On My Bedside Table: Emily Hourican
Journalist and bestselling author Emily Hourican shares the books she’s reading now …
Emily Hourican is a journalist and author of ten novels, including The Glorious Guinness Girls, The Kennedy Affair and The Privileged; non-fiction, How To Really Be A Mother, and a children’s book, Murder at the Ivy Hotel. Born in Belfast, she grew up in Brussels, before moving to Dublin in 1990. A House in Winter (Eriu) is out now.
“My bedside table is a mess of books. Some I have started and will go back to (I review books occasionally, as well as write them, and if something comes in that needs to be read fast, I drop everything else), others I have started and abandoned – no names! I no longer feel I have to finish every book I begin. Why would I, when there are so many interesting new ones all the time? Here are two I have recently read and loved.
“Dideon & Babitz by Lili Anolik. I’ve long been a fan of Joan Didion, but I only came to Eve Babitz recently, thanks to my sister Bridget. Babitz was some years younger than Joan, and far less celebrated, but the two had an odd, at times close (at others competitive) relationship. Babitz was an interesting writer, with a fascinating life, and Anolik has done a brilliant job of this biography. She has closed the gap between author and subjects and doesn’t even pretend not to be partisan. The result is the most absorbing and page-turning book, one I read at a gallop.
“The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen was a gift from Martina Devlin, who picks brilliant books. This is Bowen’s first novel, published in 1927, and she is clearly already a remarkably sophisticated and funny writer. The ensemble cast of characters – gentle maiden aunts, boisterous young women, a diffident clergyman – of this novel set on the Riviera in the 1920s, are so brilliantly drawn, and her perspective on them so sharp, unflinching and wise. Very little happens, yet she covers a lot of ground psychologically and emotionally.”
A House in Winter (Eriu) is out now.
