Book reviews, book features, BOOKS!

Nita Prose author
Nita Prose author

Review 

 

Title: The Mystery Guest

 

Author: Nita Prose

 

The Sunday Independent

 

10th March 2024

 

The Mystery Guest is Nita Prose’s second novel featuring Molly, the Head Maid at fancy hotel, who solves crimes in her spare time. Prose’s first book, The Maid was a runaway bestseller and garnered praise from such luminaries as Stephen King.

When famous author JD Grimthorpe drops dead in the Regency Grand, poisoned, ahead of making a much anticipated announcement, there are no end of suspects. Molly herself knew Grimthorpe and spent a lot her childhood in his house where her Granny was a cleaner. The story unfolds along two timelines, the present and Molly’s childhood.

 

Said childhood is positively Dickensian which considering it would have been the early 2000s is hard to credit. To be honest there’s a lot that’s utterly defies belief even allowing for the liberties that can be taken in the Cosy Crime genre. I could forgive the fact that staff routinely gather in the public areas of the hotel for a chat or a bite to eat if that was the only flaw.

 

Unfortunately, the entire story is completely unmoored from reality and is full of internal logical inconsistencies. Molly’s fiercely protective Granny thinks nothing of regularly leaving her alone with a sexual predator. Similarly, the constant penury they live in is inexplicable as Granny is a fantastic, reliable, and honest cleaner – they can usually write their own paycheck.

 

 

Apart from Molly herself everyone is a two-dimensional stereotype. We are told things about them rather than the characters revealing themselves through their actions. Maybe the first book was fantastic, and this is ‘that difficult second album’, but either way, there are better ways of wasting time than reading The Mystery Guest.

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/nita-proses-the-mystery-guest-fails-to-live-up-to-its-best-selling-predecessor-the-maid/a979000346.html

Murder, mystery, suspence, books, reading, writing,
Tom Hindle author of Murder on Lake Garda

 

Review 

 

Title: Murder on Lake Garda

 

Author: Tom Hindle

 

The Sunday Independent

 

3rd February 2024

 

Murder on Lake Garda is a proper old-school murder mystery – think Agatha Christie in a contemporary setting – posh people, extended family, secrets, and grudges. Italian Eva Bianchi is a beautiful and glamourous influencer who is marrying upper class Brit Laurence Heywood. Their wedding is taking place in a small castle on an island in the middle of the spectacular Lake Garda.

 

In the days leading up to the wedding Laurence’s ‘side’ are all staying in a large fancy villa on the coast of the lake, but despite the spacious surroundings tensions run high. Margot the widowed matriarch, Godfather Jeremy and Laurence are all determined that his younger sibling Toby gives up his dreams of owning his own bar and joins the family financial firm HCM.

 

Toby’s girlfriend Robyn has never met any of his family before and she soon realises why Toby isn’t that fond of them. Both Margot and Jeremy are cold and condescending, while Laurence and his two schoolfriend groomsmen are arrogant, snobby, and patronising. Despite Robyn’s best efforts to be pleasant to Toby’s family they only bother to talk to her when they’re attempting to get her to convince Toby to join HCM. The only people who attempt to make her feel welcome are Laurence’s best man, Stephen, and his pregnant wife Abigail.

 

 

On Eva’s side things are also far from happy. The bride’s only sister hates her. Harper, Eva’s agent, has spent a year trying to recover the career Eva derailed (ignoring Harper’s advice), and is treated like a dogsbody as thanks. Dad Vito is in deep debt and now the shady characters who lent him money are calling their favours in. Apart from her smitten fiancé Eva has alienated everyone except for her parents but shortly before Vito is due to walk her down the aisle they have a furious row, and she tells him she hates him.

 

When Eva is found murdered – stabbed by an ornate dagger of historical importance, the guests/suspects are isolated on the island for several hours. Robyn having trained as a journalist starts using her investigative knowledge to figure out who killed Eva and why. But then there’s a second murder…

 

Hindle effortlessly brings classic crime into the modern age with plenty of glamour and opulence but never at the expense of the story which has plenty of twists and turns and is a proper page-turner.

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/tom-hindles-old-school-crime-sleuthing-shows-us-that-sometimes-marriage-is-murder/a918228496.html

rehab, mystery, alcoholism, recovery, crime, drug addiction
The Clinic by Cate Quinn

Review 

 

Title: The Clinic

 

Author: Cate Quinn

 

The Sunday Independent

 

21st January2024

 

The Clinic is a vast, remote, and exorbitantly expensive US Rehab. Due to its inaccessibility and high walls, it guarantees anonymity to its high profile clients.

 

When Meg, who works undercover in a Casino, catching cheats and loan sharks, hears that her estranged sister Hayley Banks, a famous country singer, has killed herself whilst resident at the Clinic, she is convinced that Hayley has been murdered. Meg decides to investigate her sister’s death posing as a patient. As she is too fond of alcohol and Oxy herself, her boss is only too willing to pay the vast fees. The clinic is managed by perfectionist Cara and the action unfolds from her perspective and Megs.

 

Overall, The Clinic is a great piece of escapism – who doesn’t love a story about the scandalous rich and famous whether real or fictional. While Meg is at the clinic, her investigation, and the interactions between the other inmates including a rock star, a veteran actor, and a washed up supermodel, are pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of time for Meg to get to Rehab and the last chapters are superfluous to the plot.

 

Quinn wrote The Clinic after her own successful stint in Rehab, and she spends a lot of time pondering on the nature of addiction and various psychological conditions. While I understand completely why this fascinates her, (I’ve been in recovery myself for over two decades) attempting serious insight while having a Big Reveal that really does push the boundaries of credulity is an unhappy mix. Quinn cites our own Marian Keyes as an inspiration, but unlike Keyes she’s not able to blend fact and fiction so seamlessly. Take the fun and ignore the rest. 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/sex-drugs-sobriety-and-death-cate-quinns-the-clinic-works-best-as-escapism/a604796741.html

 

 

 

 

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson
The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

Review 

 

Title: The Christmas Guest

 

Author: Peter Swanson

 

The Sunday Independent

 

26th November 2023

 

 

 

The Christmas Guest is a novella which can be read in a couple of hours.

 

The story kicks off with the diary of Ashley, a young American woman, studying art at a prestigious university in London in 1989. She’s “a loud American… A little of her goes a long way.” When her classmate Emma, who she is not particularly friendly with, invites her to her family home for Christmas, she’s delighted to accept.

 

Emma’s family are very posh and live in Starvewood Hall, a large Country House on the outskirts of a small village. It’s everything that the California native expected England to be and she loves it all, especially Emma’s twin Adam. He is the epitome of 80s style “leaning against his sporty car wearing a long tweed coat… smoking a cigarette,” not only “beautiful” but extremely charming.

When Ashley finds out that Adam usually has more than one woman on the go at any time and, more importantly, that he is the only suspect in the recent murder of a young woman, it only makes him more attractive.

 

 

Halfway through the book everything suddenly changes and it’s quite the shock. I loathe spoilers so I’m not going to reveal any details and the same goes for the other twist which occurs towards the end of the story, which I defy anyone to predict.

 

I was tempted to say that there are three stories being told in The Christmas Guest but actually it’s more accurate to say that it’s the one story being told in three ways. Either way, it’s compulsive reading.

 

Peter Swanson is a genius, and this is one of those stories that will remain embedded in your memory forever as it’s funny, clever, sinister, and extremely gripping. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Roisin Meaney
Roisin Meaney

Review 

 

Title: A Winter to Remember

 

Author: Roisin Meaney

 

The Sunday Independent

 

12th November 2023 

 

 

A Winter to Remember is told from the perspective of four different women. Emily who owns a restaurant, Heather, an American who moved to Ireland as a teen, Lil a young librarian and Christine, a recovering drug addict.

As the book begins Emily is living with Bill, Christine’s Dad, and together they are bringing up his grandson Pip who is almost two. Christine ran away from home soon after Pip was born and has been missing since. 

Heather lives with Shane and their blended family – his two sons, her a ten-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and their baby girl. It’s never fully explained why Heather whose parents are rich, lives in such cramped conditions. When her seriously high maintenance Mum shows up from the US there are seven people in a house with one bathroom, which given her mother’s personality is hard to credit. Lil and her fiancé Tom live in Emily’s old flat above her restaurant.

Shortly after the action starts Christine reappears after spending three months in a post-Rehab half-way house. After a few overnight visits with Pip and encouraged by her Dad, Christine takes full custody of him – without social services support or any sort of plan. Childless Emily, who has been a de facto mother to the little boy is, justifiably, devastated. “Every day she suffered the lack of him. She’d lost a bit of herself.”

Many of Meaney’s characters have featured in previous novels so readers who already know and love the individual women will probably enjoy the continuation of their stories. I was hoping for some easy escapism, but I felt overwhelmed by too much drama.  Meaney could easily have more than one book with the material, and I wish she had. 

Comedy. cancellation, trans, Graham Linehan, Father Ted
Tough Crowd by Graham Linehan

 

Review 

 

Title: Tough Crowd

 

Author: Graham Linehan

 

The Sunday Independent

 

20th October 2023 

 

In 2010 when I joined Twitter (Now X) Graham Linehan one of the first people I followed because he’s the comedy genius responsible for Father Ted,The IT Crowd and Black Books. Since 2018 his name is no longer synonymous with making people laugh as he’s now regularly called a “bigot”, a “fascist” and even a “Nazi”. Linehan’s fall from grace was swift, brutal, and ironically, enabled by Twitter.

The second half of the book deals with his cancellation - Linehan has lost everything, his marriage, his home, his career, and most of his friends for tweeting the commonplace view that ‘gender identity’ doesn’t change someone’s biological sex.

 

I won’t dwell on that section of the story except to say that whilst his frustration and disappointment rise off the page he never strays far from his need to entertain and make the reader laugh.

 

The first section of Tough Crowd covers the more familiar ground of memoir – Linehan’s life from nerdy bullied boy to successful writer.

The first series of Father Ted aired in 1995, and it’s now so ingrained in pop culture that it’s easy to forget how different things were then. Linehan and his writing partner Arthur Matthews worried most about ‘Paddywhackery’ which “would kill us. We didn’t want to go back to Ireland and be chased everywhere like a kind of evil Beatles.” 

 

Linehan has made the shift from sitcom writer to author seamlessly. He’s simultaneously eloquent and chatty and even manages to pack in a lot of information about the workings of writing, comedy, and TV production without obstructing the flow of the narrative. Honestly, anyone who fancies themselves as a writer would do will to read this book as it’s a great primer on technique and structure.

 

The only criticism I have is that I’d have loved to hear more stories about Linehan’s Mum as they left me helpless with laughter. I think she is the main source of his funny bones.

There’s plenty of giggles in Tough Crowd but also great sadness. The saddest thing about this memoir though is the fact that the very people who should read it, to hear the facts - Linehan never received any caution from the police, for example, probably won’t. They’re not a Tough Crowd just an intractable one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/graham-linehan-makes-shift-from-sitcom-writer-to-author-seamlessly-with-his-memoir-tough-crowd/a1958503082.html

 

Review 

 

Title: The Running Grave

 

Author: Robert Galbraith

 

The Sunday Independent

 

8th October 2023 

 

Robert Galbraith is the nom-de-plume of JK Rowling and The Running Grave is her seventh book in the crime fiction series about private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott.

 

This time the pair have been employed by a very desperate and exceedingly rich Sir Colin Edensor who wants their help in getting his son Will out of the outwardly respectable Universal Humanitarian Church (UHC). The organisation is led by the handsome and charismatic Jonathan Wace and his deeply strange and creepy wife Mazu.

 

From humble beginnings on a run-down farm and former hippy colony, over the decades the new religion has spread globally, with lavish ‘temples’ in major cities and plenty of celebrity endorsement.

It's only after taking the case that Strike realises that he and his sister lived briefly at Chapman’s Farm along with their mother when they were kids. The commune was subsequently raided by the police as it was a front for a paedophile ring.

 

Former members refuse to talk about UHC which, now immensely rich, uses lawyers and other less savoury methods to silence them, so Robin goes undercover. What follows is classic cult indoctrination – a lack of sleep, starvation rations, uniform clothing, and endless repetition of mantras.

 

Questions are likely to result in humiliation and physical punishment - as Robin observes, “practices that in the outside world would be considered abusive or coercive were excused, justified, and disguised by a huge amount of jargon”.

 

Members of the Church are expected to have sex (‘spirit bond’) with anyone who demands it, regardless of attraction or sexuality (Jonathan and Mazu are deeply homophobic). Any babies that result from these encounters are taken away from their mothers as attachment to ‘flesh objects’ is deemed ‘materialism’. Robin has to battle hard to stay sane, let alone get information for the case.

 

The real life backdrop to the events in the book is the period before and after the Brexit Referendum – which is very apt as it shows how susceptible people are to manipulation when they don’t know what to think or do.

 

 

Rowling just gets better with each book.  The Running Grave isn’t just Grip Lit, it’s a totally immersive universe. The plot and subplots are all finely worked, and I was totally blindsided by the ending. Be warned though, Rowling is the woman who killed Dumbledore and none of her characters are ever really safe.

 

 

www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/review-grim-goings-on-at-jk-rowlings-sinister-farm/a1138277968.html

The 19 Steps, Stranger Things, Books, Reading, World War 2
Millie Bobby Brown

Review 

 

Title: The Nineteen Steps

 

Author: Millie Bobby Brown

 

The Sunday Independent

 

17th September 2023 

 

 

Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown is as a talented actress, has a very successful cosmetics line and a long-term lovely boyfriend and is still only 19.  Given her Midas Touch I expected her debut novel The Nineteen Steps would be pretty good. Sadly, I was disappointed.

 

The story revolves around Nellie, a young woman, living through World War II, in Bethnal Green, London. Her two best friends are brother and sister Babs and Billy. Billy is in love with her, but his dreams are shattered when she meets the handsome American GI Ray.

 

The pivotal event in the narrative is a real tragedy that occurred in 1943 when 173 people were crushed to death at the entrance to the unfinished Bethnal Green Tube station which was being used as a bomb shelter. To give Brown her due, this section of the tale is well-handled.

 

As for the rest – Brown gets the big facts right but utterly fails to grasp the historical period she’s dealing with and has cheerfully imposed modern social mores and values onto the past. An unmarried mother is loved by all, and no one judges. Ray, a farm boy from the end of nowhere in Michigan speaks to Nellie’s Dad about “American isolationism”. The female Mayor is addressed by an official as “Mrs Mayor”.

 

Irritations like this add up but worse is that Nellie herself has no discernible character apart from being oh so lovely – just like everyone else - it’s EastEnders by Disney and the only villain is Hitler.

 

As celebrities go, I’ve always liked Brown and think has been sorely let down. There’s little doubt that The Nineteen Steps will sell well to her young fans, but given a few more years and a rigorous editor, Brown might have written something a bit more substantial. 

Baltimore, The Wire, Baltimore Sun, Crime, Books, Reading
Laura Lippman author of Prom Mom

Review 

 

Title: Prom Mom

 

Author: Laura Lippman

 

The Sunday Independent

10th September 2023 

 

I’ve been a huge fan of Baltimore journalist and best-selling author Laura Lippman since she began writing novels in the late 90s. Her latest, Prom Mom, is loosely based on a news story that gripped the US in 1997.

 

At 16 Amber Glass was an awkward swotty girl with a massive crush on Joe, the most popular boy in school and her elder by two years. He, rather unenthusiastically, took her to his Prom, because she asked him to and he was, as everyone said, a nice guy.

 

The morning after, Amber woke up covered in blood with a dead baby lying beside her. Nobody, herself included, had any idea she was pregnant, and her mind is a blank on what happened the night before.

 

Twenty years later Amber, having been found guilty of murdering her baby and being placed in a juvenile jail until her 18th birthday, returns to her hometown for the first time since. She’s no longer a gawky teen, but a sophisticated and successful woman. Thanks to the internet she’s aware that Joe is still handsome, that he’s married to a beautiful plastic surgeon called Meredith and they live in a huge house despite having no children.

 

The scene is set for a psychological drama where Amber enacts her revenge on Joe, who survived the tabloid frenzy about the ‘Prom Mom’ relatively unscathed. He moved to Texas to stay with his uncle, a successful realtor and deferred university for a year and then carried on with his charmed life.

 

But Lippman does not go down this obvious route. It is Joe who can’t stay away from Amber, despite repeatedly telling himself he will. Joe is determined to be a ‘good guy’, but he lies - mostly to himself. He’s repeatedly cheated on his wife and has re-mortgaged their large home without telling her, to finance a property deal his uncle (and boss) refused to touch.

 

The Covid lockdowns destroy any hope he had of making money on the deal and as the deadline for a large repayment quickly approaches Joe panics about losing his home. His situation is further complicated by being unable to shrug off his latest mistress. Desperate, he turns to Amber for help. Still smitten, she agrees, even though she risks going to jail, again.

 

The story whips along with ever-increasing tension until the inevitable truth is revealed along with a hell of a twist. I loved it. 

Books, writing, reading, Hannigan
Rosie Hannigan, The Midnight Gardening Club

Review 

 

Title: The Moonlight Gardening Club

 

Author: Rosie Hannigan

 

The Sunday Independent

20th August 2023 

 

The Moonlight Gardening Club by Rosie Hannigan (aka Amy Gaffney) is a love story, just not the one I was expecting.  Frankie is a struggling single mother, she had to drop out of university when she became pregnant and then, her fiancé died before her son Dillon was born.

