Article Category: Reviews

RUTH & PEN – EMILIE PINE

June 30, 2022
THIS DEBUT novel expands on many of the same well-worn themes aired in Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self (2018), a short collection of essays... Read more »

NORA – NUALA O’CONNOR

June 16, 2022
THE CHOSEN book for this year’s One Dublin One Book initiative is a richly fictionalised biography of Nora Barnacle’s life and times. Having already... Read more »

POGUEMAHONE – PATRICK McCABE

June 2, 2022
FOLLOWING HIS early success with The Butcher Boy in 1992, Patrick McCabe’s distinctive tongue-in-cheek fiction has often been hit and miss. The alternating scenes... Read more »

ROAR – CECELIA AHERN

May 19, 2022
THROUGHOUT HER career as a middling-to-awful fiction writer, Cecelia Ahern has generally given a wide berth to socio-political issues. But having noted the prevailing... Read more »

PANDEMONIUM – JACK HORGAN-JONES/HUGH O’CONNELL

May 19, 2022
THIS IS the second book on the Covid-19 pandemic in Ireland. It also has two experienced political hacks as authors and benefits from this... Read more »

NONE OF THIS IS SERIOUS – CATHERINE PRASIFKA

May 5, 2022
THE POST-PANDEMIC fiction sub-genre (aka ‘Trinlit’) continues to grow, with this debut novel about the impact of social media on young people’s lives. It... Read more »

THE COLONY – AUDREY MAGEE

April 7, 2022
THE EMOTIONAL power that distinguished Audrey Magee’s 2014 debut novel The Undertaking earned her widespread critical praise. Written in simple, understated language, her alternate... Read more »

AGAIN, RACHEL – MARIAN KEYES

March 10, 2022
THIS SEQUEL to the mega-selling Rachel’s Holiday (1998) received a level of hype on a par with that accorded to Sally Rooney. So does... Read more »

BREAKING POINT – EDEL COFFEY

March 10, 2022
THE DEBUT novel from journo Edel Coffey arrived with a fairly rapturous fanfare as it climbed the Irish bestsellers list. The sensitive subject matter (infant... Read more »

FREE STATISM & THE GOOD OLD IRA – DANNY MORRISON

February 24, 2022
THIS IS a book of two parts but just one laser-like focus: ‘free statism’ and its hypocrisy, double-standard and betrayal of Irish citizens in... Read more »

THE RAPTURES – JAN CARSON

February 10, 2022
THIS IS Jan Carson’s follow-up to The Fire Starters, which portrayed a dystopian view of modern-day east Belfast and its people. The Ballymena writer’s... Read more »

DID YE HEAR MAMMY DIED? – SÉAMAS O’REILLY

January 27, 2022
THIS AFFECTIONATE childhood account about growing up on the Derry-Donegal border during the 1990s is one of several recent memoirs set during the Troubles... Read more »

HAUGHEY – GARY MURPHY

December 16, 2021
READING THE largely glowing reviews in the national press for Gary Murphy’s Haughey, one would be forgiven for failing to realise what an intense... Read more »

APRIL IN SPAIN – JOHN BANVILLE

December 16, 2021
IN HIS latest crime novel, John Banville returns to his moody Dublin state pathologist (known only as Quirke), the hero of several earlier mysteries published... Read more »

LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN – RODDY DOYLE

December 2, 2021
IN THIS slim short fiction collection, Roddy Doyle has managed to get to market one of the very first fiction efforts to encapsulate (cash... Read more »

WE DON’T KNOW OURSELVES – FINTAN O’TOOLE

November 4, 2021
SAMUEL BECKETT, with whom Fintan O’Toole is compared on this book’s back cover, might conceivably have compressed his era into 57 pages. O’Toole’s occupies... Read more »

THE PAGES – HUGO HAMILTON

October 7, 2021
THE AUTHOR is best known for The Speckled People (2003) in which he recalled his eccentric childhood, growing up in a Dublin suburb with... Read more »