Edel Coffey shares the best books to curl up with this long weekend …
With over 100 young adult books under her belt, Jacqueline Wilson is an undisputed queen of teen fiction, who tackles all sorts of taboo issues. Many of Wilson’s original readers are now in their 40s, so it makes sense that Wilson has written her first novel for adults using some of her most beloved teen characters. In THINK AGAIN (Bantam, €16.99) Ellie, Magda and Nadine (from the Girls series) are still friends. Ellie lives in a small flat with her 19-year-old daughter Lottie and their cat Stella. As Ellie turns 40, she knows that she is lucky in her life, but she is also lonely and longs for something exciting to happen. A must-read for fans of the original books.
Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train (2015) was one of those books that simply took over the public imagination. Everybody seemed to be reading it. Hawkins has gone on to have a stellar career and her latest thriller is an intriguing novel called THE BLUE HOUR (Doubleday, €16.99). Hawkins says she was inspired by a holiday she took to the Côte de Granit Rose in France, a place where presqu’îles or “almost islands” are cut off from the mainland by the tide for a certain amount of time every day. On a walk along the coast, she spotted a single lonely house on an island and knew that she would write about it. In The Blue Hour, Eris is one of these almost islands cut off from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day. It has one house with one owner. The house used to belong to a famous artist, whose philandering husband disappeared 20 years ago. Now Grace lives there. It’s not the kind of house where people just drop by. But one day, a visitor comes calling.
Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series has made him the best-selling adult author of the decade. Now, he is taking a break from that series as it is adapted into a film for Netflix, and has turned his attention to a new cast of characters in his latest book, WE SOLVE MURDERS (Viking, €15.99). The book follows the story of retired policeman, Steve Wheeler, and his daughter-in-law, Amy, who is a bodyguard to billionaires. Amy’s client, Rosie D’Antonio, just happens to be the biggest-selling crime author in the world. Steve is happy with a quiet life, but when Amy needs his help, he is forced out of retirement.
Niall Williams is one of my favourite Irish authors. From his 2006 novel, Four Letters of Love, right up to his last novel, This Is Happiness, his delicate, compassionate stories of Irish life, love and community are beautifully insightful and uplifting. His new novel, TIME OF THE CHILD (Bloomsbury, €15.99), sees him return to the fictional Irish town of Faha. It’s 1962 and the widowed Dr Troy lives with his unmarried daughter, Ronnie. When an abandoned baby is left in their care in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the story becomes about whether Ronnie can keep this unexpected gift, but it is also a larger account of a particular time in Irish history.
Among the longlisted books on this year’s Booker Prize is Richard Powers’ PLAYGROUND (Hutchinson Heinemann, €15.99). I really enjoy this Pulitzer-winning author’s philosophical novels – he always makes me question what it is to be human. In Playground, he looks at the idea of creating floating cities on the world’s biggest ocean. It sounds like something Elon Musk might have in the works, but it’s also a thought-provoking story about where our world might be headed.
Unlike many celebrity novelists, Graham Norton has proven he is the real deal when it comes to writing. FRANKIE (Coronet, €15.99) is Norton’s fifth novel. It tells the story of an elderly woman looking back on her life and recounting tales to her young male Irish carer. Through Frankie’s recollections, we learn about her life in post-war Ireland, and her experiences as an immigrant in New York, all told in Norton’s warm and heartfelt style. It’s a moving story about how every life, no matter how big or small, is intensely felt by each of us and how human connection is at the heart of everything.
Another Irish powerhouse, Cecelia Ahern, is back with a new novel, INTO THE STORM (Harper Collins, €15.99). Enya, a middle-aged doctor, is struggling with her busy life. On a stormy night, she stops to help with a hit-and-run accident. She saves the young boy’s life, but the experience throws her own life into turmoil. She takes a job in rural Ireland, leaving her husband and son in the process, in an attempt to gain some understanding into her own life. A character that will resonate with many women.
