Irish Writing
The Way We Were : Catholic Ireland Since 1922, Mary Kenny (hardback Aug 22)
£17.99
At a time when the values of Catholic Ireland are so often viewed in a negative, even hostile, light, Mary Kenny's approach is a balanced and measured recollection of the Ireland of our times - and of times past, since the foundation of the Irish state a hundred years ago. She focuses on the people and personalities involved in our social history, seeing Ireland from 1922 to 2022 through their stories, and the events in which they were involved. Yes, there have been stark failings in Irish society, involving the position and power of the Catholic church, and these must be honestly described.Yet our values, our heritage, our own family members also included many kind, intelligent and patriotic people doing their best, who built up the Irish state from a fragile beginning.
Foster, Claire Keegan ( paperback)
£8.99
From the author of the Booker-shortlisted Small Things Like These, a heartbreaking, haunting story of childhood, loss and love by one of Ireland's most acclaimed writers. 'A real jewel.' Irish Independent'A small miracle.' Sunday Times'A thing of finely honed beauty.' Guardian'Thrilling.' Richard Ford'As good as Chekhov.' David MitchellIt is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not knowing when she will return home.
In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. But in a house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers how fragile her idyll is.
Now a stunning and emotional film, The Quiet Girl ( part Irish / Eng with subtitles)
The Irish Difference : A Tumultuous History of Ireland's Breakup With Britain by Fergal Tobin ( paperback Jan 2023))
£10.99
For hundreds of years, the islands and their constituent tribes that make up the British Isles have lived next door to each other in a manner that, over time, suggested some movement towards political union. It was an uneven, stop-start business and it worked better in some places than in others.Still, England, Wales and Scotland have hung together through thick and thin, despite internal divisions of language, religion, law, culture and disposition that might have broken up a less resilient polity. And, for a long time, it seemed that something similar might have been said about the smaller island to the west: Ireland. Ireland was always a more awkward fit in the London-centric mini-imperium but no one imagined that it might detach itself altogether, until the moment came for rupture, quite suddenly and dramatically, in the fall-out from World War I.
So, what was it - is it - about Ireland that is so different? Different enough to sever historical ties of centuries with such sudden violence and unapologetic efficiency. Wherein lies the Irish difference, a difference sufficient to have caused a rupture of that nature?In a wide-ranging and witty narrative, historian Fergal Tobin looks into Ireland's past, taking in everything from religion and politics to sports and literature, and traces the roots of her journey towards independence.
The Ghost Limb, Claire Mitchell ( November 2022, paperback)
£15.00
Where did the spirit of 1798 go?
Did northern Protestants forget their history?
Who are the keepers of the flame?
In The Ghost Limb a group of northern Protestants retrace the steps of the United Irishmen, who worked for the unity of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter over two hundred years ago. In a quest to reconnect with this lost heritage, they walk and talk their way through the landscapes of County Down and Antrim. They go to political meetings, take Irish language classes, visit graveyards, pubs, churches and protests. They commune with radical ghosts and personal ancestors. And they chalk messages on walls.
As they search for the spirit of 1798, they bring a new politics alive in the present. They begin to imagine a different future.
The book pulls together history, politics and personal stories, with a little magical thinking, to bring alternative Protestant identities back into the light.
Making Sense of A United Ireland, Brendan O’Leary ( paperback May 2024)
£10.99
Will Ireland really reunite?A century ago the resolution to Ireland’s long struggle for independence was a settlement that saw six of its northern counties remain in the United Kingdom while the other twenty-six formed the new Republic of Ireland. Since partition the unification of the two parts of the island has seemed impossible, particularly because of the bloody legacy of past conflict. However, by 2030, if not sooner, demographic and electoral advantages of Ulster unionists, who wish to remain part of the UK, will be over.