 

Frankie had been abandoned by her own mother, Nicole, when she was two weeks old and was reared by her Granny, Aggie.  As the book begins Frankie is struggling – financially, emotionally, and practically, in the wake of Aggie’s death and feels very alone.  Castle Cove, where she lives, is a thriving seaside town, popular with tourists, and Frankie gets to clean up after them in hotel rooms and chalets.

 

Ruby is a sophisticated, middle-aged widow, who grew up in Castle Cove and returns to the town, thirty years after she left,  in the hope of finding some solace for the grief she still feels 18 months after the death of her husband James.  It is blindingly obvious to readers from the beginning that James was not a very nice man, and that Ruby is in complete denial.

 

Ruby and Frankie get off to a bad start due to a misunderstanding and confrontation.  They find common ground working on the Moonlight Garden – a community project. The garden is specifically designed to look it’s best at night, hence the name.  Childless Ruby comes to think of Frankie as the daughter she never had.  But then James, from beyond the grave, manages to destroy their close bond.

 

This is a fabulous book, the writing is superb, the characters (including the town itself) are fully realised and credible, especially six-year-old Dillon.  Writing convincing children is difficult for even the most seasoned of writers but Hannigan has done a brilliant job in creating a very real little boy.  I yearned to reach into the pages and give him a hug.  Yes, The Moonlight Gardeners Club melted my cynical old heart which says an awful lot about how good it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/rosie-hannigans-moonlight-gardening-club-will-melt-the-most-cynical-of-hearts/a1543528693.html

Judge Rinder Strictly Come Dancing Robert Rinder
Judge Rinder aka Rob Rinder author of The Trial

Review 

 

Title: The Trial

Author: Rob Rinder

 

The Sunday Independent

7th July 2023 

 

Criminal Barrister Rob Rinder (aka Judge Rinder) is one of my favourite people on television. Whether he’s presiding over his TV Court Room, dancing on Strictly or hosting breakfast news, he always comes across as sharp, smart, and funny. I had high hopes for his debut novel The Trial.

 

The story kicks off with a bang. Britain’s ‘Top Cop’, Grant Cliveden, adored by both public and press, drops dead in the witness box while giving evidence in a trial at the Old Bailey. The police quickly establish he’s been poisoned and arrest Jimmy Knight, a criminal with a grudge, for murder.

 

Adam, a Pupil (trainee) Barrister, is left with the responsibility of providing a defence for Knight as his ‘Pupil Master’ Jonathan thinks the defendant is a lost cause and, besides, he’s being paid out of Legal Aid and would prefer to concentrate on more lucrative clients. Adam is convinced Knight is innocent as he realises early on that Grant Cliveden was not the ‘good guy’ he pretended to be.

 

Given Rinder’s legal background the book is very strong on Court procedure and the way the legal world works especially for Pupils in Chambers vying to get a permanent place. “As well as (a) shoplifting case, Adam had defended two burglars, a drunk driver and an indecent exposure that week… the late nights preparing for cases and the long days defending them.”

 

The story takes a little while to properly get going and Rinder has an unfortunate tendency for cliches. The glamourous Judge Charlotte Wickstead has a voice as “pure and clear as crystal”, her Judge’s robes “billowing around her like a witch’s cape”, her “razor stare”, a juror with “raven hair extensions.” Then there’s the frankly bizarre “she glided in with the elegance of tall reeds swaying in the breeze.”

 

Once the action starts The Trial becomes quite the page turner, with an ever-growing list of people who had a reason to want Cliveden dead. Like the best classic crime fiction there are plenty of red herrings.

 

Adam’s background is slowly revealed which works extremely well in the context of the case he’s working on. There are several twists at the end, some of which were inevitable but some that come as a genuine surprise.

 

The Trial is not for serious crime buffs, but it is fun so I’m looking forward to Rinder’s next book and he still remains a telly favourite.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/verdict-is-in-on-judge-rinders-debut-novel-the-trial/a1260812347.html

Books, reading, cults, Jim Jones, Jonestown
Children of the Sun by Beth Lewis

Review 

 

Title: Children of the Sun

Author: Beth Lewis 

 

The Sunday Independent

2nd July 2023 

 

I was really looking forward to reading Children of the Sun, as author Beth Lewis and I share a fascination with cults. The book is set in 1982, not long after the Jonestown mass suicide and the ‘Children of the Sun’ share a lot of similarities with the people led by Jim Jones. They live communally in a secret location called Atlas where they must abide by the draconian rules laid down by enigmatic leader Sol.

 

Everyone in the commune has made terrible mistakes and Sol's promise is, literally, a clean slate, in a parallel dimension via a ‘Golden Door’. The plot unfolds from the perspective of three people, James, an investigative reporter who embeds with the community in Atlas; Eve a former member who is determined to find and kill Sol, and Root, a six-year-old ‘Sunbeam’, one of Sol’s ‘special’ children, who are vital to his plan.

 

The story is great and there’s a huge twist that is absolutely brilliant. The individual histories of Sol’s followers are compelling and believable. The worry about Sol’s ‘sunbeams’ and their fate is visceral as we know early on that that a little girl has already died. Eve’s narration is easily the most absorbing, especially when she discovers Sol’s real identity.

 

 

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Root and James. Like most children in fiction Root is preternaturally smart for his age, yet he speaks at the ‘Me Tarzan’ stage of a much younger child, “Leaf roar like lion… He half off edge and he try pull up grass”. Fair play to Lewis for experimenting but unfortunately it quickly becomes extremely grating. James just grates, he’s a mess and unbelievable as any sort of journalist. Lewis is undoubtedly a talent, with a wonderful imagination and if you can get past the irritations Children of the Sun is well worth a read.

Ann O'Loughlin author of The Irish House
Ann O'Loughlin author of The Irish House

Review 

 

Title: The Irish House

Author: Ann O’Loughlin

 

The Sunday Independent

25th June 2023 

 

Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell famously said, “to lose one parent… may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Lord knows what she’d make of poor Marianne the heroine of The Irish House, a romantic novel that blends The Field with P.S. I Love You.

 

At only 26 the New Yorker has lost her Aunt, both her parents, her beloved grandmother Collie, and her job in quick succession. Collie has left her the rather grand, but faded, family home Kilteelagh House in County Wicklow. The bequest is made with two conditions, first that Marianne return both the house and extensive gardens to their former glory, and second that she provides a home for her orphaned cousins, Katie (6) and Rachel (15), who Collie had been rearing since their mother’s death. 

 

Collie’s only surviving child Katherine, who has a husband and two children of her own, is furious, as she nursed the old woman throughout her long final illness. “I spent every waking hour with that woman, and what did I get?...nothing personal or of sentimental value for her only living daughter.” Katherine vows that she will make Marianne hand over Kilteelagh House and the two girls to her and enlists several of her dreadful snobby friends to help.  They’re all for knocking down Kilteelagh House to replace it with a housing estate because they’ll make money. 

 

Luckily for Marianne, her late grandmother’s best friend Dolores and handsome local handyman Jack, provide emotional support and practical help in the face of Katherine’s campaign to get her to leave.

 

At the start of every month Marianne receives a letter from her late grandmother, containing advice, memories, and a few surprises.  While learning to parent two grief-stricken girls,(one a teen determined to act up) and going full Grand Designs on the house and garden, Marianne decides to relaunch her career as a fashion designer. And, as this is a romance, despite everything on her plate Marianne love is ever in the air with Jack the handsome handyman. 

 

I’m one of nature’s cynics and while most readers will probably sigh over Collie and her doomed love, I was irritated at the waste of a life.  I guessed the twist but then I devour crime fiction, and instead of it endearing me to the late Collie, I felt even sorrier for poor Auntie Katherine.

 

My scepticism aside, I can honestly say I enjoyed this book no end; I imagine if you are a fan of romantic fiction you will love it. The plot and pace are faultless, and O’Loughlin, whose sixth novel this is, has created very credible characters. Aunt Katherine could easily have slid into a caricatured baddie, but the author has created a woman who is conflicted, confused and, for many good reasons, quite resentful of her late mother. The Irish House is also a love letter to the beauty of County Wicklow, where O’Loughlin lives.

 

 

Definitely one for fans of fashion, romance, and handsome men with power tools. 

Books, Reading, Writing, Publishing, Authors
Author Annie Macmanus

 

Review 

 

The Mess We're In

Annie Macmanus

 

 

The Sunday Independent 

3rd June 2023 

 

 

 

It’s 2000 and 21 year old Orla after three years in university in Ireland and a year learning music production in Cheltenham, moves to London to finally start living her life.  “A shop called Liberty.  A place called Angel. All these dreamy names, free and full of hope.”

 

Her journey is shared by her bestie Neema who is going to study law.  The pair are moving into the attic of a house shared by Neema’s brother Kesh and his two band mates.  They are a proper band, signed to a label, touring, and making records which is good news for Orla as she is desperate to get into the music business.

 

At the start low self-esteem is something that Orla aspires to, “I look like Gwen Stefani if she had a weight problem and a face like a potato.” she desperately wants love and for everyone to like her.  She engages in awkward and unfulfilling sex with a boy she fancies despite him not being bothered to pretend to care.  Then she takes up with a shady character called Vinnie (that he nicknames her Oral says everything about him) but at least the sex is good.  Despite her people pleasing goals, Orla is self-obsessed to a level where she can’t see what’s right in front of her. 

 

Living in Kilburn and working some shifts in an Irish pub opens Orla’s eyes to the lives of the previous generation of Irish immigrants.  “I can pick them out on the High Road now.  The women, too, hardness etched on to their faces… I’m a different kind of Irish to them. I didn’t come here when I was a teenager to send money home to my family like they did.  I didn’t lift bricks until my hand bled.”

 

Like many middle-aged Irish mammies, I identified with much of Orla’s story, because I lived it – the pure hedonism, the crushing hangovers, the wrong men, the hope, disappointment, the friendships, and the fun.  Being young and trying to be free is never easy, especially when time passes rapidly as Orla discovers, “a feeling of trying to stay afloat in stagnant water while everyone else moves with the current.  It’s a feeling of life leaving me behind”. 

 

McManus is a truly talented writer as evidenced by the snippets of conversations between Orla and her sister at home in Ireland where she manages to reveal a character from dialogue alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/the-mess-were-in-review-annie-macmanus-on-making-love-and-music-in-london-town/a238754552.html

Books, reading, writing. novels,
Carmen & Grace by Melissa Coss Aquino

Review 

 

Carmen & Grace

Melissa Coss Aquino

 

 

The Sunday Independent 

7th May 2023 

 

I must admit to getting a stab of envy as a writer when I read a debut novel as good as this one. Carmen and Grace is the work of a confident and accomplished author, with a fantastic plot and distinctive, well-formed characters. 

 

There are books where you identify with the characters and circumstances and for me this wasn’t one.  Despite familiarity with many of the places, I entered a world totally alien to me and I’m better off for it. 

 

I fear I won’t be able to do the novel justice as it’s so good on fine detail but in extremely broad terms this book is The Godfather reimagined in the first 20 years of this century, set in the Bronx among the Puerto Rican community and, most importantly, is female dominated. 

 

Carmen and Grace are cousins but as close as sisters. When the female gang boss dies, a power struggle ensues, and Grace is determined to win at all costs.  Carmen, newly pregnant is determined to get out and put the Bronx behind her as quickly as she can. 

 

This alone would have made for a gripping read but this book is about so much more than a gang of drug dealers. Grace is motivated not just by money, but what money can buy – not just for her but the women in her gang, - education, power and freedom from the constraints placed upon them by a male-dominated society. 

 

“Every single girl on the block lives for the day some (guy) will put a ring on her finger and walk her down the aisle in a white dress. Even if she ain’t seen a wedding in three generations of her family, she is still Cinderella sitting around with three kids waiting for her prince. Pure bullshit. Pure poison. And that shit is holding every single one of them back.”

 

By giving the women, and their children, a chance to better their lives, Grace’s form of feminism does liberate them, but, at the same time they are not free because she demands absolute loyalty. There is no leaving as her desperate cousin finds out. 

 

While the book is very focused on women, their friendships, their place in society it’s also an indictment of modern America and how whole sections of society are failed by the system. One of Grace’s favourite topics is “the Kennedys, and the mob… How everybody who got rich in this country started dirty. Slave trade. Moonshine. Gambling.”

 

I can foresee this book getting the ‘Daisy Jones’ treatment from some streaming service and that would be great, I’d certainly watch it, but I’d urge people to read the book too, because it shouldn’t be missed.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/review-this-reads-like-the-godfather-set-in-the-bronx-among-female-puerto-rican-gangsters/a39015929.html

Royals reality show: Crowning a raft of new titles for the coronation

 

The Sunday Independent  

15/4/23

 

One of the best reality shows in history is ‘The Firm’, the name the Royal Family have given themselves. There have been spin-off series ‘The Real Housewives of Windsor’ originally starring Princess Diana and Fergie, but latterly following the relationship between Kate and Meghan. As soon as ‘The Jeremy Kyle Show’ was taken off-air, Harry and Meghan began acting like participants in a new posh version – accusations are regularly flung, all that’s missing is the lie-detector and DNA tests. For now.

 

A bonus for Irish people is that we get all this entertainment for free as the British taxpayer funds it.

 

Any journalist, writer or media commentator will tell you that the Royals sell by the shedload – newspapers, magazines and books all fly off the shelves. And that’s just most of the time, when there’s a big royal occasion, frenzy doesn’t cover it. With the Coronation imminent there are more royal-related books around than even the most devoted monarchist could read in a lifetime. There’s plenty of biographies and factual books but there’s also Coronation-inspired fiction, royal fashion and food, enough children’s books to fill several libraries and even a ‘Harrody’.

 

Robert Jobson’s biography “Our King: Charles III: The Man and the Monarch Revealed” (John Blake Publishing €30.80) is the perfect book for anyone who is interested but doesn’t want to hear about every letter the new King wrote or every speech he gave. Jobson knows how to tell a good story and is master of the understatement noting that “Oprah did not ask Meghan to back up the veracity of her claims.”

 

Pitkin have two coffee table type books out, “King Charles III” and “Diana, The Life and Legacy of the People’s Princess” by Brian Hoey. Both cost €18.19 and are lavishly illustrated with formal and informal photos. Seasoned royal-watcher Angela Levin’s biography “Camilla: From Outcast to Queen Consort” (Diversion €25.99), was published late last September but the paperback has come out in time for the new Queen’s big day.

 

Harry and William are not the first pair of royal brothers to fall out. The late Queen’s uncle Edward VIII famously abdicated for ‘the woman he loved’, but that was only part of the story. Alexander Larman dishes the royal dirt in “The Windsors at War: The Nazi Threat to the Crown” (W&N €32.99) – Wallis and David (as the ex-King was called) were big fans of Herr Hitler. 

 

Diana and her siblings famously disliked their stepmother Raine, calling her ‘Acid Raine’.  “Three Times A Countess” by Tina Gaudoin (Constable €28.46) is Raine’s compelling story. Flicking through Hoey’s book on Diana, it’s noticeable that she spent her 20s dressing like a frumpy middle-aged woman and it was only in the 1990s that she found her iconic look. “The Royal Wardrobe” by Rosie Harte (Headline €25.99). is a wonderful book about the fashion and style of individual monarchs from Henry VI right up to Charles today. (Diana’s famous ‘Revenge Dress’ gets a mention too).

 

For food-lovers there’s "The Royal Heritage Cookbook: Recipes from High Society and the Royal Court”, by the Honourable Sarah Macpherson (The History Press €19.99) who has based her recipes on those found in the archives of stately homes in Britain and Ireland.

 

Kids love stories about kings, queens, and fairy princesses so it’s no surprise that there are so many children’s books dedicated to King Charles and the Coronation.  From renowned children’s writer Michael Murpurgo there’s “The Boy Who Would Be King” (Harper Collins Children’s Books €16.79). Scholastic have added “King Charles III”, by Sally Morgan and illustrated by Sarah Papworth (€9.99), to their Life Story series aimed at ages 9-11. The series Little People Big Dreams by Francis Lincoln Children’s Books (€14.00) are simple illustrated biographies aimed at ages 4-7 and “King Charles” by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara is the latest.

 

Disney are no doubt hoping that Charles does for Pooh what the Queen did for Paddington with “Winnie-the-Pooh Meets the King” (Farshore, €9.99, co-authored by Jane Riordan).

 

In fiction, Charlie Higson was commissioned to write his new Bond book, “On His Majesty’s Secret Service” (Ian Fleming Publications €17.95) specifically to commemorate the Coronation, while Jennifer Robson’s historical novel “Coronation Year” (William Morrow €16.00) is set in 1953 and around the events leading to the late Queen being crowned.

 

Prince Harry’s “Spare” was released at the beginning of the year and provided plenty of (unintentional) comic fodder the latest being parody “Spare Us! A Harrody”, by Bruno Vincent (Abacus €13.99). I have a feeling the word ‘Harrody’ is going to take on a life of its own soon. 

 

Books Reading Writing Novels Fiction
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

 

 

Review 

 

One Italian Summer

Rebecca Serle

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

15/4/23

 

If ever there was an example of not judging a book by its cover then One Italian Summer is it. It looks  like a typical summer romance novel and while it is a love story of sorts, it’s not the one I was expecting.

 

LA resident Katy is thirty and has just lost her mother to cancer. Carol was the perfect Mum, she cooked wonderful meals, had a good eye for clothes and decoration; she was nurturing and highly organised. Katy’s visceral grief is compounded by the fact that Carol and she shared an intense special bond. “I was her great love… I was her one, just like she was mine.” And, like most grief, Katy’s carries a fair amount of anger, “How could she make herself so indispensable, so much a part of my life, my very heart…. Only to leave.”