Michael Connelly is one of the best crime novelists writing today. The former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has created many beloved characters, including LAPD detective, Harry Bosch, and Lincoln lawyer, Micky Haller. His latest novel, THE WAITING (Orion, €17.99), sees detective Renée Ballard investigating a cold case. When a young man is arrested, his DNA links him to Ballard’s 20-year-old case; a notorious serial rapist who terrorised LA before disappearing off the radar. Now, detective Ballard finally has the evidence she needs to make an arrest. But it’s never as straightforward as that with a Connelly book. Ballard drafts in Harry Bosch to help her, while Harry’s police officer daughter, Maddie, has her own reasons for getting involved with the case.
Irish writer Martina Devlin is best known as an incisive columnist, but she is also a novelist and her second historical novel, CHARLOTTE: A NOVEL (The Lilliput Press, €16.95) tells the story of Charlotte Brontë’s life through an Irish lens. Brontë spent a brief time in Ireland honeymooning with her Irish husband, Arthur Bell, but she died nine months into their marriage. Bell eventually left England and returned to Ireland, where he married his cousin, Mary Nicholls. Nicholls had been one of the people who originally met Brontë on her honeymoon trip to Ireland all those years before, so Devlin uses this character to give a fresh perspective on the story of one of literature’s most fascinating writers.
Japanese writer Yoko Tawada was made famous by her novel, The Bridegroom Was A Dog, but she also wrote a much-loved book about a group of friends called Scattered All Over The Earth. In SUGGESTED IN THE STARS (Granta, €13.92), she returns to the characters of Hiruko and friends, as they search for someone who speaks Hiruko’s native language. When they finally find a sushi chef who knows the language, they discover he has lost the power of speech, and they set out to help him regain his voice.
I couldn’t sign off this month without paying tribute to the cultural icon that is Ross O’Carroll-Kelly. Created by Paul Howard, the final book in the Ross series, DON’T LOOK BACK IN ONGAR (Penguin Sandycove, €16.99), is out now. We look forward to seeing what Paul Howard does next.
A frenzy surrounds any new Sally Rooney publication and INTERMEZZO (Faber, €21.99), is no different. Intermezzo tells the story of two brothers, Peter, a Dublin lawyer in his 30s, and Ivan, a 22-year-old competitive chess player, both of whom are mourning the death of their father. Peter is in two relationships, one with a young college student and the other with his first love, while Ivan, who has always been a loner, is involved with an older woman. It sounds like exactly the kind of emotionally complicated chess game that we’ve come to love from the Co Mayo writer.
Christine Dwyer Hickey’s OUR LONDON LIVES (Atlantic, €15.99), her ninth novel, is a big heart-rending story about two brilliant characters, Millie and Pip, told over four decades. Millie first meets Pip when she is working in a bar in London in the late 1970s, running away from problems in her own life. Pip is a boxer and already experiencing some of the problems that will later tear his life apart. They quickly fall for each other but life gets complicated. Their friendship abides and through Dwyer Hickey’s impressionistic writing and skilful time-mapping we get not only the story of their lives but also the story of the Irish in London over the decades.
Roddy Doyle’s THE WOMEN BEHIND THE DOOR (Jonathan Cape, €16.99) is a sequel to Doyle’s books The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996) and Paula Spencer (2006). Now Paula is 66 and a grandmother. She is widowed and has a boyfriend and a job that she likes, but when her daughter Nicola turns up at her door with a crisis, this book becomes a meditation on women and their relationships, particularly the mother-daughter one. Doyle’s writing about women is always sensitive and insightful but it is his inquiry into the human mind and heart which is most compelling of all. See more: Author Roddy Doyle Tells Us What He Is Reading This Month
Donal Ryan’s HEART, BE AT PEACE (Jonathan Cape, €16.99) is the sequel to Ryan’s debut The Spinning Heart but can absolutely be read as a standalone novel. The Spinning Heart was discovered in the slush pile at Lilliput Press, and told a contemporary story about the effects of the Celtic Tiger and economic crash on a rural Irish town. Heart, Be At Peace moves the action on ten years and the characters are now on the other side of the crash and rebuilding their lives. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to fear. I love how Ryan makes his characters come alive so completely.
In TELL ME EVERYTHING, (Viking, €17.99) American writer Elizabeth Strout brings together two of her best-loved characters, Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge. Strout’s writing is always elegant and spare and her characters feel completely real. In Tell Me Everything, Bob, the town lawyer, is defending a man accused of killing his mother. The book is told through conversations between Bob and his friend Lucy, and those between Lucy and Olive, who is now living in a retirement home. As always with Strout, the reader is given a masterclass in life’s important lessons – the importance of friendship, companionship, community and conversation.