And in the light of Brexit, the rising popularity of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin, political developments both sides of the border, and within Great Britain, Irish unification referendums will become increasingly likely. Yet even those who want these to happen are not prepared. Making Sense of a United Ireland is a landmark exploration of this most contentious of issues.
Distinguished political scientist Brendan O'Leary - a global expert on divided places, who has been profoundly engaged with the Irish question for nearly four decades - argues that the time to consider the future of the island of Ireland is now. 'The first comprehensive manual of Irish unification' Irish Times‘Several books have been written about this subject . .
. for sheer intellectual firepower O’Leary wins first prize’ Business Post 'A tour de force' Globe and Mail'A must-read for anyone who lives in Northern Ireland and thinks seriously about its future. [O'Leary has] thought through the implications of possible unity so deeply it would be foolish for anyone who seeks it or opposes it to ignore his book' Cathal Mac Coille
Living with Ghosts : The Inside Story from a 'Troubles' Mind by Brian Rowan ( large paperback Sept 2022)
£16.99
Brian Rowan is a former BBC correspondent in Belfast. Since the late 1980s, he has reported on all the major developments on Northern Ireland’s journey from war to peace; stories he has told using a range of sources – IRA, loyalist, police, military, intelligence, political, Church and others. Rowan left the BBC in 2005, the year the IRA ended its armed campaign. Four times he has been a category winner in the Northern Ireland Press and Broadcast awards, including twice as Specialist Journalist of the Year. Living With Ghosts is his seventh book.
For many of us who have lived through the troubles, the past is something we’ve tried to forget, move on from, suppress. But it’s still there in our politics, in our sense of who we are and where we are going. I have long respected Brian Rowan’s work and enjoyed this book which explores the unreported world of the troubles; the secrets, the corruption, the lies, and the struggles. Brian argues that we cannot create a seamless narrative of the past, a full and agreed account of the past is not achievable, but, as he argues in the chapter on amnesty, there is a way out of it, albeit messy and never complete. We will never know the whole story but books like these help.
A Little Unsteadily into Light : New Dementia-Inspired Fiction ( 2 Sept 2022)
£14.99
To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways of being – linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a slightly different perspective of the world.
In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from Ireland and the UK powerfully and poignantly explore the depths and breadth of the real dementia experience, traversing age, ethnicity, class and gender, sex and consent.
Each writer’s story is drawn from their own personal experience of dementia and told with outrageous and dark humour, empathy and startling insight. Here are heroes and villains, tricksters and saints, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, characters whose past has overshadowed their present and characters who are making a huge impact on the world they currently find themselves in. They might have dementia, but dementia is only a small part of who they are. They will challenge, frustrate, inspire and humble you.
Above all, these brilliant pieces of short fiction disrupt the perceived notions of what dementia is and, in their diversity, honesty and authenticity begin to normalise an illness that affects so many and break down the stigma endured by those living with it every day.
After Dad, Claire Shiells (Paperback Sept 2022)
£9.99
A bittersweet love story exploring why good people sometimes do bad things... Millie Malone, a spirited, thirty-something journalist returns home to Northern Ireland after a life-changing decision leaves her London life in ruins. A family reunion soon unravels, opening old wounds and igniting new grievances regarding the murder of her father by the IRA decades earlier.Retreating to the family cottage in Donegal, Millie soon meets Finn McFall, a fisherman originally from west Belfast, who loves to paint and recite Irish poetry. In the new modern Ireland, Millie believes religion is no longer a barrier for love. But she soon finds home is a place still struggling with a fragile peace and simmering sectarianism.
As events unfold, Millie is forced to decide between love and loyalty, eventually having to ask herself the ultimate question: can love really conquer all?
