It’s a year this week since my book Social Capital was published (there’s a newsletter in that, so watch this space) - if you want to find out more about it, here’s a post I did on it last year, and you’ll find links here to buy it online. It’s in the library, so please head there if you want to access it for free (yay for libraries) and it’s also available as an ebook, where you’ll get to hear my dulcet (ahem) tones.
In lieu of actually being good at tracking my reading, here are a few highlights from my recent reads, most of which are new books. (You can find a similar post here.)
Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Eilís Ní Dhuibhne (2018)
I read this a few months ago, but really wanted to mention it here as it was such an impactful read. Ní Dhuibhne, as many will know, is an Irish writer and folklorist, and this memoir is about her relationship with the folklorist Bo Almqvist, whom she met while at UCD. He was Swedish, her former professor and 23 years older than her, all things they feared they would be judged for at the time, and this memoir has a lot to say about how Irish women were ‘expected’ to conduct relationships in the 1970s. It’s also hugely insightful on women’s treatment in academia in midcentury Ireland, and I loved reading about how Ní Dhuibhne found her way as a woman and a writer, forging her path despite the sexism thrown at her.
Almqvist got ill and died in 2013, and the story of what happened to him made me absolutely bawl. It’s awful to read about the end of a loving and long relationship, but it’s the hospital treatment that Almqvist received and Ní Dhuibhne’s realisation that all was not as it should have been that hit home for me. I was there in that corridor with her, confused but hopeful, presuming that those in charge knew best. Anyone who’s experienced feeling let down by the health system will recognise a lot of what she went through. There’s a raw unsentimentality to this memoir, a sense that though love might persist, life is not always easy - and we don’t always get the happy ending we desire.
Emma, Disappeared by Andrew Hughes (2024)
Fans of Catherine Ryan Howard’s twisty crime novels should pick up Andrew Hughes’s first non-historical book (you’ll probably remember his novel The Coroner’s Daughter was the One Dublin One Book pick in 2023 - this year’s is Snowflake by Louise Nealon, which I enjoyed as it’s a more rural take on the campus novel).
Emma, Disappeared is a very of-the-moment tale about the disappearance of a young student, Emma Harte, whose story is shared widely on social media. The book is narrated by James Lyster, an archivist with a particular interest in Emma’s disappearance. But why does he care so much?
Hughes cleverly uses Lyster as an unreliable narrator, but we’re never quite sure how unreliable, or why, until the very end. It’s very cleverly and satisfyingly done, and Hughes manages to deftly walk a tightrope when tackling issues like online toxic behaviour and misogyny without glamourising this behaviour. You get absorbed into Lyster’s world, because Hughes makes him a very real and accessible person, and this is the key to making the novel work. I shall say no more lest I spoil it…
Quickly, While They Still Have Horses by Jan Carson (2024)
During the pandemic lockdowns I did a short story course with Belfast author Jan Carson, and having done a few courses since, it’s without doubt the best writing course I’ve attended (there’s a reason why her course at West Cork Literary Festival is sold out - I’m also hosting a non-fiction course there and there are still places available).
If you’ve read anything by Jan you’ll know that she is a thoughtful, clever, empathetic writer who thinks outside of the box. Her prose is excellent, and her characters are so fully formed that you cringe and cry alongside them. She’s great at depicting complicated human behaviour. She also often includes some magical realism, which lifts her work to a level above others. Her 2023 novel The Raptures is my favourite novel of hers, but her short stories are always brilliant (her linked collection The Last Resort is a super read if you’re looking for an intro to her work that you can read in an hour or two).
Her latest short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses, came out this month and I was lucky to interview Jan for the Sunday Times Culture magazine about it. Some of the stories were published before, so you might have encountered them elsewhere, but it’s a great introduction to her work if you’re not familiar with it. My favourite stories of hers tend to be the darker or sadder ones - like the opening story about a self-absorbed woman on a beach, or the very dark story about a man named Victor Soda. It’s a collection that manages to feel broad while also being focused on a very specific community (the local is universal, etc) and if you’re a short story writer there’s loads to learn from how Jan does it.
Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong (2024)
Another author who I interviewed recently (for the Irish Times Magazine) is Maggie Armstrong, whose debut short story collection is published by the inimitable Tramp Press. Armstrong has such a strong sense of voice in this collection of linked short stories - at times self-pitying, at others overly confident, at others resigned to her troubles.
Her protagonist is called Margaret, and she really goes through it in life, getting into difficult relationships and finding partnership and motherhood hard. But if that all makes it sounds harsh and serious, this is actually quite a funny and wry collection too, with Margaret kicking back at the ways women are supposed to ‘accept their lot’ in Ireland. Sometimes you want to ask her what the hell she’s doing; at others you want to applaud her brazenness. A delight.
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes (2024)
The four Flattery sisters in The Alternatives are the sort of ultra-smart, loquacious, people who you’d have strong opinions about if you met them. Hughes introduces us to the sisters chapter by chapter, and gradually unfurls the story of the family tragedy that they suffered while barely into their teens. The women are all living their own distinct lives as adults, but when Olwen Flattery disappears, her sisters try (to varying degrees) to find her - and when they do (this isn’t really a spoiler), there’s a lot of family history to reckon with.
Hughes’ third novel is so crammed full of excellent lines and clever metaphors that I could hardly contain my professional envy. The New York Times review of this book is close to how I feel about it, in that at times it does ask a lot of the reader, but this feels very rewarded. And how great is it to see people take formal risks, like when Hughes writes in screenplay form? I found the way Hughes thinks about images to be hugely inspiring, and loved getting to know the Flattery sisters - even if I was also envious of their capability and nous.
Bird’s Nest Soup by Hanna Greally (2008)
Before my granny Maureen died, she gave me her copy of this remarkable memoir by Hanna Greally. To my shame, I only picked it up recently, after years of looking at it on my bookshelf knowing I needed to read it. I was familiar with Greally’s story, knowing that as a young woman she had been sent to a psychiatric institution, St Loman’s in Mullingar. But there was so much I didn’t know about her, like the full details of how she spent decades in the institution involuntarily despite her mother visiting her regularly.
It’s a situation that Greally both has to get resigned to and try to fight against, and we see in the book (which is written in a series of vignettes) how she even attempts to escape several times. It’s incredible how much inner strength she had when faced with a horrific situation, and how she had to find a way around undergoing treatment like electroshock therapy and insulin shock therapy (the details of which have to be read to be believed) while also knowing that she did not deserve to be treated in that way.
(Related: I’m interviewing Clair Wills and Molly Hennigan about their books - Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secret and The Celestial Realm - which both tackle the subject of Ireland and its institutional history at Cúirt Festival in Galway on Thursday.)
Reality Check by Vicki Notaro (2024)
Confession time: I’ve never watched a full episode of the Real Housewives. So when I started Vicki Notaro’s first foray into commercial fiction I wasn’t sure if it was something I’d really ‘get’ - I’ve watched plenty of reality TV (I guess those of us who were nineties teens can call ourselves part of the ‘Big Brother generation’) but would I miss out on obvious tropes or points of view?
This is the story of Desdemona ‘Dessie’ Daniels, a Kerry-born reality TV maven based in LA, and her brood of children, one of whom is an influencer (Vinnie), one a screenwriter living a low-key life (Portia, the protagonist) and one a teenager with a cheeky side (Ariel). I needn’t have worried about my lack of Real Housewives knowledge, as this is more focused on an Irish-American family trying to keep up appearances in a social-media saturated world than being about one specific franchise. I found this an absolute treat to read, as it balanced lightness and seriousness really well (OMG What a Complete Aisling fans will definitely enjoy).
I particularly appreciated that Portia is childfree by choice, and that the novel showcases the hamfisted attempts others make at interrogating her about this. I’ve interviewed Vicki for the Sunday Times, and it’ll be in the paper in the coming weeks. The book is out on 9 May.
What have you been reading lately? I’d love to hear in the comments.
C'mere now. All you've done here is make me salivate after another pile of books. There'll not be a child washed in the house. Again.
Stoneyard Devotional was an absolute beauty of a novel. Formally interesting yet compelling. It's still hanging around in my head weeks later.
Maggie Armstrong is going straight to the TBR pile!