If you didn’t already know (where have you been?!), I’m Irish. And today, is St. Patrick’s Day.
To honour our dear patron saint, who was actually in fact, not Irish himself, I thought I would put together a list of my 10 favourite books written by Irish authors.
If there is one thing Irish people are very well-known for, it’s storytelling. From famous playwrights like George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, to poets like Seamus Heaney and James Joyce, the Irish are not ones to hold back when using a pen (or a quill if you’re Oscar Wilde) or a laptop keyboard if you’re me.
Without further ado, here are my top recommendations for books by Irish authors. Who knows, maybe I’ll make someone else’s list in the future.
1. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
What’s the book about?
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.
My review: I went into this book not knowing what to expect other than being set in rural Ireland. However, this short book inspired me to look deeper into the goings on of the Catholic Church and the Magdalene Sisters which I have added to my long list of things to watch. Amazingly written and left me with a lot of intrigue and questions as to what actually happened in these Laundries.
2. Normal People by Sally Rooney
What’s the book about?
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation – awkward but electrifying – something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can’t.
My review: I read this book in the space of two days, maybe a little less. I had seen the TV show and heard the book was very similar, if not identical to the show. The lack of speech marks threw me off a little at the beginning, but as there is so much dialogue in the book, I think it worked a lot better not having the speech marks in the text. I would definitely recommend, even if you haven’t yet watched the TV show as there are so many quotations and lines that I will always remember forever. Beautiful.
3. Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen
What’s the book about?
Aisling is twenty-eight and she’s a complete… Aisling. She lives at home in Ballygobbard with her parents and commutes to her good job at PensionsPlus in Dublin. Aisling goes out every Saturday night with her best friend Majella, and spends two nights a week at her boyfriend John’s. But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the hen with the willy straws. She wants out of her parents’ house. When a week in Tenerife with John doesn’t end with the expected engagement, Aisling calls a halt to things and soon she has surprised herself and everyone else by agreeing to move into a three-bed in Portobello . Newly single and relocated to the big city, life is about to change utterly for this wonderful, strong, surprising and funny girl, who just happens to be a complete Aisling.
My review: A funny, witty, Irish version of Bridget Jones. I think we all know an Aisling in our own towns or even friend groups so the book was highly relatable and funny, and made for some lovely light reading.
4. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
What’s the book about?
Eimear McBride’s award-winning debut novel tells the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. It is a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist. To read A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator’s head, experiencing her world at first hand. This isn’t always comfortable – but it is always a revelation.
My review: Sally Rooney writes without any quotation marks, but Eimear McBride takes this to the next level with no quotation marks and many broken sentences. This story is told over a girl’s young life from very young until a late teenager – and the writing reflects this. We have to interpret the text throughout the beginning as it’s written as if from the point of view of a toddler, and then doesn’t get much better by the time the main character is a teenager. It’s an incredible story of family, grief and boundaries. It’s one that makes you think and definitely not one to skim over as it grips you right from the beginning.
5. The Book of the Gaels by James Yorkston
What’s the book about?
Rural West Cork, Ireland. Two Kids, Joseph and Paul, and their struggling, poet father, Fraser, are battling grief and poverty. When a letter arrives with a summons to Dublin and the promise of publication, it offers a chink of light – the hope of rescue. But Dublin is a long, wet and hungry way from West Cork in the mid-70s, especially when they have no money – just the clothes they stand up in and an old, battered suitcase.
My review: I would describe this as ‘if Shuggie Bain was set in Ireland’. If you loved Shuggie Bain or Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart, then you’ll very much love this. Told from the perspective of young Joseph, two brothers and their dad go through poverty and struggle to make money to survive. With a dad as a poet and without a mother who died in a boating accident, the family travel across Ireland from Cork to Dublin in the search of money and a publishing deal. Heartbreaking at times, witty and also heartwarming. I loved every page.
6. Big Girl Small Town by Michelle Gallen
What’s the book about?
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 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, wears the same clothes every day, has the same dinner each night and binge watches Dallas 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.
My review: I picked this up in my local library as I liked the sound of the title. Did I relate to it? Perhaps. It spans a week or two following a young girl that works in a chip shop in the local town. We meet all the characters of the town, her family and what you could call a very average life. However, the book is full of wit and the mundane yet sarcastic life of Majella and I enjoyed it very much. A light-hearted, fun read with some reminders of home.
7. None of This is Serious by Catherine Prasifka
What’s the book about?
Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They’ve got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She’s overshadowed by her best friend Grace. She’s been in love with Finn for as long as she’s known him. And she’s about to meet Rory, who’s suddenly available to her online. At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.
My review: I hugely enjoyed this book. Some of the characters read more like they were younger and in their teens, compared to being around graduating university age, but the storyline was very ‘normal’ in a sense that I could have been reading about myself and my own times growing up in Ireland. I think this is why I related to the book and liked it so much. It doesn’t take the most page-turning plot to make a book enjoyable, sometimes it’s just the mundane and dramatic life of a 20-something young girl.
8. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
What’s the book about?
Politically alert, heartbreakingly raw, and dryly funny, Exciting Times is thrillingly attuned to the great freedoms and greater uncertainties of modern love. In stylish, uncluttered prose, Naoise Dolan dissects the personal and financial transactions that make up a life—and announces herself as a singular new voice.
My review: Naoise Dolan has been dubbed as another Sally Rooney, but if I’m being honest, I think I’m a bigger fan of Naoise Dolan’s writing than Sally Rooney’s. I can see the comparison, but found Exciting Times much easier to digest and more enjoyable to read than Sally Rooney’s latest work. I’m a huge fan of this book, especially with all of its Irish colloquialisms.
9. Milkman by Anna Burns
What’s the book about?
At the book’s heart, a teenager – whose only means of escape is literature – is slowly ground down by the unwanted attentions and creeping psychopathy of a paramilitary many years her senior. This is the secret state, a place where gossip and hearsay are weaponised methods of control, contained in a novel written with both a sad humour and a certain kind of fury. Eschewing mention of Belfast and cloaking every character in nameless anonymity, this is contemporary history rewritten as dystopia, where power and fear are wrought by rumour and half-truth.
My review: I won’t lie that it took me a little longer than usual to get through the book, and I didn’t love that there was a grand total of five chapters in all, but I understand the concept of it. Even though the location was never mentioned, it was a little reminder of home with all its little quips and colloquialisms. I find it really interesting to read about a time that I never went through but was only ten years before I was born; a very different world than I was brought up in, but amazing to learn about all the same.
10. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
What’s the book about?
Frances, Bobbi, Nick and Melissa ask each other endless questions. As their relationships unfold, in person and online, they discuss sex and friendship, art and literature, politics and gender, and, of course, one another. Twenty-one-year-old Frances is at the heart of it all, bringing us this tale of a complex menage-a-quatre and her affair with Nick, an older married man.
My review: Another Sally Rooney book makes the list. You’ll notice I haven’t included her most recent novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, because I didn’t rate it at all, but the two I have included – very much worth reading. Just don’t go in expecting massive plot twists and gripping page turners as it’s all about the beautiful prose in Sally’s books.
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