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died, Seamas O' Reilly ( paperback June 2022)
£10.99
THE IRISH TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER and AN POST BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR
Seamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten brothers and sisters and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble (most of the time), and Seamus at that point was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars and the actual location of heaven than the political climate.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is a book about a family of argumentative, loud, musical, sarcastic, grief-stricken siblings, shepherded into adulthood by a man whose foibles and reticence were matched only by his love for his children and his determination that they would flourish. It is the moving, often amusing and completely unsentimental story of a boy growing up in a family bonded by love, loss and fairly relentless mockery
Skittles, Neil Speers ( paperback June 2022)
£9.99
An eclectic set of short stories, written in verse, and often using the North Antrim vernacular.
Beautifully illustrated on front cover with Neil's own art.
Spies in Canaan, David Park ( paperback May 2023)
£8.99
Michael has travelled a long way from his boyhood under the endless skies of the Midwest. His retirement is peaceful, if solitary. But one day there is a visitation: a mysterious car on the seafront, and a package delivered.
From its contents, Michael understands that he has been commissioned to undertake a final journey. As Michael makes his way deep into a distant desert - a strange and liminal landscape that lies between hell and redemption - he undertakes another journey, into long-suppressed memories: of Vietnam and the dying days of war, and to face a final accounting for what was done. Taut, atmospheric and moving, Spies in Canaan is a powerful elegy to the pain of love, the guilt of old age, and the grace of atonement.
'It is seldom that one can say a book is perfect, but this is as close as I've seen in a very long time' SUNDAY INDEPENDENT'
This Train Is For, Bernie McGill ( paperback, June 2022)
£12.00
A great collection of 'caught at the moment ' short stories from Northern Irish Bernie McGill ( author of The Watch House, The Butterfly Cabinet, Sleepwalkers)
These stories have a delicacy, an emotional connection and a sense of what's between the lines, in a range of voices and characters. Very enjoyable.
The End of The World is A Cul De Sac, Louise Kennedy ( paperback May 2022)
£9.99
A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
The secrets people kept, the lies they told. In these visceral, stunningly crafted stories, people are effortlessly cruel to one another, and the natural world is a primitive salve.
Here, women are domestically trapped by predatorial men, Ireland's folklore and politics loom large, and poverty - material, emotional, sexual - seeps through every crack. A wife is abandoned by her new husband in a ghost estate, with blood on her hands; a young woman is tormented by visions of the man murdered by her brother during the Troubles; a pregnant mother fears the worst as her husband grows illegal cannabis with the help of a vulnerable teenage girl; a woman struggles to forgive herself after an abortion threatens to destroy her marriage. Announcing a major new voice in literary fiction for the twenty-first century, these sharp shocks of stories offer flashes of beauty, and even humour, amidst the harshest of truths.
The Quiet Whispers Never Stop, Olivia Fitzsimons ( paperback March 2023)
£8.99
In 1982, Nuala Malin struggles to stay connected, to her husband, to motherhood, to the smallness of her life in the belly of a place that is built on hate and stagnation. Her daughter Sam and baby son PJ keep her tethered to this life she doesn't want. She finds unexpected refuge with a seventeen-year-old boy, but this relationship is only temporary, a sticking plaster on a festering wound.
It cannot last and when her chance to leave Northern Ireland comes, Nuala takes it. In 1994, Sam Malin plans escape. She longs for a life outside her dysfunctional family, far away from the North and all its troubles, free from her quiet brooding father Patsy, who never talks about her mother, Nuala; a woman Sam barely knew, who abandoned them twelve years ago.
She finds solace in music, drugs and her best friend Becca, but most of all in an illicit relationship with a jagged, magnetic older man.
I found this coming of age story powerful, toxic and very very readable - loved the imaginative voice and thoughts of Sam - Linda, BPS
Truth Be Told, Sue Divin ( paperback April 2022)
£7.99
The gripping new YA novel from Sue Divin, the acclaimed and Carnegie shortlisted author of Guard Your Heart. She's writing about contemporary Derry and it's brilliant!
Northern Ireland. 2019. Tara has been raised by her mam and nan in Derry City. Faith lives in rural Armagh. Their lives on opposite sides of a political divide couldn't be more different.
