We don’t have to resort to potboilers this year …
Spend your days indulging in new arrivals from some of the very best international writers, from Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead (Fleet, €19) to Ben Lerner’s highly acclaimed Transcription (Grant, €18), another novella that has more to say than any doorstopper.
Anyone who’s read the enchanting Bel Canto (2002), or indeed any of her renowned nine novels, will delight in a new Ann Patchett. WHISTLER (Bloomsbury, €17) focuses on a woman reconnecting with her estranged former stepfather. For Daphne, “the past is a sinkhole”, and this story of family, love and memory is a warm bath of beautiful writing. It’s an elegy to kindness: as one character says, “I swear to you, it’s mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges”.
DAD HAD A BAD DAY (Daunt Books, €18) is a quirky, darkly comic tale that will appeal far beyond dads, tennis players and tennis-playing dads. After Ned loses his job, he’s meant to look after his young son instead, but when he finds an old tennis racket in the garage he becomes increasingly obsessed with the game, and captaining his team to victory. Tennis clubs are often microcosms of human misbehaviour, and this is delightfully brought to life here, and will remind you of every over-competitive midlife male.
Sara Baume is a magical writer who weaves words like tapestries, and her new OPENING NIGHT (Granta, €17) is set in West Cork, where she’s based.
From another star Irish writer, Niamh Campbell’s MAKE STRANGE (W&N, €17) is full of foreboding, reflected by the unnerving cover image. Haunting and intensely readable, it asks if we can ever really protect our children – and what if we can’t? I loved Campbell’s award-winning This Happy (2020).
Sheila Armstrong is another brilliant young Irish writer to discover this summer. Her second novel, THE RED MOUTH (Bloomsbury Trade, €17), is a poetic meditation on discoveries unearthed from the Irish bogland. There’s minimal dialogue; instead it delves deep into the land and excavates the past held there, via beautiful writing. An elegant companion piece to Maggie O’Farrell’s elegiac Land (Tinder Press, €17).
With shades of both Brooklyn and Maeve Binchy, THE LONG WAY HOME by poet and author Helen Dwyer (Poolbeg Press, €18) tells the story of a schoolgirl from Sligo who has to give up her baby. It traces her fraught progress to adulthood, via Milan and Celtic Tiger-era Dublin, with themes of family, loss and love.
A compelling holiday read, PEOPLE IN LOVE (Penguin Michael Joseph, €18) by Claire Daverley is a well-written romance with depth. At first, the story seems to be a predictable one – Nora is about to get married, but is really in love with her best friend (the boy next door), and it will take her many pages to realise this. But it doesn’t quite go the way you think, and Daverley handles sensitive subjects gently, such as dealing with trauma and loss. It’s a thoughtful take on the institution of marriage and what it really means to know and love someone.
MAIN CHARACTERS (Headline Review, €20) by Bobby Palmer has a beguiling conceit: it’s a love story told by everyone but the main characters, an aspiring director and an actor. The drama is related by the couple’s friends, flatmates and strangers, all giving their version of events. One for those who loved One Day.
I didn’t intend to read Alan Bradley’s UNMASKING SAMANTHA COOKES (Merrion Press, €17) – true crime books aren’t my thing. But this nasty story, about the serial fraudster who posed as an au pair around Ireland, is weirdly fascinating, raising as many questions as it answers. It reads like a podcast; Bradley also directed the Bad Nanny documentary about this story. It’s harrowing and outrageous – especially when the brazen Cookes becomes a feted author. Scary stuff.