Elif Shafak is a writer and intellectual at the top of her game. Her latest novel THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY (Viking, €23.15) is a big, ambitious, multi-layered story moving across continents and centuries. In Turkey in 2014, Marin and her grandmother are forced to travel across war-torn lands. In London in 2018, Zaleekhah is escaping her marriage. In the ancient city of Mesopotamia and in Victorian London, other forces are forming the story. This is a book that sweeps you away.
They say don’t judge a book by its cover but I found it very hard to resist a book with the title DEAR DICKHEAD (Macmillan, €23.75) emblazoned brightly across its cover. This latest novel from French writer Virginie Despentes (she of Baise Moi fame) is being called an “ultra-contemporary Dangerous Liaisons” that deals with sex, ageing, gender, privilege, feminism and addiction. The story is about ageing actress Rebecca Latté, and author Oscar Jyack, who is accused of sexual harassment by his former publicist. When Oscar and Rebecca get into an Instagram spat, their mutual dislike burgeons into unlikely friendship as Paris gets locked down during Covid.
Dublin-based writer Sarah Moss’s memoir MY GOOD BRIGHT WOLF (Macmillan, €21.75) is a shocking and riveting personal account of her childhood at the hands of unkind parents, as well as a comprehensive investigation into her own disordered eating, the female experience, literature and how historical context influences the people we become. Moss is the author of books including The Fell, Summerwater, and Ghost Wall, and teaches on UCD’s creative writing MA programme.
ASK NOT (Mudlark, €18.99) by investigative journalist Maureen Callahan is a book about the long list of women whose lives were upended by the Kennedy political dynasty. A sentence from the book’s opening paragraph tells you everything you need to know about this book, and makes it impossible not to read on. “Kennedy men have been valorised and lionised for nearly a century, but the women they’ve broken, tormented, raped, murdered, or left for dead have never really been part of their legacy.” Callahan tells their story.
The late Rebecca Godfrey (author of Under The Bridge) was working on a novel about Peggy Guggenheim before she died in 2022. Her friend, the writer Leslie Jamison, finished the book and PEGGY (Penguin Random House, €25.95) is the result. Guggenheim dedicated her life to art; the book follows her through New York and Europe, and through love and romance.
Irish crime writer Amanda Cassidy was nominated for a CWA Dagger award for her debut novel Breaking and she is back with her third novel, THE PERFECT PLACE (Canelo, €12.99) about an interiors influencer with a dark secret. When she gets an opportunity to buy a rundown old château in France, she jumps at the chance … but there are conditions attached. How far will Elle go to protect her brand, and her past?
If you’re a Lee Child fan, you’ll enjoy his new collection of short stories, SAFE ENOUGH (Bantam, €23.20), which includes 20 fast-paced stories about CIA agents, gangsters, cops, hitmen, bodyguards and soldiers. All non-Jack Reacher stories, they are published together for the first time in this collection.
To mark the centenary of his birth this year, Penguin is reissuing James Baldwin’s NO NAME IN THE STREET (Penguin, €14.50). First published in 1972, this book opens with a personal account of Baldwin’s childhood in Harlem, where he grew up with a violent stepfather and eight younger siblings. But the book quickly moves to a meditation on the consequences of the deaths of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the rise of fascism in Spain. Baldwin’s voice is so individual, that mix of linguistic formality and humour, and his subject matter so vividly described, that when you do eventually lift your head from this brilliant book, it feels as if you have awoken from a bleak dream of the past. And then you realise his work is as much a bleak dream of the future and is as relevant now as it has ever been.
THE GLOSS editors share what they’re reading now …
Edel Coffey, Books Editor
I’m currently re-reading Jilly Cooper’s classic 1988 bestseller Rivals to coincide with the new TV adaptation. I had an urgent desire to re-read it last week, so I dashed into my local Eason’s and picked up a copy. I also recently splurged on an armful of writing books when I discovered that Raven Books in Blackrock in Dublin has an incredibly well-stocked section on creative writing. As a result, I am currently switching between Cooper’s fizzy sex and media romp, with the stoic encouragements of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, while I finish writing my third novel. See more: Victoria Smurfitt On Starring In The Glossy New Show Rivals.