Until they come face-to-face with each other and are shocked to discover they look almost identical. Are they connected?In searching for the truth about their own identities, the teenagers uncover more than they bargained for. But what if finding out who you truly are means undermining everything you've ever known?
LENNY, by Laura McVeigh ( large paperback March 2022)
£13.99
Such a lovely story. A young boy and his father, living in the oppressive and run down deep south, with a litany of disadvantages to overcome. But somehow the story is full of hope, and humanity, friendship and courage. I found myself hooked through every chapter.
I'd recommend it to 9+ children, and their parents!
If you enjoy RJ Palaccio, Katya Balen .. this is the same genre.
In the Ubari Sand Sea in 2011, during the First Libyan Civil War, a mysterious pilot falls from the sky – a sky devil – and is forever changed by the little boy who rescues him. One year later, in the town of Roseville, Louisiana, in the aftermath of economic crisis and corporate environmental damage, 10-year-old Lenny Lockhart is losing the people and things dearest to him. His only friends now are his plucky, elderly neighbour, Miss Julie, and the town’s lonely librarian, Lucy Albert.
Homeless and neglected, Lenny heads deep into the dark and unpredictable bayou, determined to conquer the sinkhole that is threatening to swallow his town. As time seems to be simultaneously slowing down and running out, is it really Lenny who needs saving, or the broken adults in his life?As these two timelines converge, Lenny tells a deeply affecting story of family and love, the ways we can be kind, and the power of one boy’s imagination to heal and survive.
These Days, Lucy Caldwell (paperback March 2023 )
£9.99
The new novel from the Winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 2021.
Two sisters, four nights, one city. April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war - so far.
Over the next two months, it's going to be destroyed from above, so that people will say, in horror, My God, Belfast is finished. Many won't make it through, and no one who does will remain unchanged. Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz, These Days is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.
WINNER OF THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION
WINNER OF THE E. M. FORSTER AWARD
AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4s BOOK AT BEDTIME
The Colony, Audrey Magee ( Feb 2023, paperback)
£9.99
He handed the easel to the boatman, reaching down the pier wall towards the sea. Mr Lloyd has decided to travel to the island by boat without engine - the authentic experience. Unbeknownst to him, Mr Masson will also soon be arriving for the summer.Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place - one in his paintings, the other by capturing its speech, the language he hopes to preserve. But the people who live on this rock - three miles long and half-a-mile wide - have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken and what is given in return. Soft summer days pass, and the islanders are forced to question what they value and what they desire.
As the autumn beckons, and the visitors head home, there will be a reckoning. ''Beautifully written.' STELLA, The Telegraph'The Colony contains multitudes - on families, on men and women, on rural communities - with much of it just visible on the surface, like the flicker of a smile or a shark in the water.' John Self, The Times'Austere and stark . .
. a story about language and identity, about art, oppression, freedom and colonialism. The Colony is a novel about big, important things.' Financial Times'The Colony is a beautiful, haunting and incredibly powerful book; a reading experience unlike any other, so vivid you can see it all unfold in front of your eyes.
Audrey Magee has a true storytelling gift. Absolutely mesmerising.' FIONA SCARLETT
The Raptures, Jan Carson ( paperback from Jan 2023)
£9.99
When several children from the same village start succumbing to a mysterious illness, the quest to discover the cause has devastating and extraordinary consequences. It is late June in Ballylack. Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks' reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other.As others fall ill, questions about what - or who - is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends are struck down. Isolated and afraid, she prays for help.
Elsewhere in the village, tempers simmer, panic escalates and long-buried secrets threaten to emerge. Bursting with Carson's trademark wit, profound empathy and soaring imagination, The Raptures explores how tragedy can unite a small community - and tear it apart. At its heart is the extraordinary resilience of one young girl.
