates, he feels as though he has finally arrived. When a slightly older colleague from the hotel where he works seems to reciprocate his initial ham-fisted attempts at flirting, he is determined to win her over. Whether McHugh is describing Masterson’s nervous jokes as he tries to woo Amber or detailing his nerve-stricken breathlessness as he waits to see if he makes the team on match day, every inch of this novel is convincingly authentic. Masterson is an eejit, but he’s a very likeable eejit, and he stands up when he thinks something is wrong.
The Bridge to Always
By Lynda Marron
Maeve Gaffney doesn’t do things by halves. Still mourning her late mother, she ups sticks and moves herself and her daughter to a small West Cork town, just because that’s where the love of her teenage life now lives, and she reckons they have a good shot at making it work. Without a care for Tim’s wife, or her own anxious child, she sets about renovating an old house and flinging herself at her lost love at every opportunity. Two neighbors try to look out for Maeve, but she is mercurial at best, and veers between building friendships and haring off on her own madcap schemes. It’s an enjoyable read and a great second novel from Marron, the Cork-based writer whose fan base is bound to be increasing steadily.
Confessions
By Catherine Airey
Cora Brady is planning a meet-up with the guy she fancies when she catches sight of the first plane hitting the North Tower on September 11, 2001. Her dad works in Cantor Fitzgerald at the top of that tower and the more she watches, the more she knows he can’t possibly have survived. He’s her only surviving parent and now he’s gone. Cora is 16 and determined not to have social services get involved. So, when she gets a letter from her aunt in Ireland, she picks up and moves across the ocean. Instead of seeing how she copes with the huge adjustment, we delve back in time to the childhood and youth of Cora’s mother and aunt and life in rural Donegal. This is Catherine Airey’s first book and this reader, for one, can’t wait to see what she does next.
Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted
By Lissa Evans
It doesn’t seem right that a book about such an iconic television series should be so short, but Lissa Evans explains that very early on: “This is not a comprehensive study of Father Ted, it’s a book of bits and pieces from my own memories of the series.” And bits and pieces is very much what we get. Brought in as a producer from the second series, Evans (now a novelist) has a few amusing anecdotes about filming and continuity and decisions made around locations, but it’s more like a long magazine article than anything that will truly excite the die-hard fan. It’s mildly amusing in parts but does convey a good sense of Evans’ own gratitude for her luck in getting to work on it.
Burn After Reading
By Catherine Ryan Howard
Jack Smyth has been under a cloud of suspicion since his wife Kate died in a house fire. He raced into the blazing house to save her but was too late. When it emerges that she didn’t die of smoke inhalation but from horrific violence, he is more under the spotlight than ever. Meanwhile, writer Emily is hoping her publishers forget about the fact that she never submitted the second book she was under contract for. The advance has been spent long ago, but there’s just nothing there to stand up to the runaway success of her first novel. When her publishers reach out, she knows she’s going to have to pay. Their suggestion is fairly off-the-wall – ghostwrite Jack Smyth’s memoir, including his version of that night or repay the money owed. Emily has never ghostwritten anything in her life, but she’s ready to give it a go. She’ll be flown to Florida and has to sign a DNA, but it’s her best chance of getting out from under the debt she owes. When she meets Jack initially, she finds it hard to believe that someone so charismatic and gentle could have had anything to do with the death of his wife. Told with the author’s customary flair and keen eye for twists, it’s very readable, though not as good as some of her other thrillers.
The Good Mistress
By Anne Tiernan
Rory has died prematurely and his wife Erica, in a wine stupor, hadn’t noticed that he had failed to come to bed that night. Juliet returns from New Zealand for the funeral, bereft at the loss of the only man she has ever loved. They’d been close in her teens, and had quietly rekindled their affair in recent years, but she knows she can’t tell anyone that. Instead, she has to watch as his wife and teenage son are chief mourners at the front of the church. Maeve, another close childhood friend of Juliet and Rory, is now a bestselling novelist and would appear to have it all. So why does she feel the need to drive to Dublin and check in to an airport hotel just to get a bit of rest and time to herself? While this doesn’t quite live up to Tiernan’s (sister of comedian Tommy) debut, it’s an enjoyable read all the same.
The Paris Express
By Emma Donoghue
A new Emma Donoghue book is always an event in itself – partly because you just never know what you’re going to get! But that’s half the fun. For this outing, she’s brought us back to France in 1895 and a train journey that’s about to get very interesting. Inspired by a famous rail disaster, and the anarchy rearing its head in France at the time, the author sketches gifted pen pictures of a whole range of characters – including the railway crew (who bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘work husband’), a little boy travelling alone to meet his father, a wealthy politician and his ailing wife, and budding Irish writer J.M. Synge, or John as he’s referred to throughout. As the train speeds its way through the French countryside, on its way to Paris, the tension rises. It’s not one of Donoghue’s best, though it is a very enjoyable journey. I wouldn’t recommend reading it on the train, though!
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