 

With her mother gone Katy is thrown into an identity crisis asking herself “who am I in her absence?” She decides to go alone on a long-planned mother and daughter trip to Positano, where Carol once lived, pausing to tell her husband of five years that she’s not sure she wants to be married anymore, before leaving for the airport.

 

At her hotel in the magical Italian town, she meets a handsome fellow American and they begin to spend time together and I thought I knew exactly where the plot was heading. I was wrong. I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I won’t reveal what happens next but it’s far better than anything I could have imagined.

 

One Italian Summer is a joyful book, a wonderful read and full of little twists (and a very big one). Serle not only captures the rawness of grief but portrays the town of Positano so vibrantly that you can almost feel the sun and taste the food. It’s an absolute treat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/rebecca-serles-one-italian-summer-summons-sorrow-sunshine-and-real-surprises-42433692.html

Kate Collins, books, reading, writing, spooky, gothic, thriller
A Good House For Children by Kate Collins

Review 

 

A Good House for Children

Kate Collins

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

25/3/23

 

 

The Reeve, a small mansion, stands atop a cliff on the Dorset coast.  With its wonderful architecture, spectacular views, and large garden it seems like the ideal family home. The plot of A Good House for Children follows two families, forty years apart, who move there for the good of the children.

 

In 2017 painter Orla arrives with her baby daughter and small son Sam who refuses to speak. Her husband Nick works away taking the car and Orla is completely isolated during the week.  In 1976 newly widowed Sara purchases the house so she and her four children, can take a year out, away from real life, including school. The action in 1976 is from the point of view of Lydia the nanny who comes with them from London.

 

As both timelines advance both Orla and Lydia quickly realise that something is not right at The Reeve.  They respectively see glimpses of things, hear footsteps and snatches of songs and conversations. Orla realises that “ the solitude she had welcomed so readily when they first moved, the isolation that she had held both arms out to embrace, now threatened to overwhelm.”  Her husband thinks she is having a breakdown.

 

There are also parallels between Orla’s son Sam and the eldest of Sara’s children, the sensitive 8-year-old Philip.  From the perspective of the 2017 timeline the reader knows that something terrible happens in 1976 (and it is utterly heart-breaking when it does).

 

This is a book that the reader will want to race through as the simultaneous storylines are highly compelling, but it really deserves to be read slowly as it is not a traditional haunted house story. 

 

Apart from the content the delivery is sublime, that this is Collin’s debut is frankly astonishing.  Her writing is well-crafted and takes readers from the real to surreal and back again with ease. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/a-good-house-for-children-is-an-astonishing-gothic-debut-following-unhappy-families-42403121.html

Crime, Books, Reading, Writing, Publishing, Thriller
The Institution by Helen Fields

Review 

 

The Institution

Helen Fields

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

12/3/23

 

The Institution is a remote hospital for the criminally insane (the easiest way to reach it is by helicopter). The ‘Heaven’ ward is where the worst inmates are held, violent prolific serial killers.

 

Criminal profiler Connie has gone undercover on the ward to find out who killed heavily pregnant nurse Tara and removed her baby.  “It was called foetal abduction, and it was the worst crime imaginable as far as Connie was concerned. No small claim given how high her professional experiences had set the bar.” Connie needs to find the vulnerable baby quickly while knowing her removal must have been done by a staff member. She knows that the killers will quickly guess why she is there.

 

 

Dr Ong, who is in charge of the ward, is a Do-Gooder who imagines he can cure his patients – or clients as he instructs everyone to call them. Both the medical and auxiliary staff think he is as deranged as his charges. His deputy Dr Roth is a sadistic angry woman. Then there are the ‘clients’ five violent men, any one of whom could have murdered Tara.  

As a teenager Connie spent time in a psychiatric institution herself. By necessity all staff live within the walls of the Institution and Connie begins to struggle in the closed claustrophobic world. Then there’s a storm and all the power goes down which means the locks on the doors open.

 

I struggled a bit with the first chapter as I found Connie speaking to Tara’s corpse toe-curling but I’m so glad I carried on. Fields has delivered both a thriller and Whodunnit where the tension never lets up. Connie doesn’t know who to trust and nor will the reader as there are more twists and turns than in a bowl of spaghetti. A right riveting read.

Review 

 

Someone Else's Shoes

Jojo Moyes

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

26/2/23

 

From The Prince and The Pauper to Trading Places, the ‘life swap’ has always been a popular fictional theme. In Someone Else’s Shoes Jojo Moyes reimagines the classic plot in modern London.

 

Sam is a very put upon woman. She has a stressful full-time job, demanding aging parents, an unemployed husband suffering from depression who does nothing – not even letting their elderly dog out for a wee when he needs one (or cleaning up the mess) and a teenage daughter. Her new boss is a bully who is determined to make her working hours difficult.

 

By contrast New Yorker Nisha is rich beyond measure and even more entitled. Their lives intersect briefly at a gym. Sam, in a hurry, grabs Nisha’s bag on the way out. By the time she realises her mistake she has no option but to wear Nisha’s Chanel jacket and red Louboutin heels to a series of business meetings that day. The expensive designer shoes make dowdy Sam feel confident and they garner respect from clients.

 

Nisha has a driver, so she leaves the gym in a bathrobe. When she gets back to the fancy hotel where she’s staying in the Penthouse, she is locked out. Her ruthless husband’s security serve her with divorce papers, and she’s not allowed to retrieve her clothes. All her cards have been cancelled and she is left wandering around London in gym flip flops with only her rapidly dying mobile phone for company.

 

 

This is a modern day feel-good fairy tale and all the more satisfying for it, because, unlike real life everyone gets what’s coming to them. What is very authentic though is the portrait of middle-aged women and the bonds that tie them regardless of social status or nationality.  I can almost guarantee the Epilogue will make you cheer.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/jojo-moyess-feel-good-life-swap-tale-of-walking-in-another-womans-louboutins-42358252.html

 

 

Tabloids, Scandal, News of the World, Thackery, Vanity Fair
Becky by Sarah May

 

Review 

 

Becky

Sarah May

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

12/2/23

 

Vanity Fair, despite being published in mid-1800s, is a surprisingly modern book. Given the social mores of the time author Thackeray managed to make his anti-hero, Becky Sharp, a ‘bad woman’, into a character that everyone roots for. Thackeray’s Becky, an orphan, having no family, no money and as a female, no power, has no option but to manipulate her way into a safe, settled position by any means necessary.

In Sarah May’s retelling, teenager Becky, after a brief stint as a nanny for the media mogul Pitt Crawley, begins working in the febrile atmosphere of 90s tabloid journalism. May follows her unstoppable rise from the typing pool of The Mercury newspaper to CEO of the parent company in just under two decades.

Becky is from a disadvantaged background and her first ‘fake news’ story is herself – a carefully curated fiction in order to get ahead in a sexist and somewhat classist industry. She remarks that when she does tell the truth “people are far more likely to doubt it than when I lie.” Her first rebranding is her own name – insisting on Rebecca, which ties in nicely to the plot.

Much of the story comes from recent history – royal scandals, the disappearance of a teenage girl and the eventual discovery of her brutal murder, the tabloid campaign against paedophiles, historical child abuse cover-ups and phone hacking. The only thing missing is where an old man gets a pie thrown in his face.

 

It’s an unfortunate irony that the novel Becky, like its heroine, is attempting to be something it is not. Vanity Fair remains a masterclass in storytelling and Becky while a very good read pales in comparison to the original which is a shame. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/sarah-mays-becky-is-much-less-sharp-than-in-thackerays-vanity-fair-42336729.html

 

 

 

Review 

 

really good, actually

Monica Heisey

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

29/01/23

 

Fans of Dr Who will know that Time Lords live for thousands of years, but routinely have to regenerate into a new physical body.

 

While reading ‘really good, actually’ I felt as though the legendary Bridget Jones had regenerated into Maggie, a newly single 28-year-old living in Canada, and I mean that as the highest of compliments as this is one of the most enjoyable, smart, observant, honest and funny books I’ve read in recent years.

 

Maggie is getting divorced and is living completely on her own for the first time ever – her ex, who she started dating aged 19, took the cat. “I wasn’t making some grand comeback to single life, this was my debut.” Maggie thinks she is handling things very well (hence the title), she downloads all the dating apps and has copious sex with both men and women, she has a hobby of ‘having hobbies’ (for “void-avoidance) and fills her time going to free introductory classes.

 

Thanks to technology there are now several outlets for making a holy show of yourself and Maggie avails herself of all of them – social media, texts, emails, WhatsApp. What Maggie sees as liberation her friends and family view as a breakdown.

 

‘Really good, actually’, accurately portrays life for modern young women who have to present so many faces to the world. With a less talented author this could be grim, exhausting, and cliché-ridden but Heisey is a wonderful writer with a distinctive wit and the novel grabs you from the very first sentence and does not let go. The end is a surprise and a glorious one.  

 

This isn’t just a book for young women either because as Maggie says, “not everyone is divorced but everyone has had their heart broken.”  Treat yourself. 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/witty-debut-on-having-your-heart-broken-echoes-the-best-of-bridget-jones-42316548.html

Revenge, Sex, Murder, Crime
Pretty Evil by Zoe Rosi

 

Review 

 

Pretty Evil

Zoe Rosi

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

22/01/23

 

“Violence is never the answer”, is a sentence that most of us have trotted out frequently. Yet, who hasn’t secretly thought “good” when hearing about a bit of rough justice being meted out to a violent sex offender or murderer inside the prison walls?  If you haven’t, read no further, as Pretty Evil is a revenge fantasy about ‘bad men’ being punished for their crimes agains women. 

Camilla Black is the revered editor of a top fashion magazine – think Anna Wintour-type power and influence. (That is where all comparisons with Wintour end). She has it all, the top job, the wardrobe, the money, a fabulous Mayfair flat and sex on tap.

 

Black is also a relentless serial killer. She hunts down abusive men and gruesomely murders them. “Nothing’s more fun than playing a player at their own game. Drugging the druggers. Abusing abusers. Controlling controllers.” Camilla considers her actions a public service, and there are plenty of readers (mostly female I imagine) who will agree with her.

 

Camilla decided to enact her own version of justice having been violently abused as a child. Despite reporting it, her abuser was found not guilty in court and walked out a free man. She was labelled a liar.

 

Nobody has any idea that the famous fashion editor has a very guilty secret, except for Detective Chief Inspector Glen Wheelan who is determined to prove his suspicions about her.

 

 

Alongside the violence there is a great deal of sex which has led to Pretty Evil being compared to Fifty Shades of Grey. I think the comparison is unfair as Zoe Rosi’s sex scenes are actually sexy. I hesitate to say this is a fun read but vicariously punishing predators via Camilla has its merits and I certainly enjoyed it.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/magazine-editor-by-day-avenging-angel-by-night-pretty-evil-is-a-sexy-potboiler-42303373.html

Marian Keyes. Ian Rankin, Alex Marwood. JK Rowling, Jo Spain Crime
Jo Spain author of The Last to Disappear

 

The Sunday Independent

Critic's Choice 2022

 

Best Six Crime & Popular Fiction

 

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

04/12/22

 

2022 has been a vintage year for characters old and new.  Again, Rachel (Michael Joseph 22.40) brings back one of Marian Keyes most-loved characters twenty years on.  Keyes is always at her best when writing about the Walsh family and Again, Rachel is no exception.  The ‘happy ever after’ at the end of Rachel’s Holiday didn’t last - life got in the way.  This is a book that is utterly heart-breaking at times but also laugh out loud funny.

 

Ian Rankin’s Rebus is back in A Heart Full of Headstones (Orion 23.00) and readers are in for a shock as our favourite cop is now in the dock!  Rankin keeps us guessing, and second guessing as to why.  This is a must read for Rebus fans and includes not just his former protégée Siobhan Clarke and nemesis Ger Cafferty but also Malcolm Fox the man from the ‘Complaints’. 

 

The Ink Black Heart (Sphere 23.00), the long-awaited sixth book about detective duo, Cormorant Strike and Robin Ellacott, written by JK Rowling using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, is a real page-turner. While the plot focuses on the myriad of dangers social media and the internet have loosed upon society, the relationship between Robin and Strike continues to fascinate. 

 

An Irish woman writing Scandi-Crime sounds a bit odd but Jo Spain nails it in The Last to Disappear (Quercus 14.99).  Set in the fictional town of Koppe in Finland, Brit Alex Evans arrives to investigate the circumstances in which his wayward sister drowned. He discovers she’s not the first woman to come to harm.  Fans of Wisting and other Scandi dramas will love this book.

 

On the surface Alex Marwood’s, The Island of Lost Girls (Sphere 26.59) seems to be a thinly disguised version of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes against young women and girls.  It takes no stretch of the imagination to see the similarities between grotesquely fat and monstrously rich Matthew Meade and his daughter Tatiana, to Robert and Ghislaine Maxwell.  There’s also a Prince that everyone is keen to impress. Marwood however, goes beyond high end trafficking, and looks at the misogynistic culture that allows exploition to thrive. It’s grim but gripping.

 

On the flip-side Jane Fallon’s Just Got Real (Michael Joseph 20.99) is a funny romp about three middle-aged women who having been duped by the same man decide to enact their revenge.  Sometimes there’s a thin line between comedy and crime.

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/the-best-six-crime-and-popular-fiction-books-of-the-year-42193889.html

India Knight Darling Books Reading Writing Mitford
Darling by India Knight

 

 

Review

 

Darling

 

India Knight

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

27/11/22

 

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford is one of my favourite books so I approached India Knight’s modern retelling, Darling, with apprehension. The Radlett family, based on Mitford’s own, were, even by the standards of the early part of the 20th century, wildly eccentric. Updating them seemed unlikely.

I’m delighted to admit that I was entirely wrong. While sticking closely to the original plot and characters Knight manages to shift them easily in the modern world. The story is narrated by Franny, the daughter of ‘The Bolter’ (she ‘bolts’ from relationship to relationship) who has been reared and home-schooled at Alconleigh the home of Uncle Matthew and Aunt Sadie and their four unconventional children.

Uncle Matthew is now a retired rock star who has decided to raise his family in a deserted area of Norfolk to avoid the excesses of modern life. Like the original he is “a man of violent passions, and explosive, random-seeming dislikes and prejudices,”. The list of his dislikes goes on for three pages and includes ‘wellness’ and he wonders “why would I take advice from posh girls with eating disorders?”. In a book that’s full of great quips and hilarious lines he gets all the best ones.

While the Radlett parents feature heavily throughout, Darling is the story of their second daughter, the beautiful and charismatic Linda. Franny, the same age as Linda, absolutely adores her cousin (everyone does) and details Linda’s quest for romantic love.   In the original book neighbour Lord Merlin was fabulously rich and debauched, now he’s simply Merlin a very rich and famous fashion designer who exudes a ‘dark glamour’. He introduces the naive and unworldly Linda to glitzy society in London.

After a brief career as a model and recreational drug user, Linda rushes into marriage with the ridiculously rich son of a right wing captain of industry. Her second union is with posh Eton-educated Christian Talbot a little known writer who likes to pose as working class and left-wing. “He had no interest in ordinary life… or about subjects that weren’t politics, mistreated animals or Christian Talbot.” Between marriages Linda falls in love with Ballymaloe Cookery School and Barry’s Tea.

Knight has managed the impossible, kept true to the original story while wonderfully satirising our modern world. It’s a testament to the power of Knight’s words that even though I knew how the story ended it still hit me like a brick to the face.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/ballymaloe-cookery-school-and-barrys-tea-feature-in-india-knights-modern-day-mitfords-romp-42174511.html

Review

 

Cat Lady

 

Dawn O'Porter

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

20/11/22

                                               

 

 

 

Mia is the Cat Lady of the title. She has the perfect life, a job she loves, a husband, lovely home  and a sixteen year old cat called Pigeon who she adores. And yet…. In the first chapter Mia goes to a self-help group for people who are grieving for dead pets. The participants seem to have come from ‘Stereotypes R Us’ – a bald tattooed angry man, a, I kid you not, ‘jolly’ black lady, a Cat Lady from central casting and an Insta-ready beautiful young Asian woman.  O’Porter apparently recognises this herself when later in the novel it transpires that the Instagram Gal was an undercover reporter. Her hit piece in a daily newspaper notes, “If the cast of characters were in a novel, the author would have leaned too comfortably on the stereotype.” 

 

In chapter two Vegan Mia prepares steaks for a dinner party with her husband’s friends – two couples and his ex-wife Belinda. (Belinda is an almost constant presence in Mia’s home). They are all gargoyles with no redeeming characteristics at all. The conversation revolves around Mia’s cat and her veganism both of which they all disapprove of. Mia has been married seven years and they’re still at this?

 

Mia works for a small jewellery company named after the owner Isabella May – a former It Girl and socialite whose business survives on regular handouts from her superrich father. Isabella is a narcissistic nightmare. Now if Mia was a timid 28 year old with low self-esteem the fact that she would put up with some of these people (including her wimpy husband Tristan), might make some sense. Instead, Mia is a successful self-contained woman of 45 so none of it rings true.

 

Midway through the novel Mia’s life implodes and she loses her husband, her home, and her job in one day.  And to be fair things do pick up a bit as Mia stumbles from one ‘comic’ set piece to another (just don’t expect any internal logic in her actions).  When the reader is finally appraised of the reason why Pigeon the cat has such inflated importance in Mia’s life it makes sense and feels real and relatable.  Unfortunately, it’s too little too late. There are the seeds of a decent story in Cat Lady but sadly they are smothered under too much fertiliser.     