As the world crumbles around her, she must find the courage to be different in a place where conforming feels like the only option available. Darkly funny, highly inventive and deeply moving, The Raptures is an unmissable novel of 2022.
Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan ( Paperback Dec 2022)
£9.99
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
The perfect novella, cannot recommend this highly enough! Linda
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize - WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR
Life Without Children : Stories, by Roddy Doyle ( paperback Oct 2022)
£9.99
A brilliantly warm, witty and moving portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heart-rending short stories. Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief.
Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these ten, beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times.
A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.
Told with Doyle's signature warmth, wit and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet.
( image featured is hardback. New Paperback is red cover)
Dinner Party : A Tragedy, Sarah Gilmartin (paperback July 2022)
£9.99
** This is one of the most astute, enjoyable books I've read this year so far!** Linda
Kate has taught herself to be careful, to be meticulous. To mark the anniversary of a death in the family, she plans a dinner party - from the fancy table settings to the perfect Baked Alaska waiting in the freezer. Yet by the end of the night, old tensions have flared, the guests have fled, and Kate is spinning out of control.
But all we have is ourselves, her father once said, all we have is family. Set between the 1990s and the present day, from a farmhouse in Carlow to Trinity College, Dublin, Dinner Party is a dark, sharply observed debut that thrillingly unravels into family secrets and tragedy. As the past catches up with the present, Kate learns why, despite everything, we can't help returning home.
Blank Pages, Bernard MacLaverty ( paperback August 2022)
£9.99
The extraordinary new story collection from one of Ireland's greatest writers and bestselling author of Midwinter Break. Bernard MacLaverty is a consummately gifted short-story writer and novelist whose work - like that of John McGahern, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien or Colm Toibin - is deceptively simple on the surface, but carries a turbulent undertow. Everywhere, the dark currents of violence, persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love, the making of art, Catholicism, the Troubles and, latterly, ageing.Blank Pages is a collection of twelve extraordinary new stories that show the emotional range of a master. 'Blackthorns', for instance, tells of a poor out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely saviour. The most recently written story here is the harrowing but transcendent 'The End of Days', which imagines the last moments in the life of painter Egon Schiele, watching his wife dying of Spanish flu - the world's worst pandemic, until now.
Much of what MacLaverty writes is an amalgam of sadness and joy, of circumlocution and directness. He never wastes words but neither does he ever forget to make them sing. Each story he writes creates a universe.
The Weight of Love, Hilary Fannin ( paperback, March 2021)
£8.99
Robin and Ruth meet in the staff room of an East London school.
Robin, desperate for a real connection, instantly falls in love. Ruth, recently widowed and fragile, is tentative. When Robin introduces Ruth to his childhood friend, Joseph, a tortured and talented artist, their attraction is instant.
Powerless, Robin watches on as the girl he loves and his best friend begin a passionate and turbulent affair. Dublin 2017. Robin and Ruth are married and have a son, Sid, who is about to emigrate to Berlin.
Theirs is a marriage haunted by the ghost of Joseph and as the distance between them grows, Robin makes a choice that could have potentially devastating consequences. The Weight of Love is a beautiful exploration of how we manage life when the notes and beats of our existence, so carefully arranged, begin to slip off the stave. An intimate and moving account of the intricacies of marriage and the myriad ways in which we can love and be loved.
'Delicate, powerful, hypnotic' DONAL RYAN'
Here Is The Beehive, Sarah Crossan ( paperback July 2021)
£8.99
What would you do if you lost someone the world never knew was yours? For three years, Ana has been consumed by an affair with Connor, a client at her law firm. Their love has been consigned to hotel rooms and dark corners of pubs, their relationship kept hidden from the world. So the morning that Ana's company receives a call to say that Connor is dead, her secret grief has nowhere to go.
Desperate for an outlet, Ana seeks out the shadowy figure who has always stood just beyond her reach - Connor's wife Rebecca...
