Spring brings with it a host of literary offerings …
First up, my book of the month – and possibly the year? – is DREAM COUNT (4th Estate, €23.20) by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie’s novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah have made her a literary superstar and now, ten years on from her last novel, she returns with Dream Count. Much has happened in that decade, not least a global pandemic, and that is where this story begins. The book’s opening sentence sets up the central question of the novel – how well can we be known by another person, and how well do we know ourselves? It tells the story of four closely connected women: Chiamaka is a wealthy travel writer living in America; Omelogor is her cousin, a finance whizz in Nigeria; Zikora is a successful lawyer and Chiamaka’s best friend; while Kadiatou is Chiamaka’s cleaner, who is raising her daughter in America. All four women face challenges that force them to confront themselves. Nobody writes quite like Adichie, who has the combined gift of being able to write beautifully and also tell a story as if she is speaking it directly into your ear.
Two Irish big hitters also release books in March. Emma Donoghue – author of Room and The Pull of the Stars – turns her attention to a famous rail disaster in 1895 in THE PARIS EXPRESS (Picador, €27.55). The express train bound for Paris is the setting where Donoghue brings together a cast of characters, including a little boy travelling alone for the first time, a medical student concerned about a fellow passenger, and the crew of the train who are more like a family than co-workers. Donoghue tells the story through these and other passengers, and with chapters broken into stops along the journey, the story builds to an unbearably tense climax. As a masterful storyteller, this is a literary thriller that you won’t be able to put down.
Colum McCann’s latest novel TWIST (Bloomsbury, €15.99) follows journalist Anthony Fennell, who is covering the story of broken fibre-optic cables on the ocean floor. He boards a cable repair vessel in Cape Town, joining a cast of drifters on board. Meanwhile, life on shore goes on while Fennell is trapped at sea, with tensions simmering on board. McCann is an expert storyteller and this feels like an utterly modern novel in a world that is both alienating and familiar, or perhaps familiarly alienating.
BROKEN COUNTRY (John Murray, €14.99) by Clare Leslie Hall has been generating a lot of buzz, not least because it has been picked up for adaptation by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine. The story was inspired by the author’s family’s relocation from London to an old farmhouse in Dorset. The novel tells the saga-like story of Beth. Beth was 17 when she first met and fell in love with Gabriel. When Gabriel left, Beth thought her life was over. But life moves on and Beth eventually builds a new life on a farm with Frank, and their son. But then Gabriel comes back and all the old feelings come back too … This is a love story and a thriller – irresistible. Read it now before it hits your screens.
Wexford author Carmel Harrington’s latest novel THE STOLEN CHILD (Headline, €15.99) moves into new twisty territory that focuses on a missing child. In 1984, Kimberly and Jason are on a Mediterranean cruise when they wake to discover their toddler Robert is missing. Despite a desperate search, their son is never recovered. Forty years later, the pair are divorced and their grown-up daughter, Lily, is a therapist. When a new client shares a theory about what might have happened to her brother all those years ago, Lily starts to believe that someone out there has the answers to what became of Robert. A gripping and clever plot.
Curtis Sittenfeld made her name writing political blockbusters like Rodham and American Wife, and has lately brought her skewering intellect to romantic comedy with no less enjoyable results. SHOW DON’T TELL (Doubleday, €16.99) is her new collection of short stories that roam around the complicated terrain of women’s lives at the point where love and ambition clash. Sittenfeld also returns to an old character, Lee Fiora, who appeared in her 2005 novel, Prep. Here, Lee returns for a school reunion and has to contend with her memories of an incident that happened while she was in school. Always clever, always sharply observational, always worth reading.
Daunt Books is one of my favourite publishers, consistently offering exciting new voices and its latest, DARK LIKE UNDER (Daunt Books, €15.95) is the debut novel from English writer Alice Chadwick. Set in 1980s England, the book deals with the fallout of the death of Tin’s favourite teacher, Mr Ardennes. Tin is the fiery character at the heart of the novel, who is both loved and loathed in school. Her boyfriend Jonah and her best friend Robin come swirling into the mix, making this story a perfect encapsulation of late adolescent intense emotions, along with loss, loneliness, betrayal and grief.
Fans of Margaret Atwood will love THE DREAM HOTEL (Bloomsbury, €16.84) by Laila Lalami. This is a piece of dystopian speculative fiction from the Pulitzer and National Book Award shortlisted author. Set in a recognisable near future, it tells the story of Sara who is on her way home from a work conference when she is pulled aside by the Risk Assessment Administration at the airport. She is told she will be detained because her dreams have alerted them that she is at high risk of committing a crime. She is transferred to an all-female detention centre (a prison really) and held there, initially for three weeks but her stay is extended for minor infractions. Lalami uses the story to explore the dangers of technology and what we might be sacrificing for convenience.
BEARTOOTH (Granta, €18.75) by American author Callan Wink tells the unexpectedly gripping story of two brothers from Montana who go on a poaching trip in Yellowstone National Park. Brothers Thad and Hazen run a sawmill together and supplement their income with a bit of poaching on the side. As winter closes in and their bills start to mount, they are forced to take on a job they know is risky. Tense and gripping. Wink lives in Montana himself and is a guide on the Yellowstone River.
Ireland’s crime writing scene is expanding and Cork writer Catherine Kirwan is a name to add to favourites like Jane Casey and Andrea Mara. A solicitor by day, Kirwan has a brilliant understanding of crime and her fourth novel, THE SEVENTH BODY (Hachette Books Ireland, €15.99) is inspired by a true story about the discovery of six male skeletons on a building site. When a seventh body is found, Detective Garda Alice McCann is determined to find the truth. McCann is as intriguing as the plot itself, a rich fully formed character who is barely holding her personal life and career together, as she tries to solve the case.
BONUS BOOK: TRUE CRIME
Hallie Rubenhold topped the Sunday Times bestseller list with her book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack The Ripper. She looks set to repeat the trick with her latest book, STORY OF A MURDER: THE WIVES, THE MISTRESS AND DOCTOR CRIPPEN (Penguin Random House, €25), which looks at the lives of the women involved with the infamous medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen.
In 1910, the music hall performer, Belle Elmore, disappeared from her home in London. Her friends and fellow performers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild were distressed and demanded an investigation, which led to an international manhunt for her husband, Crippen. Meanwhile, Crippen had set off for America with his young typist and lover, Ethel le Neve. Rubenhold puts the women of the story front and centre, and explores who Ethel really was, while also digging into the death of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte. Through an impressive wealth of research, Rubenhold reasserts Belle’s place as the victim in this infamous story, and not the domineering woman she has been cast as by history. The book reads like a page-turning thriller with a huge cast of characters, from police investigators and lawyers to showbiz performers, journalists, judges, and even Winston Churchill.
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