Ireland Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

Saoirse by Charleen Hurtobise

Catherine — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:35:16 +0000

A teenage girl in fear for her life steals both money and a passport to get out of the U.S. and into Ireland in the 1990s. This is the beginning of the novel Saoirse, but it’s nowhere near the beginning of the life of Sarah, the main character. That unspools slowly throughout the book as […]

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Heart, Be at Peace

Catherine — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:15:20 +0000

Two five-stars in one week?! What’s going on over here at The Gilmore Guide? Well, the reviews have been pretty few and far between this summer so I felt like giving everyone another outstanding reading option was the least I could do. I’ve been enthralled by Irish authors for years now and one of […]

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January Reading Wrap-Up

Catherine — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 08:20:19 +0000

Anyone else have a tough reading month in January? Who knows whether it was because I had so much amazing backlist reading over the holidays or the fact that none of the new January books panned out for me. Either way, I’m not sorry to say goodbye to this first month of 2024. Let’s go […]

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Kala: A Novel

Catherine — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 07:06:41 +0000

Even when it’s a tourist destination on the Irish coast a small town is still just a small town to the teens who live there—a boring place to escape as soon as possible. For the six disparate, but tightknit friends in Colin Walsh’s novel, Kala, teen boredom and energy lead to a prank that goes […]

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Juno Loves Legs

Catherine — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 07:09:18 +0000

With a personality as incendiary and out of control as her flaming red hair, Juno bursts onto the pages of Juno Loves Legs like a wildfire. She and Legs, her best friend, live in a housing estate in Dublin and in an abbreviated 300 pages the novel follows them from childhoods where even home isn’t […]

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The Rachel Incident

Catherine — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:41:11 +0000

Rachel is working in London as a journalist when an unfamiliar man throws out a name from her past that catapults her back to her university days. From this modern-day beginning author Caroline O’Donoghue jumps back to 2008 when the Irish economy was in freefall, Rachel was in her third year of university, and she […]

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The Queen of Dirt Island

Catherine — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 08:21:02 +0000

The week Saoirse Aylward is born her father is killed in an accident, leaving her mother, Eileen alone to raise her. Their lives in a small village in western Ireland are at the heart of Donal Ryan’s boisterous, tender novel The Queen of Dirt Island. Although the novel stays within the village’s borders it’s an […]

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56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

Catherine — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 04:33:39 +0000

I’ve had some hesitancy about COVID novels—too much too soon, but Catherine Howard’s 56 Days had a premise I couldn’t resist. Set in Dublin, a couple that only recently started dating decides to move in together when the country’s lockdown begins. Now, 56 days later a body is discovered in the apartment where they lived. When […]

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Normal People by Sally Rooney

Catherine — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 07:08:42 +0000

Marianne and Connell live very different lives in the same small Irish town. She has a wealthy family and a big house, but is an outcast at their school, while he is everyone’s best friend, a natural athlete, a good student. His mother cleans her family’s mansion, so he comes over every afternoon to pick […]

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A Star Called Henry

Catherine — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 08:28:05 +0000

There may be a lot about the reality of historical Ireland that I don’t like (being a woman and all), but fictionally, male Irish authors are some of the most lyrically gifted I’ve ever read. My longtime favorite was William Trevor (The Story of Lucy Gault, Death in Summer) and then this fall I […]

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