'Utterly gripping' RODDY DOYLE'
One of Paul and I's favourites - really engrossing read - Linda
Pure Gold, John Patrick McHugh ( paperback June 2022)
£9.99
'Ireland produces writers the way some countries produce footballers, and the latest is John Patrick McHugh' Sunday Times 'One of the most exciting writers working in Ireland today' SALLY ROONEY, author of Normal People
You had to scrap for love. In this stunning debut short story collection exploring betrayal and longing on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh takes us deep into a community of individuals who are lost, yearning, and self-deceiving.
We see two boys set fires while their worlds fall apart, follow a couple driving out to the hills in a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, watch a widow seek a stranger's help to bury her grief, see a horse crash a house party. Whether falling in love or turning on one another the residents here are united by a quest for connection in the treacherous waters of small-town boredom. In stories that are bitterly funny, profoundly moving and crackling with wild energy, McHugh embeds us in the fragile moments on which a life can twist and turn.
Pure Gold heralds the arrival of a thrilling new literary voice.
The Troubles With Us, Allie O’Neill (Paperback out June 2022)
£9.99
A hilarious memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland in the 90s towards the end of the Troubles and a brilliantly propelling narrative of the extraordinary background story of her mother. Her mother's vivid personality and witty colloquialisms dominate the book and help to give a social history of life in Belfast from the 1950s onwards. Growing up on the Falls Road in 1990s Belfast, Alix O'Neill has seen it all - burnt-out buses blocking the route to school, the police mistaking her father for a leading terrorist and a classmate playing hide and seek with her dad's prosthetic hand (blown off making a device for the IRA).Not that she or her friends are up to speed with the goings-on of the resistance. They're too preoccupied with the obsessions of every teenage girl - booze, boys and Boyzone - to worry about the violence on their doorstep. Besides, the odd coffee jar bomb is nothing compared to the drama about to explode in Alix's personal life.
Desperate to leave Northern Ireland and the trials of her mother's unorthodox family - a loving yet eccentric band of misfits - behind, she makes grand plans for the next stage. But it's through these relationships and their gradual unravelling that Alix begins to appreciate not only the troubled history of where she comes from, but the strength of its women. Warm, embarrassing and full of love and insight, The Troubles with Us is a hilarious and moving account of the madness and mundanities of life in Northern Ireland during the thirty-year conflict.
It's a story of mothers and daughters, the fallout from things left unsaid and the lengths a girl will go to for fake tan.
Last Days in Cleaver Square, Patrick McGrath (paperback Feb 2022)
£9.99
Powerful...compelling and profoundly moving' Irish Times'
Heartbroken after a long, painful love affair, a man drives a haulage lorry from England to France. Travelling with him is a secret passenger - his daughter. Twenty-something, unkempt, off the rails.
With a week on the road together, father and daughter must restore themselves and each other, and repair a relationship that is at once fiercely loving and deeply scarred. As they journey south, down the motorways, through the service stations, a devastating picture reveals itself: a story of grief, of shame, and of love in all its complex, dark and glorious manifestations.
Tennis Lessons, Susannah Dickey ( paperback April 2021)
£9.99
For readers who want to laugh and cry: the brave, beautiful, sometimes brutal story of a young misfit and her rocky road to womanhood, stopping at each year along the way. 'I loved Tennis Lessons so much' ELIZABETH DAY
You're strange and wrong. You've known it from the beginning.
This is the voice that rings in your ears. Because you never say the right thing. You're a disappointment to everyone.
You're a far cry from beautiful - and your thoughts are ugly too. You seem bound to fail, bound to break. But you know what it is to laugh with your best friend, to feel the first tentative tingles of attraction, to take exquisite pleasure in the affront of your unruly body.
You just need to find your place. From dead pets and crashed cars to family traumas and misguided love affairs, Susannah Dickey's revitalizing debut novel plunges us into the private world of one young woman as she navigates her rocky way to adulthood. 'Brilliant .
