I’m delighted to be joining forces with Kim from Reading Matters during 2024 for a Year With John Banville! Yes, following our teaser post last week, a few of you guessed who next year’s author would be… John Banville was born in Wexford in 1945 and now lives in Dublin. He worked for a number of years as a journalist with the Irish Press newspaper, and, from 1988, as literary editor of the Irish Times. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970 and since then he has written seventeen novels. The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize and wo ..read more

‘All fiction has its autobiographical roots in the sense that as a person you are your character’s litmus paper. Their single link with reality…and the workings of memory you cull from yourself also.’ Excursions in the Real World is, as the title would suggest, a collection of short non-fiction essays featuring people who have ‘snagged in the memory’ of William Trevor. Written over twenty-years for various publications including the Guardian and the New Yorker, the pieces feature themes and emotions redolent in Trevor’s novels – nostalgia, regret and the pull of memory – and his portraits of ..read more

After the excitement of FOUR Irish writers making the Booker Prize longlist, it was good to see that 50% of them made the shortlist when it was announced last week. Both Pauls, Murray and Lynch are in the running for the Prize, which will be announced on 26 November 2023. September saw the official launch of Dublin Book Festival which always has a great mix of local and international authors with a strong selection of events for children and young readers. Highlights of this year’s festival include Anne Enright, Paul Lynch and John Boyne. The casting of Gabriel Byrne as Samuel Beckett mi ..read more

My Year with William Trevor continues with a reread of his 2003 novel The Story of Lucy Gault. I read this around the time it was originally published and my revisit has confirmed the fact that it is another of Trevor’s quiet masterpieces. Told over a seventy-year period, this poignant and evocative novel is the story of how ‘calamity shaped a life’.  Opening in 1921, Trevor uses the political and social conditions of Ireland at that time as both the conduit of and background to a more domestic tragedy. In the summer of 1921 in County Cork, the ‘big houses’ of the Protestant landowners w ..read more

I’m a little bit late with my August round-up of Irish literary news, but better late than never! Starting with the longlisting of four Irish authors on the Booker Prize, it’s been another great month for Irish literary talent… Following the inclusion of so many Irish authors on the Booker Prize longlist this year, Laura Hackett wrote this great article in The Times, exploring the infrastructure and literary heritage that drive the Irish writing scene. Discover Irish Children’s Books is a new initiative created by award-winning Irish children’s author Sarah Webb. Webb increasingly realised ..read more

The title of Deirdre Madden’s 1994 novel comes from Frida Kahlo’s catalogue of definitions of colour. She associated yellow with ‘madness, sickness, death’ and cobalt blue with ‘electricity and purity’, however according to Kahlo, ‘nothing is black, really nothing’. This is suggestive of the sense of hopefulness, which infuses Madden’s portrait of a female visual artist, living in the wilds of Donegal, whose solitary, regimented life is thrown into doubt with the arrival of her cousin, who has come to stay following a breakdown. As a child, Claire would torment her father with questions like ..read more

I am now nearly two-thirds through my year with William Trevor and it has been interesting to see a core theme emerge from his novels. Death in Summer was published in 1998, four years after Felicia’s Journey again it explores the question of whether evil is an inherent trait or if it grows, slowly, blooming from a childhood of neglect and abuse. Trevor’s narratives frequently illustrate that someone who is allowed to grow up without love will eventually be of harm to others. Thaddeus Davenant is an attractive, middle-aged man whose neurotic parents paid him little attention meaning he has ne ..read more

The Booker Prize longlist was announced this morning and it was heartening to see that FOUR Irish writers have been included in this Booker Dozen. I’m currently reading The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and it is wonderful, his best yet. He was previously shortlisted for the fantatic Skippy Dies. I have yet to read How to Build A Boat by Elaine Feeney, but her debut novel As You Were was one of my highlights of 2020. Sebastian Barry’s inclusion for Old God’s Time means that he becomes one of only 11 writers, Beryl Bainbridge, William Trevor and David Mitchell among them, to have been nominated at ..read more

Family Sins is an encompassing title for this collection of short stories, suggesting as it does the personal and the taboo, the ordinary everyday lives lived under the shadows of secrets long kept. Family Sins is the name of one story in the collection but it is an apt title for all of them. In all these worlds, some hidden shame or crime brings consequences which are dealt with either by shrouding the sin in silence, or by creating a new narrative as a way to hide the ensuing shame. These stories feature characters who are creating their own versions of the truth, or being victimised by ..read more

The German author Katja Oskamp, and translator Jo Heinrich have won this year’s Dublin Literary Award, sponsored by Dublin City Council. Marzahn, Mon Amour has scooped the world’s largest prize for a single novel published in English and is worth E100,000. In this case 75,000 Euro goes to to the winning author and 25,000 Euro to the translator. To mark a year since her death, the Irish Times published a lovely piece by her friend Ethel Crowley exploring seven decades of her criticism and feature writing. Her declaration in 1958 that Ulysses would be unintelligible to most people is typical ..read more