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/dawn-oporters-cliched-cat-caper-fails-to-captivate-42154633.html

Royal Family, The Crown, House of Windsor, Queen, King Charles, Meghan Markle
Valentine Low, author of Courtieres

REVIEW

 

 

 

Courtiers 

 

Valentine Low

 

The Sunday Independent  

                                                               06/11/2022

 

When I hear the word ‘Courtier’ my mind goes to two places – the Tudor Court as portrayed by Hilary Mantel in the book Wolf Hall, and that of Queen Anne as seen in The Favourite. I think of bejewelled aristocrats, backbiting and backstabbing, jostling for position and power.  ‘Courtier’ conjures up an image of people in colourful costume and not the ‘men in grey suits’ so loathed by the late Princess Diana. What Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown reveals is that while the flunkey’s flounces and frills are now sober suits, the nature of the court remains the same.

 

Author, Valentine Low, whisks the reader through a head-dizzying number of courtiers during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II (the book was written shortly before her death). 

 

There are a huge number of court attendants and Low explains the various roles of Equerry, Private Secretary, Personal Secretary and various deputies and media managers. He also takes us through the parade of people who have filled these roles for the Queen, Prince Charles, William, Harry, and Prince Andrew.  Each royal household has their own staff and often those staff are sometimes both at war with each other and all the other households.

 

I was more interested in the ‘principals’ (the royal at the head of a household) and there’s plenty of insight into Charles, Andrew, William, Harry and of course, Meghan.  Low was the journalist who broke the story about Meghan allegedly bullying staff.  Some might expect his view of the Duchess of Sussex to be slightly slanted but when he analyses the notorious Oprah interview he gives a more than fair account.  “Some of it is simply not true. That does not mean, however, that all of it is not true.”

 

‘Megxit’ (Harry and Meghan’s dramatic exit from the Royal Family) isn’t the only crisis the Royal Family have faced in recent years and Low details the courtiers’ efforts to resolve and defuse various scandals. One of the most interesting, (and from a journalist’s perspective shocking), parts of the book are the details around the disastrous interview Prince Andrew gave to Emily Maitlis when he made the claim that he doesn’t sweat. 

 

There is nothing in Courtiers that wasn’t already in the public domain but Low is a great  storyteller. He manages to explain the machinery of Court, which isn’t easy and could have been very tedious, extremely well and delivers a truly entertaining read.   

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/backstabbing-and-betrayal-of-britains-royal-court-is-laid-bare-42119531.html

Horror. Myth, Dogs, Cujo, Wizard of Oz, Hunger Games
Fairy Tale by Stephen King

REVIEW

 

 

 

Fairy Tale

 

Stephen King 

 

The Sunday Independent  

                                                               09/10/2022

 

The familiar fairy tales we grew up with are sanitised versions of folk tales which did not always end happily ever after and functioned as a combination of social commentary and warning. These days we’ve got horror and crime fiction, and Netflix documentaries.

Stephen King’s Fairy Tale is a mixture of all of the above with the plot incorporating the past and present, the material and the mythical.

The first part is about the all-too-real world of Charlie Reade, a boy whose mother was killed in a tragic accident and whose father succumbed to alcoholism. But Charlie’s father finds AA, stops drinking, and their life improves exponentially.

While King is a master of spine-tingling supernatural scares, and there’s plenty here, he knows that human beings can be as bad, if not worse, than ‘monsters’.

He refers to and incorporates a plethora of well-known tales and modern horror – everything from the Bates Motel to the Hunger Games, Rumpelstiltskin, and the Emerald City of Oz.

 

There are plenty of knowing winks to the reader and he even throws in a reference to his own creation, the deranged dog Cujo. King is at his very best writing dogs and Radar, Charlie’s companion as he battles evil, is exceptionally well portrayed.

Charlie is a remarkably likeable hero and although he is unusually mature and responsible for his 17 years, his backstory make his qualities credible. King’s fans will love this unquestioningly and I’d happily recommend it to anyone who likes a good read.

The middle section is slightly long but overall, it’s still a page-turner. Ultimately Fairy Tale is an allegory about modern America and the death of the Dream, and therein lies real terror and the uncertainty of a ‘happily ever after’.

‘Fairy Tale’, Stephen King, Hodder & Stoughton, €17.99

 

ndependent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/stephen-kings-fairy-tale-serves-up-a-grim-fantasy-that-proves-all-too-real-42048282.html

Trinny and Susannah, Susannah Constantine, The Queen, Princess Margaret
Susannah Constantine, Ready for Absolutely Nothing

REVIEW

 

 

 

Ready for Absolutely Nothing

 

Susannah Constantine 

 

The Sunday Independent  

                                                               0210/2022

 

Most people will know Constantine as one half of the TV and writing duo “Trinny and Susannah” but I was in the States when What Not To Wear was broadcast so opened her memoir Ready for Absolutely Nothing knowing very little about the author. And gosh, there is quite a lot to know.

 

Constantine had a privileged upbringing, dividing her time between the family’s house in London and what they considered their home, a large house on the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. Her parents sound like they’ve stepped out of the pages of a Nancy Mitford book but information about them is non-linear and piecemeal, which is both frustrating and confusing.  

 

Constantine’s first boyfriend was (the then) Viscount David Linley, the Queen’s nephew. By the time she met David, her own mother had succumbed to mental illness and alcoholism and Princess Margaret, contrary to her public image, was a warm and maternal presence in her life. After her long relationship with Linley ended Constantine spent 18 months with Imran Khan, knowing it was never going to last. She’s now been happily married to Sten Bertelsen for 27 years and the couple have three children.

 

On the surface, and indeed in fact, Constantine led a charmed life.  She moved in elite circles, was one of the original Sloane Rangers and something of an ‘It Girl’. Her career in fashion happened rather than being planned.  Oddly, Trinny, a friend long before they were famous, is hardly mentioned, but she is spoken of fondly.   

 

While there are plenty of genuinely hilarious anecdotes about posh people, royals, stars and celebrities, the real meat of the memoir is in the darker side of the author’s life. Despite being the daughter of an alcoholic, Constantine spent years denying to herself that she too had an issue. ‘‘I wasn’t a violent, angry or depressive drunk so you could argue it didn’t matter.  (But), while everyone else was being their true selves, I was impersonating someone else, and my friends and family were having a relationship with that person rather than me. …I was there physically but not emotionally. My drinking was the worst of me.”

 

It was only when a friend said they could not be around her when she was drinking that Constantine’s denial was shattered.  “I think I hated myself so much I poured my energies into getting others to like me. I wanted to be …. Unique… Special, but there is nothing unique or special about alcoholism.”

 

 

I enjoyed Ready for Absolutely Nothing as Constantine is very amusing and a genuinely good writer, with a brilliant turn of phrase and the insider gossip is superb. While she’s very self-aware, this is the opposite of a ‘poor little rich girl’ whinge, I think she’s a smarter and a better writer than she gives herself credit for. Old habits die hard and, while she’s unsparingly honest, I wish she had trusted herself to not need the reader to like her and just let rip.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/susannah-constantines-witty-memoir-is-big-on-gossip-but-fails-to-bare-all-42030028.html

REVIEW

 

 

Rowling, trolling and the net’s heart of darkness in

The Ink Black Heart

The Sunday Independent  

 

                                                                               02/09/2022

 

The Ink Black Heart is the sixth novel featuring the detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott written by J.K. Rowling using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

 

The action starts where it left off at the end of the book number five, Troubled Blood, with Robin and Strike, both single, on the verge of finally admitting their feelings for each other. But first there’s a new case to investigate – a double stabbing which has resulted in the death of Edie Ledwell and has left her ex-boyfriend Josh Blay critically ill.

 

Edie and Josh created the successful Ink Black Heart animated series and were attacked in the same secluded spot of Highgate Cemetery where they initially came up with the ideas for the cartoon.

 

For years prior to her death Edie had been the target of online trolls and a campaign of abuse. As Robin observes “they’re mostly focused on criticising Ledwell for being racist and ableist and… well, pretty much every “ist” and “phobic” you can think of.” (Fans of Rowling will know that she is writing this from experience).

 

Much of the trolling is done by ‘Anomie’ a super-fan who created online Drek’s Game (based on the cartoon) along with another fan ‘Morehouse’. The game is free but there is a strict rule that players cannot break anonymity or try to contact each other in real life.

 

The attack on Edie and Josh occurred just as they were about to sign with a film company, and it is the movie executives who hire Robin and Strike to unmask Anomie who is agitating online against the film adaptation.

 

There’s a wide array of suspects. Drek’s Game has eight moderators and then there’s the original voice cast of the cartoon, many of whom have a grudge against Edie. One of them shuns her publicly saying some of her views were ‘problematic’. There’s Josh’s bitter and manipulative ex Kea, who claims Edie stole her ideas and all the residents of the arts commune where Josh and Edie lived at the time they began the cartoon.

 

On top of that, it appears that a far-right group, the Odinists (and I imagine the similarity to Onanists is quite deliberate on Rowling’s part), have infiltrated Drek’s Game.

 

 

Rowling just gets better with every book and The Ink Black Heart while Dickensian in both scope and delivery is still a tightly executed engrossing murder mystery.

 

No doubt future historians will reference it as a valuable snapshot of pre-Covid London and the odd hybrid of real and virtual life most of us live in 2022. Ironically I was so immersed in the story that I resented real life every time it intruded on my reading.  And it kept me off Twitter for days!

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/rowling-trolling-and-the-nets-heart-of-darkness-in-the-ink-black-heart-41956521.html

REVIEW

 

 

Jack Jewer

The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

31/07/2022

 

Debuts don’t come better than The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys by Jack Jewer.  Leaving aside the historical elements and the fact that Pepys was a real person, this is a page-turning crime thriller. Pepys is a man moving up, but the Restoration Court is fraught by factions and conspiracies.  It’s 1669 and Pepys, with his former servant and now friend, Will, is dispatched to Portsmouth to investigate Royal Navy finances and the murder of the last man sent to find the missing money.

 

As his investigations begin things become complicated.  The navy are not cooperative, an attempt is made on his life, and he quickly realises that he cannot trust anyone. All of this is set against the background of the threat of imminent war with the Dutch.  Pepys personal life is faring no better.  His wife has left him because of his repeated infidelities, someone has discovered a damaging document from his youth that could get him hanged for treason and he’s suffering from severe pain and blood in his urine. 

 

The latter turns out to be massive kidney stones and in the middle of his various investigations he undergoes the most gruesome surgery imaginable – without the aid of an anaesthetic.  I had to unclench every part of my body after reading it, men this is your ‘Trigger Warning’. 

 

Pepys is a flawed hero.  He’s sexually incontinent, (the book opens with him fleeing a burning brothel), a tad pompous, over-sensitive and a wimp.  Yet, he’s also sympathetic, brave and wants to do the right thing.

 

Apart from the odd Queen, historically women were largely ignored.  Jewer takes time to include the voices and perspective of females.  Seventeenth century women lived in constant fear of male violence both in their homes and in the streets with little official protection.  Enter proto-Feminist Lady Charlotte de Vere and her very literal take on empowering women. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but I really approve of her methods. I’m sure many other women will too.

 

 

Jewer, like the best historical novelists, has done his research.  He recreates the world of 1669 in a vivid, realistic, and natural way.  Fashions change, slang changes (the men in the book frequently refer to their ‘cods’) but people remain the same and Jewer’s characters are as relevant today as they were 300 years ago.

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/samuel-pepys-at-the-heart-of-murder-and-intrigue-in-jack-jewers-gripping-restoration-yarn-41879279.html

REVIEW

 

 

Jemma Wayne

When I Close My Eyes

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

01/05/2022

 

This novel is proper old-school Grip Lit.  The opening chapter is a masterclass in exposition without obviousness.  All the information the reader needs to know is revealed without the flow of the writing being interrupted.  Wayne moves easily between past and present as Lilith, the main character sets the scene.  

 

Lilith, once an awkward teen from Marlow, is living the dream in LA. She is fabulously rich, has her own TV show which she writes, directs, and produces. She runs along the beach and goes to yoga before work.  She’s been with handsome and lovely Patrick for four years. Everything in her life is fantastic.  Well not everything.  Despite the length of her relationship with Patrick she refuses to spend the night with him, or to let him stay over at her home.

 

As a child Lilith began walking in her sleep and developed OCD as a result.  She blamed her name ‘Lilith’ and feared she was predestined to be a vengeful creature of the night. She changed to Lil and began obsessively performing rituals to try to prevent herself from doing harm. The reader knows that some terrible incident happened in her teens and her rule for sleeping alone has freed her from obsession, sleepwalking and the unrelenting fear of doing something horrific while unconscious.  She’s so free from anxiety she’s reverted to Lilith and the “feminist accounting of my name… powerful woman; not demon.”

 

Lilith’s perfect life is upended when Cassius, her best pal from her teens and sometime boyfriend arrives at her door late one night with his three-year-old daughter Jessie.  Despite their former close relationship, she hasn’t seen Cassius (the handsome rich golden boy at school) for a decade.  He’s now widowed.

 

Despite her rule she lets Cassius and Jessie move in with her and almost immediately she begins to sleepwalk again. And something dreadful does happen.  While Lilith risks everything for her friend, the canny reader will see the clues that she fails to. Of the two twists I did not see one coming at all. A real page turner. 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/dream-life-descends-into-a-nightmare-in-the-gripping-when-i-close-my-eyes-41600650.html

Books, reading, writing. novels,
The Club by Ellory Lloyd

REVIEW

 

 

Ellory Lloyd

The Club

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

21/03/2022

 

The Club is just the sort of book the world needs now – a diverting reminder of a much simpler time.

 

The club in question is the Home group. A select members only institution for the very special few with not just the money for the fees but who are ‘cool’. Ned Groom, the man who created Home, is celebrating the 25 years since he opened his first club in Covent Garden.  Since then, he has opened increasingly more opulent Homes around the world culminating with the launch of Island Home – an entire island off the coast of Sussex.

 

On the first night of the launch only a handful of stars are invited for dinner with Ned and the team he’s had with him for the last quarter century,  loyal PA Nikki, membership manager Annie, and younger brother Adam Groom.  The dinner guests are actor Jackson Crane, “so famous that it was quite hard to imagine a time when you did not know who they were”,  younger actress wife Georgia, former boyband sensation turned talk show host Freddie Hunter, artist Keith Little and Kurt Cox, an up-and-coming young film director, the son of a much-beloved Hollywood couple. Unfortunately for his guests Ned Groom has a few surprises that they won’t like.

 

 

The story unfolds from the perspective of Annie, Jess the last-minute hire as head of housekeeping, Nikki and Adam. All of these narratives are joined together by excerpts from a Vanity Fair article called Murder on the Island. The plot unfolds gradually – we know from the start that there is a murder, but we don’t know who. Equally, motives emerge gradually as more than one person has reason to want revenge. 

 

 

The Club combines the best of Grip Lit and the glamorous blockbuster world of the late Jackie Collins.  The authors (Ellery Lloyd is a writing duo) have a clear-eyed view of fame and celebrity and they know how to tell a cracking good story.   

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/playing-it-cool-in-ellery-lloyds-hotbed-of-celebrity-suspense-41463367.html

Books, reading, writing. novels,
The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith

 

REVIEW

 

 

Jennifer E. Smith

The Unsinkable Greta James

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

06/03/2022

 

Greta James is in her early 30s and a rock star. Having spent her 20s plugging away at small “indie” gigs, she finally arrived a few years ago and has been living out her long-cherished dream. When her mother dies suddenly, while Greta is on tour, she is at first numb. When she returns to the stage, attempting to sing a song written for her mother, she is pole-axed by grief and breaks down on stage. The footage goes viral, and Greta stops performing, worrying that her career is over.

 

A few months later Greta’s brother guilt-trips her into taking her mum’s place on a cruise around Alaska with her dad, Conrad, and two other couples. Greta’s relationship with her father has been difficult since she was in her teens and is not improved by the fact that her breakthrough hit ‘Told You So’ was a verbal two fingers to Conrad.

 

Author Jennifer E Smith has written many books for younger readers, and it’s hard to believe this is her first foray into adult fiction as it’s so accomplished. The novel, despite having a rock star as its central character, is wholly based in reality. The characters and relationships are all very authentic. The action happens mostly over the week of the cruise and Smith makes every word count.

 

Conrad, who grew up poor, worries that Greta is not financially secure or in a stable relationship. He would prefer if his daughter had a steady job, a spouse and three children, like her brother. When her mum was still alive she was able to intervene between the two, but now they struggle to communicate.

 

Then there is an unexpected holiday romance with Ben, a handsome but nerdy professor who is on board giving lectures about the great love of his life – Jack London and his adventure novel The Call of the Wild. While the pair ostensibly have nothing in common (Ben has to google Greta to find out who she is), they are both equally passionate about their work. Ben is separated from his wife but is still a very present father to his two young kids.

 

The father/daughter relationship is central to this book. Most readers will identify with the complicated relationship all adults have with their parents – even if it is not as fraught as the one Greta has with her dad. And, while loss and grief are central themes, this is a genuinely lovely book. It’s charming, funny, diverting and a cracking good story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/the-unsinkable-greta-james-a-warm-hearted-story-on-a-cold-alaskan-sea-41410953.html

REVIEW

 

 

Jodi Picoult

Wish You Were Here

 

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

02/01/2022

 

Diana is 29 years old, and her meticulously planned life is perfect. She has the job she always wanted in Sotheby’s New York and is on the verge of promotion thanks to being hand-picked by Kitomi Ito to sell her famous Toulouse-Lautrec painting, a wedding present from her famous musician husband Sam Pride. (A very thinly disguised John & Yoko).