. . stays in the mind long after reading' IRISH TIMES'A beautifully written and psychologically incisive bildungsroman...the arrival of a young writer to watch' OBSERVER
Look! It’s a Woman Writer! Edited By Eilis Ni Dhuibhne (paperback, April 2021)
£30.00
This is a scholarly and yet intensely readable book. It takes female writers who were largely born in the 1950's and asks each one to reflect on her experience of being published, read and taken seriously as a writer in Ireland. The vast majority of these women do so, against a backdrop of raising families, holding down 'proper' jobs and generally swimming against the tide of what is expected from them. I found it inspiring, and humbling. In the words of Mark Twain, many of us might say "I'm writing a novel" to which his sharp reply was "Neither am I". These pioneers demonstrated through sheer will and dedication , to actually follow through. Some are more personal, some more academic, but an essential read for anyone interested in gender studies, writing in Ireland and creative endeavour.
Snowflake, Louise Nealon ( Paperback April 2022)
£9.99
Tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply moving' Louise O'Neill, author of After the Silence
Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.
This world is Debbie's normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve's eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy's drinking gets worse.
Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety. A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you've taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who's taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.
Sweet Home, Wendy Erskine ( short story), paperback June 2020
£9.99
A gripping, wonderfully understated book that oozes humanity, emotion and humour.' Guardian
Warm, compassionate and funny, Sweet Home captures life in contemporary East Belfast, in all of its forms. Set in the author's native Belfast, the ten stories in Sweet Home lay bare the heartbreak and quiet tragedies that run under the surface of everyday lives. A lonely woman is fascinated by her niqab-wearing neighbours; a middle-aged teacher becomes obsessed with a young Gaelic football player; and an employer covers for his two employees caught having sex in a public toilet. Wendy Erskine offers perfectly formed, brilliantly observed portraits of people trying to carve out a life for themselves, all the while being buffeted by the loss, grief and regret that come their way.
Winner of the 2020 Butler Literary Award, Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2019, Shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019, Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2019'A Book of the Year in the Guardian, The White Review, Observer, New Statesman, TLS.
Boys Don’t Cry, Fiona Scarlett ( paperback Feb 2022)
£9.99
What readers are saying:'Fiona Scarlett is certainly up there with the likes of Roddy Doyle . . . A beautifully written, authentic novel, that will make you both laugh and cry, I just want to recommend this book to everyone.'
'This is a heartbreaking and very emotional novel that is exquisitely written. Fíona's writing style helps to bring such raw emotion to the text that it was impossible to not shed a tear!'
'I cried so much reading this book . . . A stunning read that I'll be thinking about for a long time.'
'There is a lot of humour to balance the heartache . . . All humanity is here, in all its shades, and that's what stays with you long after you finish reading. A brilliant debut.'
Constellations: Reflections from Life, Sinead Gleason (paperback, Apr 2020)
£10.99
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*'
I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal.
A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles. How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In the powerful and daring essays in Constellations Sinead Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself.
Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinead takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. H
Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan ( paperback, March 2021)
£8.99
Likely to fill the Sally-Rooney-shaped hole in many readers' lives' IRISH TIMES
'Droll, shrewd and unafraid - a winning debut' Hilary Mantel
* Longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 * NOW IN PAPERBACK ( cover as hardback)
When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents' money, it's called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she's not sure what to call it, but it involves: - a badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children; - Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room; - Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks; - money, love, cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections.
This is an acutely self conscious and clever tale.
Dubliners, James Joyce ( Penguin Modern Classics paperback edition)
£8.99
James Joyce's Dubliners is an enthralling collection of modernist short stories which create a vivid picture of the day-to-day experience of Dublin life. This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by Terence Brown. Joyce's first major work, written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time.His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. From 'The Sisters', a vivid portrait of childhood faith and guilt, to 'Araby', a timeless evocation of the inexplicable yearnings of adolescence, to 'The Dead', in which Gabriel Conroy is gradually brought to a painful epiphany regarding the nature of his existence, Joyce draws a realistic and memorable cast of Dubliners together in an powerful exploration of overarching themes. Writing of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, he creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.