Sarah Halliwell, Beauty Editor
I was lucky to nab a proof copy of Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound, a collection of stories (Swift Press). I’ll admit that I was first drawn in by two lines on the back of the book: “Soon to be a major movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor.” Mescal, after all, rarely chooses a dud script (or tote bag, for that matter). These 12 stories captivated me; I love the way the finest golden threads interweave throughout the book, making connections across the centuries. You can tell Shattuck is also an exhibiting artist, too – images are vivid and memorable, pulsating with life, and you’ll be fully transported to the New England settings. I won’t do that thing where people say “you must read this … ” and then outline the entire plot. I just highly recommend you treat yourself to this gem and immerse yourself in its classy, beautiful writing. It’s currently out in hardback, but will be available in paperback from November.
My favourite place to buy books at the moment is Kennys in Galway. They’re brilliant at shipping copies fast, free and well-priced; I even managed to get a lovely signed copy of Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo there. I’m also very into collecting the Fitzcarraldo Editions of Annie Ernaux’s work (find them at bookshops, including Bridge Street Books.)
Patricia Marinho, Art Director
I’m reading Long Island by Colm Tóibín; I’ve just finished Brooklyn (I haven’t seen the movie yet). I started reading Long Island as I identify a lot with the main character, in the sense of being an immigrant.
I’m also reading the new book by Pedro Almodóvar, one of my favourite filmmakers, called The Last Dream. He has always refused to write his autobiography or have someone write it for him, so he published this book instead with a series of stories he wrote throughout his life. It’s the perfect gift for any Almodóvar fan. I love to visit Hodges Figgis on Dawson street or Raven Books in Blackrock when browsing for my next book.
Rachel Healy, Digital Editor
I’ve always been a fan of Graham Norton, since his Father Ted days and, of course, his ever popular talk show, but I was a bit late to get around to reading his books as I thought they couldn’t be as good as the hype claimed. (I’ve been caught out before…I fell for the P.S. I Love You ‘critical acclaim’ accolades in both book and film form, but hated both…sorry Cecilia).
I’m not a huge rom-com fan, so these books seemed more up my alley as I I love anything true crime – books, podcasts, documentaries, films – you name it. I finally bit the bullet during the summer and ended up finishing all four books on a week’s holiday as they’re so easy to read. They’re simple and very Irish – while reading, I did wonder how other nationalities would take some of the colloquialisms! – but they’re not formulaic, like a lot of crime novels. They have unique storylines and plot twists, which I wasn’t expecting.
It’s hard to believe that Norton could be such a good writer on top of his effortless presenting skills, but it’s clear to see now why everyone raved about his new career as an author. Is there anything he can’t do?! Each book would certainly work on the big screen, either as standalones or as a series, and I’m looking forward to reading his latest iteration, Frankie. I may even listen to his memoirs as I enjoy autobiography audiobooks, hearing stories in the subject’s own voice.
I buy a lot of kids’ books for bed-time stories, so I find Eason’s easy navigatable, in store and online. I always donate them to the school or via swaps groups on WhatsApp, which can be great for recommendations and second-hand books that are normally in perfect condition.
Penny McCormick, Contributing Editor
I’ve just started reading Clare Chamber’s Shy Creatures, Orion Books, and am savouring every page. I loved her 2020 novel Small Pleasures. This book, set in suburban England in 1964, is as beautifully written, quietly quirky and based on a true story. Two stories intertwine in the novel involving the central protagonist, an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital in Croydon. She is having an affair with one of the charismatic psychiatrists. They both come across a mute man, who has been shut up indoors for at least ten years, alongside a frail relative. I am intrigued to find out how Helen’s attempts to connect with him will evolve. I picked up a signed copy of this gorgeous book (the cover illustration is by artist Anna Higgie) in Books, Paper, Scissors, Belfast. It’s close to the Botanic Gardens and Ulster Museum and, as the name implies, in addition to a great edit of books it has stationery too.
READ MORE: Author Roddy Doyle Tells Us What He Is Reading This Month
