It was the NYT review that took me to this book; that review referred to the “traumatic family secret” of the young woman Saoirse, an American who made her way to Ireland in 1990. So, SPOILER ALERT, here’s that secret: it’s a book about the trafficking of children to move drugs in the US and this young woman’s escape to Ireland. I’m afraid that makes the book...
Some months ago Reading Matters posted the names of books shortlisted for the Kerry Group Novel of the year award. This is the third one of that list I have read. A young Irish woman working on costumes for a theatre production in London tells her story set over a short period in 2002. Mairéad has made her way to a job in London. While she worked to escape her life in Ireland, she misses it too...
Another remarkable work from Colm Tóibín. I find short stories harder to manage, but I was captivated by these. I will write about a few that were particularly poignant for me. The first, “The Journey to Galway,” tells about a woman hearing the news that her son, a fighter pilot apparently during the Second World War, was killed. She knows immediately the telegram brings bad news as...
It was in 2008 that I read my first Maggie O’Farrell book, so, yes, I am a fan. Land begins in the 1860s, more than a decade after the famine; Tomàs is creating a map for the “redcoats,” those oppressors of Ireland. Tomàs and his wife Phina, both lost their families during the famine and managed to survive their time in the workhouse and somehow Tomàs acquired the skills needed...
When Reading Matters listed the finalists in the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award, this book went on my list to read and it moved to the top of the list when it won the award. It tells the story of three hard-living housemates in Belfast just as they are turning thirty. It manages to be both funny and sad, as the women choose drug and alcohol-filled nights and messy love affairs over...
It was in Reading Matters’ post listing the finalists for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award that drew my attention to this book. The story is set in a small Donegal fishing village and begins with the recovery of a baby who came floating in from the sea in a barrel in 1973. The baby was quickly taken in with the minimum of legal formality by a man named Ambrose (my father’s...
Kim at Reading Matters was enthusiastic about this debut book and her description of being swept up in the story persuaded me. And I don’t know when I’ve read a book with a story so intensely told. I hope to write about some of the remarkable aspects of this book without recounting the whole plot. It is set in 2012 in Belfast as the city was recovering from The Troubles. The Belfast...
I admired the three books of Colum McCann that I read previously, so I was looking forward to this one. The narrator tells us he needs the work assignment he’s been given, writing about the cables that carry internet traffic on the ocean floor, to go well. Ideally, there would be a break in the cable and he would go out to sea with the folks who repair breaks. He makes his way to South...
I read this book by a beloved Irish author sometime before I began this blog so that means sometime before 2006. I had remembered only that it focused on a woman who was a composer and that I loved it. Now that I have read it again, I still love the book and it is bristling with post-it notes. The passages I marked are largely in two categories: one is the effort by a wonderful writer to...
It was Reading Matters that took me to this book. Kim noted it has been compared to Sally Rooney’s Normal People and l agree with Kim that there is a superficial similarity. The characters are young adults trying to decide what their lives will be and that description fits countless books. In this case Ava, a young Irish woman narrates the story of her time in Hong Kong where she moved to...