Edel Coffey provides your winter reading list
This month brings a slew of brilliant essay collections by equally brilliant writers. First up is ATTENTION (Vintage, €20) by one of Ireland’s finest writers, Anne Enright. Best known for her prize-winning novels, Enright has also amassed a vast back catalogue of cultural criticism and personal essays, writing for publications like the New York Review Of Books and the London Review of Books, among others. This collection is selected from a 30-year timeframe and as a result the subject matter is understandably diverse, ranging from the Tuam mother and baby home to lessons learned as a student of Angela Carter at the University of East Anglia, to her fascinating essay on women and their doctors and a piece about her and her husband on holiday. Each essay comes with a mini introduction, which has been written especially for this collection, and those introductions are little masterpieces in themselves, contextualising the subsequent essay and also giving a shot of Enright’s impish sense of humour.
German writer Jenny Erpenbeck won the International Booker Prize last year for her novel Kairos but her latest publication, THINGS THAT DISAPPEAR: REFLECTIONS AND MEMORIES (Granta, €12.99) is a very slim collection of short essays meditating on the impermanence of things. These things that disappear might be anything, from a grandmother’s laughter to a friendship, a building. Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967 and grew up in the GDR, which adds a certain profundity to her musings. Each essay is barely two pages long, and feels Japanese in its beautifully minimalist form. The essays were originally published in Erpenbeck’s newspaper column for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Author Zadie Smith is as consistent an essay writer as she is a novelist and her latest collection, DEAD AND ALIVE (Hamish Hamilton, €20.36), gathers 32 recent essays, twelve of them previously unpublished. The subject matter is wide-ranging, from the personal to the political. In her introduction to the collection she acknowledges the disparate nature of the many essays, which all offer a way of seeing or experiencing life, art, music and the world.
Olivia Laing is best known for their non-fiction writing (last year’s The Garden Against Time was an impressive hybrid memoir about the restoration of their garden, as well as a philosophical examination of privilege and entitlement around land) but now they return with a novel, only their second work of fiction since 2018’s prize-winning Crudo. THE SILVER BOOK (Hamish Hamilton, €20) is based on real events and is set in the world of Italian film in the 1970s. It tells the story of English artist Nicholas, who has fled London and becomes caught up with cinema designer Danilo Donati, who designs the films of greats like Fellini and Pasolini. But Nicholas has a secret (of course) that could have tragic consequences.
The acclaimed Danish writer Solvej Balle releases the third instalment of her epic On The Calculation Of Volume series, which has earned cult literary status. ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME III (Faber, €18.85) continues the story of Tara Selter, a woman who has been trapped in a time loop on the same day, November 18, for 1,143 days now. But finally she realises something has changed. She notices a man, Henry Dale, has changed his shirt. It emerges that Henry also knows that time has fallen out of joint, which means she may still be stuck on November 18, but at least she is no longer alone. If you liked TV series Russian Doll, this is for you.
One can’t think of a lifelong project like Balle’s without calling to mind Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s writing, and coincidentally, he too has a new book out in his Morning Star series. Like most of Knausgaard’s books, THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT (Harvill Secker, €25) can be read and enjoyed by itself, without having to plough through the previous books. This novel is presented as a Faustian tale, telling the story of a photography student called Kristian who arrives in London in the 1980s with a dream of becoming an artist. When he meets a Dutch artist his dream becomes a possibility, but at a cost. Then 24 years later, when Kristian is having a retrospective show in New York, things start to fall apart. A dark story about what we will do for success.
Rising star Irish author Chloe Michelle Howarth made a huge splash with her gorgeous debut novel Sunburn, which was shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards and the 2024 Book of the Year. Now she is back with HEAP EARTH UPON IT (Verve Books, €14.99), an atmospheric and gothic story set in rural Ireland in 1965. It tells the story of the O’Leary siblings, who have left their hometown and moved to the tiny village of Ballycrea in an attempt to leave their family secrets behind them. There is a mystery as to why they left their home and also some electrifying new revelations. A pacy novel that showcases Howarth’s growing talent.
Another gothic novel released this month is MEDLOCK (Sphere, €16.99) by SG Hartnell. Readers who have fond memories of the childhood classic The Secret Garden will be intrigued by this retelling of the book from the point of view of the housekeeper, Mrs Medlock.
Finally, EXIT STRATEGY (Bantam, €13) is the 30th novel featuring Lee Child’s most famous creation – Jack Reacher. When a young man brushes against Reacher as he exits a diner, he thinks he’s been pick-pocketed (I mean, who would even dare?), but it turns out a young desperate man has placed a note in Reacher’s pocket pleading for help. And so the latest Reacher adventure begins.
SEE MORE: The Books We Loved In October
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