 

Diana lives with her boyfriend Finn, a junior doctor in a busy hospital. They are about to go on the ‘holiday of a lifetime’ to the Galapagos Islands that they have saved for years for. She knows he is going to propose as she accidentally found the ring.

 

Then Covid happens. Finn has his leave cancelled and tells Diana she should still go without him. Diana arrives on the main island of Isabela just as the island shuts down for two weeks quarantine and everything, including her hotel, is shut.

A kindly old lady takes pity on her and offers her an apartment. The internet/phone only work sporadically so when Diana comes across a stash of postcards, she goes old school and starts writing cards to Finn.

 

While staying in the apartment Diana meets a young girl, who like her, has been abandoned by her mother, and her sexy moody Dad, Gabriel. Rather inevitably she starts to fall in love with Gabriel. Finn is not forgotten as occasionally an email he has sent pops up on her phone.

 

Picoult is at her very best bringing the magnificence of the Galapagos to life in all it’s strange and colourful glory. ‘In this (lagoon), the water is almost magenta, and in the centre a sandbar rises like an oasis. On it, a dozen flamingos stand folded like origami and they dip the heads into the pool to feed.”

 

The beauty and serenity of the island are juxtaposed with Finn’s descriptions of how Covid has affected New York. Each email is more despairing than the last as he and his colleagues struggle to try to treat the illness while watching their patients die. Finn is frustrated with the virtue signalling of lighting up the Empire State and banging pots and pans for carers. He is exasperated by “people who say (wearing) a mask is a gross infringement of their bodily rights…You don’t have any bodily rights when you’re dead.”

 

Halfway through the book Diana is caught in a rip tide, starts to drown and everything changes. I won’t reveal what happens because I don’t want to spoil it for readers.

 

A few hours after finishing Wish You Were Here I broke down in tears. The book triggered many hard memories as, like Diana, I had a parent with Alzheimer’s who died from Covid. Despite this I found her hard to warm to because of the way she treats Finn; she prioritises her inner world over his brutal reality of struggling with Covid and death daily.

 

Yet, this is a book worth reading, reminding us that our futures are not guaranteed or inevitable.

Best of Fiction 2021

 

 

The Echo Chamber

John Boyne

 

Normal Sheeple

 

Ross O'Carroll Kelly

 

Aisling and the City

 

 

Sarah Breen & Eimar McLysaght

 

The Man Who Died Twice

 

 

 

Richard Osman

 

Apples Never Fall

 

 

 

 

Liane Moriarty

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

05/12/2021

 

It’s become a truism that we live in times too strange and ridiculous for satire. Somebody should have told John Boyne. The Echo Chamber (Doubleday 13.99) is a brilliant parody of virtue-signalling, social media saints, and cancellations. Boyne takes no prisoners with his skewering of those who exhaust themselves trying to look as if they’re doing something good. I choked laughing.

 

Ross O’Carroll Kelly has been holding a mirror up to Irish society for two decades and in Normal Sheeple (Sandycove 9.80) his father CO’CK is the (Trumpian) Taoiseach. Sorcha is now a minster and hopes to outlaw cattle and sheep farming to stop global warming.  Ross is as laugh out loud funny as ever, but age is catching up with him. In the entire book he only cheats on Sorcha once and manages not to kill any animals despite the streets of Dublin being overrun with cows, sheep, and angry farmers. 

 

Aisling, created by authors Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, has also become a staple of Irish life. In book four, Aisling and the City (Gill Books 11.99), our girl takes a swish job in New York. I took the same journey in my mid-20s, and Aisling’s New York is (mostly) spot on. (The ‘Irish Mafia’ were called the ‘Murphia’ in my day.) Aisling is a nice, sensible girl but she is gut-bustingly hilarious. I may not be the target audience for her antics, but I adore her.  Be warned, it ends on some cliff-hanger.

 

From the young to the old.  Richard Osman’s four elderly detectives are back in The Man Who Died Twice, (Viking 8.99),  the sequel to the hugely successful The Thursday Murder Club and are as entertaining as ever. The formidable Elizabeth receives a letter from a dead man and before you know it the fearsome foursome are involved with dodgy diamonds, the Mafia, MI6 and most terrifyingly, local thugs. Osman’s wit, charm and kindness are ingrained in every page.

 

 

Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall (Michael Joseph 28.00) also features elderly people and the difficulties they face retiring after a very active and busy life. I am a huge fan of Liane Moriarty who with every book outdoes herself and this is her best yet. I could write a thesis on the many layers there are to this novel. There is not a word wasted, everything no matter how casual or throwaway, matters. I could not put it down.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/books-of-the-year-our-critics-pick-their-top-titles-to-make-your-christmas-stocking-shopping-easier-41119637.html#

 

Stephen King, books, reading, writing, thriller, horror, sci-fi,
Billy Summers by Stephen King

REVIEW

 

 

Billy Summers

Stephen King

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

12/09/2021

 

There can be no doubt that Stephen King is one of the most talented storytellers alive. Few others can create sinister characters, suspense and supernatural eeriness like King. While there are a few disturbing characters in Billy Summers, all the evil is provided by human beings, making the novel a horror story but not a supernatural one.

The titular Billy is an ex-marine sniper who now makes his money as a top assassin, but he only shoots “bad guys”. Despite being reared by a neglectful mother in a trailer park, before being put in a group home, Billy spends the opening chapter musing on Emile Zola. As opening chapters go, it’s not exactly riveting.

When the novel gets going, though it’s a good read, Billy, using a false name and posing as a novelist, moves into a rented house and, rather hilariously, rents an office to write his book. (I know many successful writers who don’t have an office outside of their home, the idea that someone writing their first book could afford one with a reception area is risible.)

Billy makes friends with all his neighbours at the house and various people who work in his office building.

Halfway through the novel, he assassinates his target and disappears into a new fake identity. Despite wearing a physical disguise and living in the basement of a building in a less well-off part of town, Billy develops a ludicrously close relationship with a couple from another apartment.

Billy also rescues a young woman, Alice, who had been drugged and raped by three men, and dumped at the side of the road. Later he enacts revenge on the three and, I can’t lie, I enjoyed that part very much.

When Billy does not get paid for the hit job and realises that Nick, who hired him, was planning on killing him after the job was done, he decides to kill him. He and Alice set off together on a road trip to find him. Then there’s a big twist – a twist that should have worked but, for me, fell flat.

The novel feels like three different stories roughly wedged together and connected only by Billy. Then there’s Billy’s story, which he actually writes while posing as an author, with plenty of detail about his time as a sniper in Afghanistan, which is genuinely riveting.

Nonetheless Billy Summers is for diehard King fans only.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/stephen-kings-good-guy-shooter-is-in-trouble-40838306.html

 

Paula Hawkins Girl on the Train books reading writing
A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins

REVIEW

 

 

A Slow Burning Fire

Paula Hawkins

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

22/09/2021

 

Hands up, I was one of the few people who did not love Paula Hawkins bestselling debut The Girl on the Train. Her new book, A Slow Burning Fire is far more my thing – an old-school psychological thriller about slightly odd people.

 

There’s no ‘unreliable narrator’ in this book, instead there are five who are all too self-aware. Elderly lady Irene shared a great love of books with her next-door neighbour Angela, both of them having a preference for PD James and Ruth Rendell and the influence of both venerable writers  clear to see in a story where disparate characters’ lives intersect, often with dire consequences.

 

As the story kicks off Angela has been dead some weeks, having fallen down her own stairs. Nearby, on Regents Canal ‘hobbit’-like book-lover Miriam, an overweight, unattractive middle-aged lady, who resides permanently on a canal boat, gets a bit twitchy about the boat in the berth next door overstaying his allotted time. Going aboard to tell him she instead finds the young man dead, gruesomely murdered. The murder victim is Daniel, the only child of the recently deceased Angela.

 

Daniel’s only surviving relatives are his aunt Carla (Angela’s sister) and his uncle Theo, Carla’s husband who she lives apart from. Rounding up the cast of characters is ‘Mad Laura’ a very damaged young woman who runs errands for Irene and having met Daniel at his mother’s house hooks up with him on the boat for sex. They row, it becomes physical, and Laura becomes the prime suspect.

 

Prior to their respective deaths Daniel and Angela had been estranged from Theo and Carla. The couple’s only child, Ben, died as the result of an accident while in Angela’s care. Theo blames alcoholic Angela for the loss of his beloved toddler and refuses to have anything to do with her again. And then there’s Theo’s bestseller, The One That Got Away, excerpts of which appear within the pages of A Slow Fire Burning. The novel, originally published under a pseudonym was famed for seeing the point of view of all the characters and even making a murdering rapist sympathetic. Unfortunately for Theo Miriam claims that his famous book is in fact a plagiarised version of her memoir.

 

Like Theo, Hawkins gives all of the characters reasons for the readers to feel sympathetic. Carla is a stuck-up madam, but she lost her baby in a horrific way. The death of his son ruined Theo. He could no longer write. His wife moved out. ‘Hobbit’ Miriam and ‘Mad Laura’ are well aware of their individual flaws. Both have horrific back stories and while the behaviour of both is unattractive and annoying their pasts play on the readers sympathies.

 

Irene is a normal 80-year-old who gets fed up with people stereotyping her just because she is old.

 

This is a proper page-turner and where it veers from Rendell and PD James is in the tone which isn’t constantly dark. Disinhibited Laura can be very funny sometimes even intentionally. I also loved the brief mention of online ‘Crowdfunding’ as ‘the kindness of hipsters’.

 

The twists are many and the first, which comes early on, made me laugh out loud. I could almost hear a laughing Hawkins saying “Got you!”

 

Monica McInerney The Godmothers Books Reading Writing
Monica McInerney Australia's Favourite Author

REVIEW

 

 

The Godmothers

Monica McInerney

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

17/01/2021

 

Monica McInerney is a very successful Aussie writer (voted Australia's favourite novelist four times in the last decade), who began her career in 2001 with A Taste for It - about an Australian chef called Maura travelling around Ireland. Her latest novel, The Godmothers, takes her back to our shores once again.

 

The Godmothers centres on Eliza, a buttoned-down, uptight 30-year-old who, in the space of a week, loses her job and her apartment in Melbourne.

 

The reasons for Eliza's control-freakery are very apparent. After a childhood with an erratic and unconventional, but loving, single mother, Jeannie, who dragged her from pillar to post, Eliza has played safe and spent her entire working life toiling for narcissistic nightmare Gillian, building up Gillian's business for no thanks and little reward.

 

Having no father, no siblings, grandparents or any other family, the only constants in Eliza's life have been her two godmothers, her mother's boarding school chums. Maxie is a famous actress who started out in Australian soaps and has become a British television institution.

Olivia is a pragmatic businesswoman whose (older) husband is in a care home with Alzheimer's. She has been left with the responsibility of running her husband's top-notch hotel in Edinburgh while trying to accommodate his two sons, Alex and Rory, and his late wife's mother, the demanding and demented Celine.

 

Eliza has no idea who her father is. Jeannie always promised she would tell her everything on her 18th birthday but she died shortly beforehand, leaving Eliza emotionally devastated.

 

After her life suddenly implodes, she decides, despite having developed a phobia of flying since her mother's death, that her godmothers' offer of a holiday in Edinburgh is one she can't refuse.

 

Making the long journey to Scotland is the first step to finally finding out who her father is. What she hasn't bargained for is that her godmothers, feeling parental towards her, have kept many of Jeannie's secrets and that her late mother wasn't quite the person that Eliza thought she was.

 

Eliza already knew that Jeannie was a creative storyteller but when some of her lies are exposed, she feels cheated.

 

"For 13 years. I've done nothing but try to be the best behaved person I can, to try to keep everything bad at bay, stop anything else terrible happening to me. But it was pointless, wasn't it? Because I was in the dark all that time. My life could have been so different."

 

Eliza is also shocked to discover that the godmothers don't know who her father is. The most likely suspect is an Irish man called Emmet whom her mother met in London and shared a house with in Australia. In between, Jeannie had worked in his family's pub in Ireland, in view of an ancient castle. With so many castles in Ireland, the search seems pointless until they get a clue courtesy of a Mel Gibson film. (The actor is "pocket-sized. It's all done with trick photography," according to gorgon Celine, who gets all the best lines. )

 

Eliza's physical and emotional journey changes her life. After 13 years of being shut down and cut off, she finally starts to live again. Surrounded by handsome men in Edinburgh, she even finds a bit of romance.

 

Readers will be delighted to hear that the Irish characters actually speak like real Irish people. McInerney perfectly captures the rhythm of speech and uses Irish-isms properly. The pacing is good throughout, letting readers enjoy the vivid scenery but not getting bogged down with extraneous details.

 

Being able to travel to Australia, Scotland, London and Ireland virtually, while we are stuck at home makes The Godmothers the perfect antidote to lockdown.

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/perfect-escapism-as-godmothers-make-an-offer-not-to-be-refused-39975888.html

Braywatch Ross O'Carroll Kelly
Braywatch Ross O'Carroll Kelly

The best books of 2020: Our critics select their picks of the year

The Sunday Independent  

 

06/12/2020

 

Popular fiction

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

 

This was the year when best-sellers went from being a guilty pleasure to an absolute necessity - escapism no longer being a luxury. Marian Keyes's great talent, apart from making readers laugh, has been to weave serious themes into her comic novels. Grown Ups (Michael Joseph, €14.24), her 16th, features another quirky family - the Caseys who each have their issues, but it is Cara's story of bulimia that keeps the pages turning. Eating disorders don't sound especially funny or escapist but in Keyes's capable hands, Cara's struggle is riveting.

 

Carmel Harrington's My Pear-Shaped Life (Harper Collins, €18.20) also takes on the issues around weight, fat-shaming and the multimillion-euro global diet and fitness industry. Greta Gale has always been the 'jolly fat girl' making herself the butt of the joke but the 30-year-old is also a struggling actress, trying to make her way in an industry that is obsessed with body image. Greta is addicted to sleeping pills and crashes her car. After rehab, she goes to the US in search of her favourite self-help guru and meets extremes of female bodies. Touching in some places, very funny in others.

 

Readers expecting Graham Norton's third novel Home Stretch (Coronet, €12.99) to provide riotous laughs may be disappointed. The novel which won the An Post Popular Fiction Book of the Year begins with a car crash on the eve of a wedding in 1987. The bride, groom and bridesmaid are killed while the bridesmaid's sister is left in a coma. Two young men walk away unscathed and the novel tracks their lives. There may be no gags, but Norton is brilliant at capturing life in a small town and the dialogue of those who live there. In the end, it's a story of hope, not defeat.

 

Finally, one of my perennial favourites - Ross O'Carroll Kelly stars in his 18th outing Braywatch (Penguin Ireland, €10.99). Once again, Paul Howard knocks it out of the pork, as Ross himself would say. Ross gets a job in Bray (of all places!) while his daughter Honor channels Greta Thunberg. The prologue, written well before the US elections, makes me wonder if Howard has access to a crystal ball. Waterproof mascara a must as you will howl laughing.

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/the-best-books-of-2020-our-critics-select-their-picks-of-the-year-39829402.html

REVIEW

 

 

The Dirty South

John Connolly

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

25/10/2020

 

Charlie Parker’s last outing A Book of Bones was a massive undertaking encompassing several different points of view and timelines, a number of different countries, countless periods in history and a vast cast of characters including more than a few ‘not of this world’. It was a masterpiece and fans wondered what John Connolly would, or even could, do to top it.

 

For The Dirty South Connolly has pared it all back, this is Charlie Parker unplugged. The book is set in 1997 when newly widowed Parker is on the hunt for the sadistic killer who murdered his wife and child. The plot is straightforward, linear and occurs over a few days.  There is only the merest whiff of the supernatural.

 

In his pursuit of the man who killed his family Parker passes through the small rural town of Cagill, Arkansas. Despite Clinton being in the White House the town is dying of poverty – the only thriving business is the illegal production of Crystal Meth. Three young black women have been killed and the county Sheriff Jurel Cade isn’t in any great hurry to find out who is responsible - as his family will make a lot of money in land sales if a proposed deal with a company called Kovas goes ahead.

 

The Cade family are a nasty bunch who will let nothing stand in the way of their ambitions. They aren’t the only ones who are prepared to look the other way if it means that Kovas will come to town.  Connolly’s books, whilst often dealing with the supernatural, have always shone a light on human nature and how corrupt it can be.  The local pastor is keen to see the town prosper so he can have a nice new church. Connolly highlights the hypocrisy that many ‘men of the cloth’ suffer from as the Pastor, a serial adulterer, blames Satan for his sins while congratulating himself for persevering “in his calling.”

 

As with all the Charlie Parker books Connolly throws in just enough humour to stop the bleakness becoming overwhelming such as describing an attorney as “wearing a smaller man’s suit, along with the kind of untrustworthy moustache that caused sensible folk to lay a protective hand on their wallets.” 

 

 

When the truth is eventually revealed it serves as reminder of the ‘banality of evil’. While the supernatural may scare us, John Connolly knows that there is little as terrifying as soured human nature.

