Today's Irish Writers
We’re all familiar with Ireland’s writing giants such as Joyce, Beckett, and Wilde, but contemporary Irish writers certainly deserve the attention of their pedigree. In both fiction and nonfiction, today’s Irish authors continue to write amongst the most compelling books of our time. I’ve plucked a few choice pebbles from the river, but I’ll bet you’ll be panning for more from today’s Irish writers for weeks or months to come.
A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy
Follows the efforts of Chicky who, with the help of Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the place) and her niece Orla (a whiz at business), turns a coastal Ireland mansion into a holiday resort and receives an assortment of first guests who, throughout the course of a week, share laughter and the heartache of respective challenges.
Brooklyn : A Novel by Colm Tóibín
Foster by Claire Keegan
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household-where everything is so well tended to-and this summer must soon come to an end.
Normal People : A Novel by Sally Rooney
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers--one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
The Witch Elm by Tana French
Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who's dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life - he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family's ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden - and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.
Time Pieces : A Dublin Memoir by John Banville
Presents a memoir of the author's life near Dublin, a city that inspired his imagination and literary life and served as a backdrop for the dissatisfactions of adult years shaped by Dublin's cultural, political, architectural, and social history.
Trespasses by Louise (Ph. D.) Kennedy
Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering debut novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and unsanctioned love--|cProvided by publisher.
We Don't Know Ourselves : A Personal History of Modern Ireland by Fintan O'Toole
A celebrated Irish writer's magisterial, brilliantly insightful chronicle of the wrenching transformations that dragged his homeland into the modern world. |cProvided by publisher. ________
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