A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann ni Ghiofra (paperback October 2021)
£9.99
In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's.
Before My Actual Heart Breaks,Tish Delaney (paperback Oct 2021)
£9.99
_'If I could go back to being sixteen again, I'd do things differently.''Everyone over the age of forty feels like that, you total gom,' says my best friend Lizzie Magee. When she was young Mary Rattigan wanted to fly. She was going to take off like an angel from heaven and leave the muck and madness of troubled Northern Ireland behind.Nothing but the Land of Happy Ever After would do for her. But as a Catholic girl with a B.I.T.C.H. for a Mammy and a silent Daddy, things did not go as she and Lizzie Magee had planned.
Now, five children, twenty-five years, an end to the bombs and bullets, enough whiskey to sink a ship and endless wakes and sandwich teas later, Mary's alone. She's learned plenty of hard lessons and missed a hundred steps towards the life she'd always hoped for. Will she finally find the courage to ask for the love she deserves? Or is it too late?'
. . A touching tale of how one woman survives a tough beginning to eventually end up exactly where her heart belongs.' ANNE GRIFFIN, author of When All is Said
The Art of the Glimpse (hardback, October 2020)
£25.00
An anthology of the very best Irish short stories, selected by Sinead Gleeson, author of Constellations. There have been many anthologies of the short story as it developed in Ireland, but never a collection like this. The Art of the Glimpse is a radical revision of the canon of the Irish story, uniting classic works with neglected writers and marginalised voices - women, LGBT writers, Traveller folk-tales, lost 19th-century voices and the first wave of 'new Irish' writers from elsewhere now making a life in Ireland.
Beautifully bound, with ribbon marker.
The collection paints a tremendous spectrum of experience: the story of a prank come good by Bram Stoker; Sally Rooney on the love languages of the new generation; Donal Ryan on the pains of ageing; Edna O'Brien on political entanglements; James Joyce on losing a loved one; and the internal monologue of a coma sufferer by Marian Keyes. List of contributing authors: Samuel Beckett, Sally Rooney, Melatu Uche Okirie, William Trevor, Marian Keyes, Kevin Barry, Edna O'Brien, Claire-Louise Bennett, Sheridan Le Fanu, Danielle McLaughlin, Mairtin O Cathain, Frances Molloy, Blindboy Boatclub, Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O'Connor, Chiamaka Emyi-Amadi, John McGahern, Anne Enright, Mike McCormack, Maeve Brennan, Oein de Bhairduin, Eimear McBride, Sean O Faolain, Cathy Sweeney.
Only a Few copies left as of Feb 2025
Big Girl Small Town, by Michelle Gallen ( paperback Feb 2021)
£9.99
Already shortlisted for a Women Comedy writing award, this has been described as Derry Girls meets Milkman. The unique blend of comedy and tragedy, with Michelle Gallen's 'Majella', is outrageous and honest.
Other people find Majella odd. She keeps herself to herself, she doesn't like gossip and she isn't interested in knowing her neighbours' business. But suddenly everyone in the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up wants to know all about hers.
Since her da disappeared during the Troubles, Majella has tried to live a quiet life with her alcoholic mother. She works in the local chip shop (Monday-Saturday, Sunday off), wears the same clothes every day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, nuked in the microwave) and binge watches Dallas (the best show ever aired on TV) from the safety of her single bed. She has no friends and no boyfriend and Majella thinks things are better that way.
But Majella's safe and predictable existence is shattered when her grandmother dies and as much as she wants things to go back to normal, Majella comes to realise that maybe there is more to life. And it might just be that from tragedy comes Majella's one chance at escape. 'It's a smasher' Kathy Burke