 

https://www.independent.ie/life/connolly-takes-parker-back-to-the-start-in-pursuit-of-evil-39663845.html

 

REVIEW

 

 

How to Fall Apart

Liadan Hynes

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

15/06/2020

 

 

A decade ago, when my son was three, we started doing ‘Movie Night’ – watching films snuggled up in bed and eating sweets. Ten years on the snuggling and sweets are gone and have been replaced by Pizza - we even have a designated ‘Pizza Towel’ to lay over the bed as I’m so particular about my pristine white bed linen. I have never told anyone the details about Movie Night for fear of being judged, so I was thrilled to read in How to Fall Apart that Liadan Hynes does exactly the same thing with her little girl, including the pizza. (Not only do Hynes and her daughter cuddle up in the bed but her Dad and her brother often squish themselves in too.) 

 

Liadan Hynes did things ‘the right way’.  At 26 she met the man she subsequently married, had a child and by the time she was almost 40 Hynes found herself suddenly single, when her marriage failed. How to Fall Apart is an honest recounting of how she coped or didn’t in some instances.  Hynes’s marriage wasn’t ripped asunder by cheating or poor behaviour but rather petered out with both parties becoming uncomfortably aware that things were over. The parting was mutual, but even in these post-Gywnnie ‘Conscious Uncoupling’ times a breakup is never easy, especially when there is a child involved. As Hynes puts it “in the minefield of co-parenting, strewn with everything from the corpses of best intentions, to unexploded bombs of rage, how you intend things to go, is usually quite far from how they do go.”

 

Hynes is very honest about the fact that until the end of her marriage she’s had a fairly uneventful and happy life – that she never endured a major trauma and “it felt for a time as if my future had closed down… (it was) a place full of gaping holes caused by the thing I had lost.” To be fair to Hynes, even though she is sad and grieving the loss of her marriage (an gruelling process) she throws everything she can at coping with her new life as a mother, and non-wife.  She tries an exhausting list of, as she calls it herself, WooWoo – life coaching, therapy, yoga, crystals, (“a veritable entourage of healers and wise women that was positively Kardashian”) admitting that she was highly cynical about ‘wellness’ before her marriage ended.  

 

Some sense does come from the Woo as Hynes realises that while she cannot choose her fate, she can choose how she reacts to it.  Another lesson is the futility of comparing your own internal struggles to the exterior of other people’s lives. (Fronting isn’t just for Facebook).  How to Fall Apart isn’t really about the ending of a marriage but the beginning of a new life, that Hynes is determined to forge for herself and her daughter.  One of the strongest themes of the book is how the friendship and strength of other women – family and friends helped her through the worst and helped her celebrate the best.  Hynes’s has a number of really solid female friends and reading this it’s easy to see why as she comes across as a lovely person, the type who would inspire great love and loyalty.   

Ending a marriage and separating, whatever the reasons may be, is a massive trauma for anyone. Hynes’s Life Coach tells her that “Fear is everything. Fear is what blocks us. We can use other words – depression, anxiety, anger – but I use the blanket word of fear. Everything is fear.” Alongside fear there is deep grief, for what was, what could have been and what no longer will be.  Hynes’s endures profound heartache and an anger that she tries very hand to deny, because she’s not one of nature’s angry people. Despite this she has no option but to get on with things for the sake of her daughter, despite finding that “running (a home) on your own as a single parent can feel relentless.”

 

How to Fall Apart isn’t just an ordinary memoir but also a ‘self-help’ guide. Hynes has negotiated the emotional and practical difficulties of ‘starting over’ and generously mapped it for the next woman in the same position.  The chapters are all very short and the heading reflects exactly what is in each. They do not flow in a linear way and at first, I found the scattershot nature of the narrative difficult. However, as I read on, I realised that anyone just out of a relationship would probably find focus and concentration difficult and appreciate the method of being able to go straight to the bit they want to read.

 

Above all How to Fall Apart is one long love letter to Hynes’s little girl, and that’s beautiful.

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/wise-words-on-how-to-fall-apart-and-then-start-over-39283743.html

The Recovery of Rose Gold
The Recovery of Rose Gold

 

REVIEW

The Recovery of Rose Gold

Stephanie Wrobel

 

The Sunday Independent  

 

22/03/2020

 

Given the hype The Recovery of Rose Gold has had in publishing circles I was expected great things from this ‘literary suspense’ debut by Stephanie Wrobel. 

The premise is extremely promising.  Rose Gold Watt’s mother Patty is just out of jail where she spent five years for child abuse.

Patty suffers from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) a mental health condition that leads a caregiver, often a mother, to get positive attention by deliberately harming their child in order to make them seem ill. 

Patty had methodically poisoned her daughter for eighteen years ruining her health, her looks and her teeth.  Rose Gold is obsessed with getting her teeth fixed.

In the five years that Patty has been away Rose Gold has become a single parent herself and met the father she never knew she had. (He bursts into her life abruptly and departs in the same fashion). 

Rose Gold has also purchased her mother’s childhood home and invites Patty to come and live with her and the baby.  For reasons that are never addressed she has also painted a large eye on the ceiling downstairs.

Adult mother/daughter relationships are always fertile ground for writers and MSBP is gruesomely fascinating (as anyone old enough to remember the crimes of Beverly Allitt can attest to).

Despite the surfeit of possible material, The Recovery of Rose Gold falls flat. Rose Gold (the constant repetition of her name becomes very irritating) has no personality at all. It’s impossible for the reader to have any sympathy for a character who is so bland.

Within Patty there are the germs of a truly great character – she’s abrasive and grimly funny but she never gets beyond two dimensions. Patty’s motivations are never examined other than a by-the-numbers abusive childhood that’s referred to but never explored in depth. 

 

At the end there is an unexpected twist which explains a lot of earlier, seemingly pointless, plot, but it’s just too little too late.

 

https://www.independent.ie/life/stephanie-wrobels-recovery-is-a-gold-turkey-39062176.html

 

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, books, publishing, fiction
Fleishman Is in Trouble

REVIEW

 

 

Fleishman is in Trouble

Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Wildfire

 

 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

25 August 2019

 

Fleishman is in Trouble is a great novel, made extraordinary by the fact that it is author Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut.  Brodesser-Akner has arrived fully formed with her own unique style and voice.

 

On the surface the plot surrounds Toby Fleishman, recently liberated from a bad marriage to Rachel, and waiting for his divorce to be finalised.  Toby is a well respected doctor with a salary in six figures but it pales in comparison to that of Rachel, an agent, who runs her own company. Toby is adjusting to his single man status and finds his life empty - “everything stayed the same every day. Nothing moved”.  He finds solace in his dating app and the opportunity it gives him to have sex with countless women – a novelty for him as he was never a big hit with the ladies.

 

The story is narrated by his university friend Libby, a writer who worked for a men’s magazine before leaving to devote time to her children. “The hardest job there was was being a mother and having an actual job, with pants and a commuter train pass and pens and lipstick.”

 

Toby’s newly found bachelorhood is disrupted when Rachel vanishes.  Toby is left trying to juggle his two children Hannah 11 and Solly 9 along with his medical duties (and his dating app). Toby finds this less irksome than many men because in his relationship with the high-powered Rachel, he was, as his divorce lawyer tells him, ‘the wife’.

 

The first two thirds of the book leave the reader in no doubt that Toby is lovely, (he’s always been the parent to go to school and sporting events, cook and play with the kids), and Rachel is a prize bitch. Libby, while decrying the fact that her career as a writer was hampered by the fact that she is female, loathes Rachel – who has not let biology or social expectations get in the way of her professional success.  It is only in the last third of the book the reader gets to see what has happened to Rachel and why.

 

Both Libby and Toby and their old pal Seth are facing their respective ‘mid-life crisis’.  Toby feels that Rachel’s success has held him back professionally, while handsome Seth, an avid bachelor, wants to settle down. The male mid-life crisis is a much examined phenomenon but Brodesser-Akner also focuses on the dissatisfactions women in their 40s face, especially those who are mothers. “There were so many ways of being a woman in the world, but all of them still rendered her just a woman, which is to say: a target.” Libby reflects on the fact that women never truly achieve equality and that the men she interviewed for magazine articles “hadn’t had any obstacles. They were born knowing they belonged, and they were reassured at every turn just in case they’d forgotten.”

 

Weighty themes, but delivered with a lightness of touch, humour and insight, make this a thoroughly enthralling read.    

 

https://www.independent.ie/life/weighty-themes-delivered-lightly-in-this-brilliant-debut-38430753.html

Charlie Parker, John Connolly, Crime, Fiction, Horror
A Book of Bones

REVIEW

 

 

The Book Of Bones

John Connolly

Hodder & Stoughton

 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

7 July 2019

 

Fans of John Connolly may find it hard to believe that 'the detective', aka Charlie Parker, has been around for two decades whilst at the same time trying to remember a fiction landscape that didn't contain him.

 

To celebrate Parker's twenty years of giving reader's pleasure, John Connolly has delivered an epic tome in A Book of Bones.  This is Parker's 17th outing, and as with all the books about him, can be read as a standalone novel.

 

A Book of Bones is a much longer and more complex novel than any of it's predecessors.  The locations have changed; Parker's adventures are usually firmly US - based. Connolly now takes the detective and his loyal aides Louis and Angel out of all that is familiar to them and fans alike.

 

This is an impressive blockbuster that encompasses the globe from the US to the UK via Amsterdam and time from the pre-Roman period to the present day.  Few authors could present a work which touches on the Sinaloa drug cartels, the criminality of the art world, the IRA's 1970s bombing campaign, Amsterdam's book industry, English farmers, police and lawyers, Jack the Ripper, pre-Christian deities, Islamophobia and a long-distance driver and serial killer with echoes of Peter Sutcliffe.

 

Few authors could manage this scope. Even fewer could manage to make all these disparate threads coherent. Connolly doesn't just make them coherent, he makes them compelling.

The plot, in short, is that Parker, Louis and Angel have come to Europe in pursuit of Quayle and Mors, the other-worldly and unsettling villains from The Woman in the Woods (Charlie Parker 16).

 

One of the recurring themes of The Book of Bones is that the past is always with us, not just in the sense that the present is the outcome of all of the events leading to it ("the accumulated burden of the past") but that time is flexible and past, present and future are all occurring simultaneously.

 

Despite Connolly's obvious encyclopaedic knowledge of history and his excellent ear for accents - events in Britain occur in London, Newcastle and the farming country in the North of England, - it is his humanity that makes his work so compelling. No matter how small a walk-on part a character has, be they a retired teacher with a hated first name, a single mother prostituting herself or a Jamaican handy-man who believes in 'duppys', the reader cares about them.

 

As with all Connolly's books there is a thread of humour (often grim) throughout. Sellars, the Sutcliffe-like serial killer, who hears a voice in his head, is upset when his wife want a divorce and muses, "Lauren was leaving him because of his past failings, when he was so much better now... Okay, so had progressed from sleeping with women to killing them, but no man was perfect."

 

As a fan of both Charlie Parker and John Connolly I can say without hesitation that A Book of Bones is his best novel yet. Be warned though, it's a commitment, I couldn't put it down and it took me the best part of a week to read it. Take it on holidays and take time to enjoy it. There is a terrific twist at the very end, like a little present from Connolly to his readers.  It was so unexpected and so moving that I almost cried.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/a-book-of-bones-by-john-connolly-malign-spirits-murder-and-a-forbidden-tome-38096939.html

REVIEW

 

 

The Wych Elm

Tana French

Viking

 

The Skeleton in the Tree

 

The Sunday Independent

 

3 March 2019

 

The Wych Elm is Tana French’s seventh novel and ostensibly the first ‘standalone’ work.  Readers familiar with her first six books will know that despite the ‘Murder Squad’ link each novel is unique and different.  The major change with the Wych Elm is the point of view – instead of the police searching for answers it’s one of the suspects.

 

Toby has led a charmed life. He went to a ‘good’ school where he was a popular rugby player. He’s well aware that he’s a “lucky bastard” as he’s good looking, naturally charming and people take to him. He’s never felt the need to bully or intimidate, he’s always had a good relationship with his parents, has a good career in PR, is still pals with his two besties from school and has a perfect relationship with girlfriend Melissa. And even though he’s an only child he has a semi-sibling relationship with his cousins Leon and Susanna who he shared magical summers with at their Uncle Hugo’s home The Ivy House. 

 

All this changes when he is brutally beaten up by two burglars and almost dies.  French is brilliant at conveying the sudden terror that overwhelms someone who has never experienced any sort of crisis.  The assault leaves Toby changed both physically and mentally.  While he struggles to cope with the pain, memory loss and emotional trauma, the worst aspect for Toby is that who he is, is irrevocably changed.  “If stuff gets better… so what? …Even if I end up running a marathon, I’m not the same person any more.  That’s the point.” 

 

The theme of identity is one that permeates the entire book.  Toby realises that being a ‘good person’ is easy when life has been easy – when there are no difficult challenges to face or when circumstances don’t force a moral dilemma.  His cousin Leon recalls not wanting to come out because “It was the thought of people seeing me as something different.  Not being a person to them any more, not being just me, ever again; being a gay.”  Another theme is how power and conversely powerlessness are linked to identity.

 

While Toby is recuperating his favourite uncle, Hugo, a genealogist, is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and both he and girlfriend Melissa go to stay with him at the Ivy House.  It is during this stay that a skull in found in the Wych Elm of the title and skeletons – physical and figurative begin to emerge.

 

French writes beautifully and lyrically and can conjure up a sense of place and atmosphere like few others.  The Wych Elm is both entertaining and thought-provoking but its uneven in execution - the critical event, the finding of the skull, doesn’t occur until almost half way through. French is usually brilliant at creating three-dimensional believable characters but not once in 511 pages does the saint-like Melissa lose her cool which stretched my belief more than her wearing pretty vintage dresses day and night.  Not French’s best, but still better than the rest.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/tana-frenchs-the-wych-elm-the-skeleton-in-the-tree-37869669.html

REVIEW

 

 

Adèle

Leïla Slimani

Penguin

 

Seedy World of a Sex Addict

 

The Sunday Independent

 

24 February 2019

 

Adèle lives with her surgeon husband Richard and their 3-year-old son Lucien in an upmarket Paris apartment.  She has a high profile job as a political journalist. She is thin and beautiful and has it all.  But Adèle is a sex addict. 

 

Sex addiction can easily be dismissed as a laughing matter but this gripping novel by Leïla Slimani (a follow up to her international bestseller Lullaby about a nanny who murders the children she looks after) reveals the grim reality of compulsive sex, “her obsessions devour her. She is helpless to stop them.”.

 

Like all addicts Adèle is seeking oblivion and relief rather than thrills.  Slimani nails the compulsion in the opening chapter where Adèle eyes up a variety of unattractive men on the train thinking that one of them ‘will do’.  In order to maintain her ‘habit’ Adèle lies to everyone and lives with consistent stress and paranoia on top of the guilt and shame she feels. She resents her husband, (wishing him dead at one point), her child and her employers for getting in the way of her pursuing sexual encounters.  

 

Adèle has one good friend, Lauren, who she mistreats in a casual off-hand way and she overspends in order to feed her addiction.  While other addictions destroy families the added multiple intimate betrayals involved in sex addiction make any sort of understanding or forgiveness of the addict near impossible.  

 

When Adèle’s husband inevitably finds out that his wife has been leading a double life he is devastated. “Adèle had ripped up his world. She has sawn the legs off the furniture, she has scratched all the mirrors… Memories, promises… none of it means anything any more. Their life is a fake.” 

 

Adèle is a woman of contradictions who can have sex with a total stranger in an alleyway yet fear that strange men might rape and attack her. Fear is constant – fear of being found out, fear of not getting what she wants and fear of getting it. 

 

Slimani never lets us really know why Adèle is compelled to have increasingly dangerous liaisons with strangers, just that it is not a choice.

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/seedy-world-of-a-sex-addict-37844003.html

Forget Cold Hard Crime, Cozy is just as thrilling. 

 

Forget New Year Resolutions, fight the cold hard months of Winter with a dose of Cozy Crime writes Anne Marie Scanlon

 

The Sunday Independent

 

06/01/2019

January is, without doubt, the most dismal month of the year.  Traditionally a time of empty pockets and tight waistbands, we make things even worse by punishing ourselves with self-denial and resolutions we can’t keep.

Those with the cash escape to warmer weather but you don’t need to jump on a jet to find solace in the long dark cold nights.  A ‘Cozy Crime’ mystery does exactly what it says on the label and banishes the bleaks

The ‘Cozy’ is a subgenre which unlike much modern Crime Fiction doesn’t grab headlines.  Despite the lack of publicity Cosies regularly appear on the best-seller lists, although a consistent definition of what constitutes one is elusive.

 Mystery author Amanda Fowler describes the genre as having “an amateur sleuth, an unsuspecting victim, a quirky supporting cast and a trail of clues and red herrings.” 

Catriona McPherson, author of the Dandy Gilver books has a simpler explanation - “someone gets killed but no one gets harmed.”

I asked McPherson why such a popular genre hadn’t garnered more attention. McPherson thinks there are two issues, one being sexism. Cozy Crime, like traditional Golden Age Crime, is penned mainly by women and the derision aimed at it echoes that usually reserved for traditional Romance.

Secondly, McPherson says, the name itself lacks “cool” and “is problematic.  You do hear a lot of people denying that their books are “Cozies” insisting they’re called “traditional mystery”.” 

Many Cozy Crime stories, like McPherson’s Dandy Gilver series, The County Guides series by Ian Sansom and the Kate Shackleton mysteries by Frances Brody are all set during the “Golden Age” period and feature country houses, picturesque towns, village fetes, posh people and clever plots.  The settings are intimate with a limited amount of characters and suspects. 

The joy of these books is that although it is fun to read them in sequence they all work well as standalone novels. 

