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 expansive story encompassing four generations of Irish women with ... Read More...
56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
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 Ciara and Oliver met outside a convenience store ... Read More...
Normal People by Sally Rooney
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 her up. On one of these afternoons they talk. This innocuous circumstance ... Read More...
A Star Called Henry
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 added John Boyne (The Heart’s Invisible Furies, The Boy in the Striped ... Read More...
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Cyril Avery’s birth was not a propitious one. He came into the world onto the floor of a tiny apartment, next to the unconscious body of his mother’s roommate, with the roommate’s lover lying dead on the stairs below. It was Ireland in 1945 and the roommate and the lover were also teens, but they were men and as such had been hunted down by one’s father. From this ... Read More...
The Good People: A Novel
She felt as though her soul was grinding itself into powder under the weight of her own unhappiness. Nóra and her husband, Martin, are raising their dead daughter’s son because his father can’t. Four-year-old Micheál has some kind of sickness that has taken away his ability to walk or talk, even though he used to do both as a toddler. Now, he squawks and shrieks, ... Read More...