Bangor-based Ian Sansom has created a Holmsian-style character with Swanton Morley, the ‘People’s Professor’ in the, to date, four County Guide novels (Fourth Estate), all set in the 1930s and narrated by the character Stephen Sefton who is a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. 

The latest Dandy Gilver escapade A Step So Grave (Hodder & Stoughton €29.39) is her thirteenth outing having gone from a new bride struggling to make sense of the aftermath of the Great War to now being a mother-in-law fearing the coming of another cataclysmic war.  In true 'Classic' style the action all takes place in a ‘Big Hoose’ (while Dandy is English she’s married to a Scot) on an island.  The islanders, including the inhabitants of the Big Hoose, all speak Scots Gaelic and fervently believe in pre-Christian superstitions which are seamlessly woven throughout the plot. 

Similarly, Kate Shackleton’s latest outing, her tenth, in  A Snapshot of Murder (Piatkus, €12.99) is set in 1928.  The detective’s photography society have taken a trip to Haworth for the opening of the Bronte home when one of their number is murdered in plain sight. Like McPherson, Brody manages to weave in plenty of facts for Bronte fans.

For modern readers the historical Cozies represent the best of both worlds as we get the atmosphere and setting of a classic, added humour and none of the casual racism, sexism and anti-Semitism that jar so much when you come across them unexpectedly in a Golden Age novel.

Then there are the novels that are historical Cozies with a twist.  Some characters are too beloved to die – even when the author has.  Dorothy L. Sayers’s aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey was resurrected for three books by Jill Paton Walsh while Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian sleuth, Poirot, has been brought back to life by Sophie Hannah, a best-selling author famous for her domestic noir titles. 

Hannah’s books are all cleverly plotted which made her a natural choice to continue Christie’s legacy.  The Mystery of Three Quarters (Harper Collins €17.99) is Hannah’s third Poirot book, which sees the famous detective exercise his little grey cells over letters, purportedly sent by him, to a number of people accusing them of the murder of Barnabas Pandy, an old man who died accidentally.  As befits both Christie and Hannah, The Mystery of Three Quarters  has an extremely labyrinthine plot.

Cozies are not confined to the interwar years – the bestselling Agatha Raisin series by “Queen of Cozy Crime” M.C. Beaton, has a contemporary setting as does A Clean Canvas (Constable €11.19), the second of a, hopefully long, series featuring Lena Szarka, a Hungarian cleaner and amateur detective by Elizabeth Mundy. 

The unifying theme between the historical Cozies and the contemporary kind are they both eschew overt sex and violence.  While that might make them sound twee, they’re not.  Both Lena and Agatha are formidable and funny woman who like men.  Lena keeps getting in her own way with her policeman friend and in her latest jaunt Agatha Raisin and the Dead Ringer (book number 29, Constable €25.19) Agatha finds true, although not necessarily lasting, love. 

It’s too cold to be cool in January. Get Cozy. 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/forget-cold-hard-crime-cozy-is-just-as-thrilling-37681551.html

An Post Book Awards, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Jo Spain, Liz Nugent
Andrea Mara, author of One Click.

Ghosts in a Gothic mansion, terrible parents and a hidden killer. 

 

Pick your winner from six first-class writers who reflect the fantastic array of modern Irish crime writing, writes Anne Marie Scanlon

 

The Sunday Independent

 

18/11/2018

 

Pity the judges who have to pick a winner from the Irish Independent Crime Fiction of the Year category in the An Post Irish Book Awards.  All six nominees are extremely strong contenders and are great examples of just how much diversity the ‘Crime’ genre contains.  

 

A House of Ghosts by W. C. Ryan (Bonnier Zaffre) is a wonderful old-school, Agatha Christie-style mystery with a supernatural element.  Set during the First World War a seemingly disparate party of house guests are assembled in a Gothic mansion, formerly an Abbey.  The Abbey is situated on an island which due to bad weather becomes cut off, the phone lines are sabotaged and the ghosts start to gather.

 

As the tension rises the previously connections between the guests, the Russian Psychic, the Playboy, the Lady Clairvoyant and government spies Kate and Donovan begin to emerge - mostly the death of loved ones during the war. A House of Ghosts is wonderfully written and a jolly good read. 

 

At the other end of the spectrum One Click by Andrea Mara (Poolbeg) is bang up to date.  Lauren is a psychologist and amateur photographer. On holidays in Italy she impulsively posts a picture of a beautiful girl on a beach.  Her post goes viral and amid all the glowing feedback there’s someone, VIN, who is insistent on knowing who the girl is and where they can find her.

 

When Lauren returns to Dublin and her exceptionally creepy client Jonathan, VIN becomes more insistent and more threatening. Mara gives us twists and turns aplenty in this thriller.  By the end I suspected everyone except the real culprit.  The only problem with One Click is that after reading it you’ll want to delete your entire online presence and live ‘off-grid’. 

 

The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan (Sphere) is a good solid police procedural. Like Andrea Mara, McTiernan keeps the reader guessing right until the end.  Within the story itself the theme of children and motherhood are central and how both can negatively impact each other. When a woman chooses her addiction over her children it leaves them at the mercy of other adults, while an unexpected pregnancy, if continued, will ruin a trainee surgeons career. 

 

Liz Nugent pursues similar themes in Skin Deep (Penguin Ireland) – the damage bad or neglectful parenting can have on children as with her heroine Cordelia and how pregnancy and motherhood can derail a woman’s life.  Skin Deep while being as grippy as any thriller is also a damning indictment of the way women have been treated in Ireland. 

 

The Confession by Jo Spain is also an indictment of modern Ireland especially those who benefitted from the Celtic Tiger years but escaped the consequences of the subsequent crash. The story begins with prominent financier Harry McNamara being battered around the head with his own golf club. The assailant JP immediately turns himself in and the subsequent narrative delivered from his point of view, that of Julie, Harry’s wife and detective Alice slowly reveals the motive. Spain goes from strength to strength with every book and The Confession is a gripping page turner.  

 

Thirteen Steve Cavanagh (Orion)is a classic John Grisham-style courtroom drama but with an added twist.  Set in New York usually low key attorney Flynn finds himself at the heart of the ‘Case of the Century’ defending Hollywood’s latest darling Bobby Solomon against the charge of double homicide – his wife and bodyguard. (This is where all similarities with OJ Simpson begin and end.)

 

Bobby swears he’s innocent despite the evidence being stacked against him and his inability to provide an alibi. Meanwhile the real killer, a serial killer who has gone undetected for decades, is on the jury and determined to convict and God help any juror who looks like they might acquit. In a story that’s full of twists and action there’s a fantastic twist at the end that the reader will not see coming.

 

https://www.independent.ie/life/ghosts-in-a-gothic-mansion-terrible-parents-and-a-hidden-killer-37536761.html

Picoult Small Great Things
Jodi Picoult A Spark of Light

REVIEW

 

 

A Spark of Light

Jodi Picoult

Hodder & Stoughton

 

Picoult's Light Sparks Debate

 

The Sunday Independent

 

04 November 2018

 

Given Jodi Picoult's track record of tackling moral and ethical issues in the U.S. it’s perhaps surprising that it's only now, with A Spark of Light, that the author has confronted the contentious issue of abortion.

 

Like her previous novels A Spark of Light is meticulously researched but in a radical departure from her usual form the story is told in reverse chronology.

 

The novel begins in crisis with anti-abortion gunman, George Goddard holed up with hostages in ‘The Centre’ - (as in real life, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi).  Chief negotiator Hugh McElroy’s job has been complicated by the fact that his 15-year-old daughter Wren, and his older sister Bex, were in the clinic when the gunman arrived. 

 

The reverse narrative works exceptionally well.  The reader has no idea why Bex or Wren are there and can make only the obvious assumptions.  Similarly knowing that certain characters are dead from the offset makes for a huge emotional impact when the reader encounters them later on in the narrative. 

 

Picoult’s sympathies are fairly obvious but she takes care to present ‘the other side’ as fully rounded, multi-faceted characters with genuine reasons for their stance. The gunman is not the only one in the clinic who is anti-abortion; one of the hostages is a woman from the permanent picket outside disguised as a patient.

 

Surprisingly given the subject matter the core of this novel isn’t about mothers or motherhood but rather about the father – daughter dynamic.  Both George the gunman, and negotiator Hugh, are single fathers who have raised their respective teen daughters alone. They are both “good” fathers, doing the best they can for their children. 

 

Another of the books more memorable characters is Dr Louis Ward, a devout Catholic African American who travels around different States providing abortions.  It is he who makes the very pertinent observation that the “waiting period to get an abortion was longer than the waiting period to get a gun.” 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/picoults-light-sparks-debate-37486532.html

REVIEW

 

 

Dancing With the Tsars

Ross O'Carroll Kelly

Penguin

 

Ross Waltzes Off with another hilarious tale

 

The Sunday Independent

 

07 September 2018

 

Dancing with the Tsars is the 18th book from the best rugby player Ireland never had, Ross O’Carroll Kelly.

 

It's two decades since Ross began life as a spoof about five “goys” who played rugby and their Foxrock Fanny parents.  Both he, the 'goys" and the books have moved on since, with each new novel being an almost impossible combination of hilarity, social satire and a barometer of contemporary life in Ireland. 

 

Dancing with the Tsars is very much focused on Ross and his immediate family.  He and Sorcha have split up.  Again.  They continue to share the family home so Sorcha can pursue her political career in the Seanad and Ross can care for their four children, 11-year-old Honor and toddler triplets Johnny, Leo and Brian. 

 

The triplets are in Ross’s own words “thugs” and “so thick they make me look like Edward Einstein.” Ross hopelessly struggles to get the boys to appreciate his one true love. “I’m in the gorden, trying to interest the boys in a rugby ball and I might as well be trying to teach economics to pigeons”.

 

The triplets are a great addition to the Ross universe and come out with some of the most imaginative swearing ever committed to paper, (as a result I can't quote it here).  I cried laughing almost every time this trio of tiny terrors appeared.

 

While Ross appears to be mellowing with age – he manages to get through the book without killing any pets, or indeed ‘specky focker’ Fionn, who may be the father of Sorcha's unborn child. While Ross has calmed down, his son Ronan appears to be a 'chip of the block' as he's "riding rings round himself'.

 

For this reason, Ross tries to get Ronan to cancel his upcoming wedding.  Despite his worries, Ross nonetheless organises Ronan’s Stag weekend in Spain and arranges a ‘Big Five’ Safari to spot notorious Dublin gangland figures who have ‘retired’ there.  As ever Ross is at sea amongst Ronan’s Northside pals (appropriate as they think he dresses like a sailor) and laments Northsiders drinking his beloved ‘Ken’ “It’s wasted on them. It’s like feeding sourdough to the ducks.”

 

Charles O’Carroll Kelly, Ross’s father, has evolved from a crooked businessman to the leader of a populist political party (sound familiar?), while mother Fionnuala spends an inordinate amount in Russia.  Sorcha becomes woke and throws herself into radical feminism, (prompted by hearing Mná is an anagram of 'man').  Sorcha displays her wokeness and RadFem cred by randomly putting 'man' in front of words ('mandescending', 'manthematics' and 'manabler') in the manner of 'mansplaining'    Daughter Honor has set her sights on the 'Goatstown Glitterball', the award for a ‘Strictly’-style competition at her school Mount Anville, or 'Westeros' as Ross calls it.

 

Ross himself may not be ‘Edward Einstein’ but Paul Howard is a genius. Not only has he created a character, in Ross, who is monstrous and despicable, but he’s given him enough humanity for the reader to root for him. Doing this once was a neat trick. Doing it eighteen times is extraordinary. Future historians will probably use these books as a primer on Ireland over the past two decades, especially the rise, fall and rise of the Celtic Tiger. If they can stop laughing long enough.  

Books Writers Uplit
Irish Writer Helen Cullen

Up Lit - newest writing style shines a light on darkness but people struggle to define it. 

 

Up Lit is the latest literary genre but writers, readers and publishers struggle to define what it means writes Anne Marie Scanlon

 

The Sunday Independent

 

17/06/2018

 

Just like couture, fashions come and go in the book world. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl launched the Grip Lit phenomenon six years ago and it has dominated bestseller lists ever since. Since Gail Honeyman’s debut hit Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine last year, a new genre, Up Lit has been gaining ground with readers.  Perhaps ‘genre’ is too strong a word as Up Lit currently has no agreed definition and encompasses a variety of different books. 

 

RTE Gold broadcaster Rick O’Shea, who runs the hugely popular Rick O’Shea Book Club on Facebook, (which currently has over 17,000 members) agrees that as a category Up Lit is difficult to define. “It’s fashionable to talk about at the moment It seems to encompass everything from Eleanor to self-help books.” 

 

One book that definitely fits that Up Lit profile is Your Second Life Begins When You Realise You Only Have One by Raphaëlle Giordano (Bantam, July 12th) which is ‘Self-Help’ in the form of a novel. Originally published in France in 2015 it has already sold over one and a half million copies.  Parisian Camille is overwhelmed, her grumpy husband lives behind his computer, her 9-year-old son gives her sass and she hates her job. When her car breaks down in a rainstorm she meets Claude a ‘routineologist’ who offers her a lot more than the use of his phone. While this is by no means the greatest novel ever published, it is strangely compelling and indeed extremely uplifting.

 

Cathryn Summerhouse, an agent at leading literary agency Curtis Brown is slightly sceptical about Up Lit being a genre but offers the view that broadly it encompasses “upmarket commercial fiction that deals with life’s problems and sometimes big issues – mental health, old age, childlessness but has an ultimately redemptive ending, although not a neat Chick Lit and 'they all lived happily ever after'.” Summerhouse sees the trend as being a response to the realities of life in the first world, “times are hard, Brexit, Trump, the doomed NHS, and we are all poor. Books have become big gifting items again as people can’t afford more expensive presents and Up Lit fills a fantastic gap in the market – books that are brilliant but also quite nice!” 

 

Alongside Up Lit, the romance novel also appears to be having a moment in the sun. “I don’t think Romance has ever been out (of fashion) but a new generation of authors are definitely breathing new life into it,” O’Shea comments. Summerhouse agrees and notes that “old-school romantic escapism rather than Chick Lit” is in the ascendant.  Her client Molly Flatt’s debut The Charmed Life of Alex Moore, (Macmillan) combines both in “a perfect example of more contemporary, future looking Up Lit.  It is life affirming but also not afraid to tackle big issues from workplace anxiety, imposter syndrome, quarter-life crises, even death.  It ultimately makes you feel empowered – and satisfied, but not without a few major bumps along the way.”

 

Alex Moore also addresses the things that make us who we are. How experiences and memories define who people become, how their storyline evolves from events big and small that are deeply rooted in the psyche. “Patterns made up of Memories… Memories create narratives about who we are. And those narratives, in turn, influence how we behave.”

 

The Possible World (Hutchinson) explores the same themes about how identity is shaped by the past but in a completely different way. Author Liese O’Halloran Schwarz agrees with both O’Shea and Summerhouse that the need for escape and ‘uplift’ is powered by the constant upheavals the world has witnessed over the past few years. “I think it would be a remarkable coincidence." she says, "if this interest in ‘cheerful’ and ‘hope’ wasn’t connected to the ‘Apocalyptic Dominoes’ around us."

 

O’Halloran Schwarz’s published her debut novel 28 years ago before starting a demanding career as an ER Doctor. The author recalls seeing “the saddest most terrible things” as a medical professional but adds “every single shift there was one person who made me feel that the world wasn’t going down in flames. I came away from all those years in medicine feeling more hopeful than logic would dictate.”  The Possible World doesn’t shrink from grimness and is as grippy as any crime novel yet is ultimately joyful and optimistic.

 

Hope is also a theme in Irish writer Helen Cullen’s debut The Lost Letters of William Woolf (Penguin, Michael Joseph).  William has abandoned his dreams and his marriage is in trouble. Cullen presents readers with the mundane reality of ‘happily ever after,’ and how real life can undermine the greatest of romances. The novel is realistic without being grim but again, in the spirit of Up Lit, offers hope for change and transformation.

While Up Lit continues to grow in popularity O’Shea doesn’t see the genre stopping the Grip Lit juggernaut. “I don’t think the two are antagonistic, sometimes you need something uplifting that reaffirms your belief in good and in the human soul, sometimes you just need to read about sociopaths killing with impunity.”

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/up-lit-newest-writing-style-shines-light-on-darkness-but-people-struggle-to-define-it-37015828.html

Behind Her Eyes Crime Suspense Psycological Thriller
Cross Her Heart by Sarah Pinborough

REVIEW

 

 

Cross Her Heart

Sarah Pinborough

Harper Collins

 

Heart-stopping Pinborough

 

The Sunday Independent

 

27/05/2018

 

Although Behind Her Eyes wasn’t Sarah Pinborough’s first novel it was the breakout number one hit that made her a familiar name to fans of psychological thrillers.  Cross Her Heart, her much anticipated latest novel, suffers a bit from ‘that difficult second album’ syndrome. This book is narrated from three perspectives.  Lisa is a single Mum not unlike Louise in Behind Her Eyes, weak, wet and hasn’t had a boyfriend for a very long time. The other perspectives come from Lisa’s sixteen-year-old daughter Ava, and her best friend Marilyn.

 

After the furious page-turning of Behind Her Eyes the first section of the Cross Her Heart was a bit of a slog. Lisa is so listless it’s hard to care about her in any meaningful way. Ava is a mardy teen (and also hard to like) in love with a mystery man she’s met online but not in real life. You don’t need a pack of Tarot Cards to see where this storyline is leading. 

 

In true teen fashion Ava thinks she’s sophisticated and clued-in. She knows all about online predators but also knows that her romance is the real deal.  Far from sophistication Ava seems younger than her years - for example when she suspects she may be pregnant she consoles herself thinking “it’s the summer holidays. If I ned an abortion, I can do it while Mum’s at work. She’ll never know.” Like Ava Marilyn is also hiding a secret. In public she appears to have a charmed life but in reality is regularly beaten-up by her abusive husband Richard.

 

Throughout the first part of the book there are hints about Lisa’s past but when her secret is revealed it is a huge shock and the pace of the plot picks up accordingly.  While some plot points are hard to credit (Marilyn’s relationship with Simon a rich businessman, and indeed, Simon’s romantic interest in Lisa) they don’t matter. Pinborough is back in proper ‘Ripping Yarn’ territory with plenty of Red Herrings and twists.

 

Unlike the shock twist at the end of Behind Her Eyes I did guess this one, but not until it was almost revealed.  Despite that it is still a fantastic twist and will no doubt shock many readers and even if Pinborough hasn’t outdone her previous book she still streets ahead of many of her contemporary Grip Lit authors.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/heartstopping-pinborough-36947048.html

Bridget Jones ChickLit Romance Books
Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce

REVIEW

 

 

Dear Mrs Bird

AJ  Pearce

Picador

 

A Bridget Jones for the Blitz

 

The Sunday Independent

 

29/04/2018

 

Dear Mrs Bird, while set in London during the Second World War, is very much contemporary women's fiction.  The wartime detail is good but this is less Hilary Mantel and more Bridget Jones Does the Blitz. 

 

Plucky secretary Emmy wants to become a ‘Lady War Correspondent’ but ends up accidentally taking care of the titular Mrs Bird’s advice page in the old fashioned magazine Woman’s Friend. 

 

Mrs Bird herself is a rather substantial lady - think Miss Trunchbull meets Dolores Umbridge, who takes a dim view of most things. She refuses to reply to any letters, either in print or privately, that contain “UNPLEASANTNESSES,” (she tends to ‘boom’ in capital letters) or include “Affairs…losing their heads… babies… and NERVES.”  The high standards of her new boss leave Emmy feeling “as if I had been brought up by a group of exceptionally awful prostitutes or had made a habit of punching the infirm.” 

 

Despite the fear that Mrs Bird inspires in everyone Emmy decides she knows better and starts answering the letters that don’t meet her superior’s impossibly high standards. Shortly after starting her new job Emmy's enlisted fiancé Edmund  elopes with a nurse. Despite her alleged heartbreak Emmy rallies pretty quickly and there’s a handsome army officer on hand to help distract her.

 

Being wartime, tragedy is never far away, and Emmy does experience some personal loss.   None of this diverts her from her mission of bringing succour to the readers of Women’s Friend and she soon starts sneaking her advice on to the printed page (Mrs Bird is too busy Do-Gooding to actually proof or read her own copy). Naturally Emmy’s deceptions eventually catch up with her. 

 

While many readers will find the story warm and uplifting  I found Emmy’s contemporary tone jarring against the background of wartime London. Similarly, A.J. Pearce's detailed descriptions of the destruction wrought by the Blitz, for me, sit uneasily beside a 'Keep Calm and Carry On' jape.

 

https://www.independent.ie/life/a-bridget-jones-for-the-blitz-36854160.html

Liz Nugent, Skin Deep, Domestic Violence, Crime, Thriller
John Connolly's 16th Charlie Parker novel The Woman in the Woods

REVIEW

 

Skin Deep 

Liz Nugent

Penguin Ireland

 

The Woman in the Woods

John Connolly

Hodder & Stoughton

 

Great Injustice as Women Lose in Man's World

 

The Sunday Independent

 

08/04/2018

 

The universality of certain experiences is reflected in the latest works of two Irish authors. Liz Nugent’s third novel Skin Deep and John Connolly’s The Woman in the Woods, while very different in style and setting, both centre around the disenfranchisement of women in modern society. 

 

Skin Deep’s Delia Russell is like a mythical goddess of destruction, beautiful, alluring and leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. However, Delia is no psychopath – ill luck follows her rather than being deliberately perpetrated by her. 

 

At the start of the novel Delia has killed someone and the reader doesn’t know who.  Nugent then takes us back to the beginning, to the tiny insular Island of Inniscrann where Delia grew up.  Delia’s father is a violent man unnaturally obsessed with his daughter, he tells her stories (scattered throughout the book) with a common theme – that women suffer to make men happy. 

 

When teenage Delia becomes pregnant in the early 1980s, she feels trapped.  She doesn’t want a baby but the decision isn’t hers, instead it’s that of three old men - her adoptive father Alan, a devout Catholic, the boy’s father Declan, a hypocrite who sits up the front of the church yet knows far too well how to get an abortion in England, and the local parish Priest.

 

Forced into having a baby she doesn’t want and marrying a husband she doesn’t love Delia finds solace in her new life in England by indulging in champagne and cocaine with her posh friends.  One of them has no problem telling Delia that all Irish people are ‘peasants’.  Younger readers might find this shocking while those of us who remember the 80s and 90s in London certainly won’t be. 

 

Delia’s looks are marred in a fire and superficially that’s what the title refers to.  Skin Deep is also about what happens when you scratch the surface of a ‘civilised society.’ Delia is a product of a culture that valued ‘decency’ at all costs and actively covered up any and all behaviour that didn’t conform to the Catholic ideal. (Similarly Delia’s posh friends for all their airs behave disgustingly in private). Delia is the agent of destruction in this book, but the real culprit is the lies, hypocrisy and double-standards she’s been forced to live with.  On top of that there’s a couple of nice, unexpected twists near the end.

 

Across the Atlantic John Connolly’s detective Charlie Parker returns for his 16th outing in The Woman in the Woods which, like Skin Deep, revolves around the relative powerlessness of women in a supposed age of equality.

 

In this instance though the woman of the title is dead and buried.  Her remains been preserved enough for police to know that she didn’t die as a result of a violent act and that she gave birth shortly before dying. But where is the baby?

 

A star of David marks the grave and lawyer Moxie Castin hires Parker to find out what happened to the infant.  The search brings Parker into conflict with two very creepy characters – Quail and Mons. 

 

While this is a relatively low-key adventure for Parker – the body count isn’t that high and his long-time ally Angel is largely absent due to illness, Quail and Mons are two of the creepiest and disturbing characters Connolly has introduced to date.  Quail is a lawyer, who claims to have lived for centuries, and is searching for a document that will bring about the end of the world as we know it. His companion Mons is a product of the British care system – carefully “groomed” to become in thrall to Quail and a cold-hearted killer.

 

The story of the woman in the woods is intrinsically linked to the story of intimate partner violence and the extremes women have to exhort to in an effort to escape it.  Connolly also places the rich and the powerful (not always the same thing) under his forensic gaze and takes a pop at the ‘great and the good’ “who routinely made million-dollar donations to museums and galleries… yet balked at the prospect of paying a living wage to their workers,”.

 

As with all the Charlie Parker books the plot unfolds at a tight pace, leaving it hard to put down.  The characters are all rooted enough in real-life, with all of it’s contradictions and complexities, to make them worth caring for.  And, as with every Connolly book there’s a lovely seam of humour that doesn’t impinge on the tension.  I laughed out loud at the poor woman “who claimed to have slipped … at a shopping mall, resulting in a fractured ankle, a dislocated shoulder, and sexual assault by a plastic elf.” Of all the disturbing images Connolly has created over the years, this one encapsulates his genius - unsettling, funny and hard to forget.

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/great-injustice-as-women-lose-in-mans-world-36783655.html

REVIEW

Molly's Game

Molly Bloom

Harper Collins

 

The Sunday Independent

 

04/03/2018

 

Molly’s Game, the memoir by Molly Bloom (dubbed the ‘Poker Princess’ in the US tabloids) about her time running the most exclusive poker games in Hollywood and New York, and her subsequent federal indictment, was first published in 2014.  The book has been rereleased to coincide with the film, Molly’s Game, on which it is based. 

 

The story works on many levels – in one way it’s a fish out of water tale – young Molly, a small town girl, the eldest of three over-achievers who has worked towards both academic and sporting excellence her entire life, is thrust into the venal culture of LA. 

 

There are some ‘Tell All’ features when Molly finds herself helping her obnoxious boss run his weekly poker game which include A-List actors, media giants and rich financiers.  Bloom names some, but not all, of these people, and readers will no doubt be shocked at the behaviour of one particular well-known actor.

 

The ‘Insider’ world that Molly becomes part of is fascinating and she makes the technicalities of poker playing relatable to the ordinary reader who may not have a clue about the high-stakes game. 

 

Bloom’s narrative voice is engaging and the story progresses entertainingly but with moments of drama, pathos, hilarity and sheer horror.  Alongside the unfolding narrative of ‘the Game’, Bloom examines her own life and in particular her relationship with her father, a demanding character who expects his children to excel in everything. 

 

The timing of the current release of Molly’s Game gives it a dimension that it didn’t have first time around – the Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo tsunami of revelations about how men wield power in Hollywood, (and in other industries). The exhaustive accounts of influential men being sexist, sexually inappropriate and bullying shed a new light on to what was already a pretty good read. 

 

The ‘Game’ empowers Molly, she has something that powerful men want – a seat at the table, hence she is treated with great respect.   “Most new players were surprised when I turned out to be a young, petite woman,” she remarks. Of course being Hollywood it turns out that that her ‘power’ is ultimately dependent on a man, a very famous actor who enjoys cruelty.  An enthralling read.

 

 

 

https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/power-and-the-poker-princess-36663779.html

Motherhood, mental illness, childcare
Leila Slimani author of Lullaby

REVIEW

Lullaby

Leila Slimani

Faber & Faber 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

04/02/2018

 

The publicity for Lullaby would have you believe that it’s the next Gone Girl.  It isn’t.  The comparison isn’t valid as this is not 'Grip Lit'.  It’s something more, something better (and I say that as a huge fan of Gone Girl).  Comparisons are futile but if pushed I’d say Slimani is a storyteller in the vein of Tana French (only much sparser).

 

Ostensibly this is a plot about a ‘Killer Nanny’ and the story kicks off with, an opening that is indeed ‘grippy’– “The baby is dead. It only took a few seconds.”. What follows, will extremely gripping, isn’t a slasher thriller but a mature work about modern motherhood, class, race, money, mental illness and obsession.  Mostly it’s about motherhood.

 

Paul and Myriam Massé are a middle-class Parisian couple. After having two children Myriam wants to pursue her real calling – the law, (later in the novel it’s revealed that Myriam is a ferocious defence barrister and good at getting people guilty off the hook). 

 

They hire Louise, a godsend, not only is she a wonderful Nanny, she cooks and cleans, doesn’t mind staying late and in a coup that makes the couple the envy of their friends, she’s white.

 

In the first few pages alone Slimani captures the contradictions and conflicts of modern motherhood – how it is possible to love your children ferociously yet at the same time find them boring and irritating, as well as the ever-present spectre of death that accompanies each new life. 

 

“Ever since her children were born, Myriam has been scared of everything. Above all, she is scared that they will die. She never talks about this – not to her friends, not to Paul – but she is sure everyone has the same thoughts.  She is certain that, like her, they have watched their child sleep and wondered how they would feel if that little body were a corpse.”

 

Myriam and Paul become as dependent on Louise as their children Mila and Adam, if not more so.  However, Louise’s presence in their life starts to make them uncomfortable in part because they begin to realise they’re not as egalitarian as they thought they were.

 

“(Paul’s) parents had raised him to detest money and power, and to have a slightly mawkish respect for those ‘below’ him. He had always been relaxed in his job, working with people with whom he’d felt equal…. But Louise had turned him into a boss. He hears himself giving his wife despicable advice.  ‘Don’t make too many concessions, otherwise she’ll never stop asking for more.’” 

 

Class is a recurring theme, Louise, with her blond hair and heavy make-up, is consistently patronised by her various employers’ despite being excellent at her job.

 

In a pivotal scene Paul becomes enraged when he comes home to find that Louise has put make-up on his little girl.  Most small children, male and female, go through a 'make up' phase and in the hands of a lesser writer Paul’s rage would be questionable, if not downright risible. Instead Slimani, whose every word seems carefully chosen, makes the over-reaction and wrath understandable. 

 

Lullaby is an important book, worthy without being dull, (it’s the opposite of dull).  It is one of those reads that you think about long after you’ve finished it. One that will keep you awake at night.

 

 

Julie Parson's The Therapy House one of the six Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year nominees
Julie Parson's The Therapy House one of the six Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year nominees

Forget the Faroe Islands, Ireland is the real killer

 

 

 

The combination of fresh authors, old hands and confident writing, as reflected in the six Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year nominees, show why Emerald Noir is putting the Scandis to shame.

 

The Sunday Independent

 

26/11/2017

 

For the past decade Tana French has been the undisputed Queen of Irish Crime Fiction, and Karen Perry’s Can You Keep a Secret? (Penguin), which was listed as one of Red Magazines Top Ten Crime Reads for Autumn, is a must–read for French fans as it combines a great plot, realistic characters, magnificent atmosphere (in both timelines) and wonderful writing. Lindsey, a forensic photographer, spent much of her teens at Thornbury Hall, the Anglo-Irish ‘Big House’ inherited by her friend Rachel’s glamourous parents the Bagenals. Twenty-five years later she returns for a weekend reunion with the school pals she hasn’t seen in the intervening years. Told through dual timelines – it’s no wonder the Irish Times said this dark, gripping thriller with a deliciously slow reveal and a stand-out twist was “elegantly written and beautifully paced”. 

 

Old friends prove to be problematic in Cat Hogan’s There Was a Crooked Man (Poolbeg).  The action ranges from Marrakesh to a small fishing village in Wexford.  Scott, a psychopath with zero self-awareness, has been in exile for two years along with his dogsbody Fran.  He decides it’s time for payback against the group of friends who he blames for his troubles – especially Jen. The plot is revealed from the various perspectives of the main characters who are all lying – to themselves and each other.  Actor Aidan Gillen (who Hogan pictured as villain Scott when writing the book) says she writes “vividly and unflinchingly,” while author and Hot Press writer Jackie Hayden stated that the villains’ “keep you looking over both shoulders long after you’ve put the book down.” 

 

More old school friends cause trouble in Sinead Crowley’s One Bad Turn (Quercus). Recurring character DS Claire Boyle gets (literally) caught in the crossfire when she and her baby daughter visit Dr. Heather Gilmore.   Gilmore has been taken hostage by her old school friend Eileen Delaney, who blames the doctor and her ex-husband, for the death of her teenage son. The Gilmore’s teen daughter Leah has been abducted in revenge.  The plot follows Claire’s hunt for the missing girl and ends with a double twist.  Fans on Good Reads were almost unanimous in their praise calling it “deceptively twisty” and noting that it was “rooted in contemporary political and financial issues in Ireland.”  RTE endorsed author Crowley saying she “masterfully evokes the lives of three very different yet similar women, Eileen, Heather and Claire”

 

Julie Parson’s whose work the New York Times praised for its “astonishing emotional impact” returns to writing after almost a decade with The Therapy House (New Island Books) a gripping, brooding thriller. Retired detective Michael McLoughlin has just moved to a ‘fixer-upper’ in an old, well established, part of Dun Laoghaire.  His next door neighbour is the renowned former Judge, John Hegarty, the son of a famous hero of the War of Independence.  When Hegarty is brutally murdered McLoughlin is the one who finds the body and soon secrets about the revered public figure begin to emerge.  The Irish Independent compared Parson’s “unflinching exploration of the black heart of humanity” with that of the American writer James Ellroy.  She also takes on the black heart of Irish history. Hopefully Parsons won’t leave it ten years before the next one.

 

Jane Casey’s Maeve Kerrigan returns in her seventh outing in Let the Dead Speak (Harper Collins). A teenage girl returns to her home in an outwardly ‘normal’ London suburb to find to find it awash with blood and her mother missing.  Kerrigan’s investigations reveal the horror that lives behind closed doors and the darkness that often accompanies religious zealotry.   Good Reads praised Casey’s latest novel saying it was “one wild twisted ride, with darker psychological tones to go along with the standard police procedures.”  Fans and critics alike were almost unanimous in their acclaim of the evolution of newly promoted Maeve Kerrigan with the Irish Times noting that she is “a woman in a man’s world…. But Casey leave’s us in no doubt how much more complicated it is for her.”

 

Stuart Neville, writing as Hayden Beck, has departed his usual style for a thriller set in the United States - Here and Gone (Harvill Secker).  Audra experiences every mother’s worst nightmare but with a horrific new twist.  Fleeing an abusive relationship in New York, Audra is arrested by a tin pot Sheriff on a deserted stretch of Arizona road. Her two children are taken away; the Sheriff denies he ever saw them and sets about framing Audra for their disappearance and murder. The shady Sheriff has already sold the children to suspicious figures from the Dark Web and Audra isn’t the first person to be set up.  The Bookseller praised Here and Gone as a “heart-stopping psychological thriller” while The Chicago Daily Herald noted it was “terrifyingly realistic from the start.”

 

If you fancy buying any of the above and I'd REALLY recommend the Karen Perry book - the awful title does not reflect just how good it is and The Therapy House, link to blog to get links to all the individual books.

 

 https://amscanlonblog.wordpress.com

Black Rabbit Hall
The Vanishing Of Audrey Wilde by Eve Chase

REVIEW

The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde

Eve Chase

Michael Joseph 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

20/08/2017

 

The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde is two stories which take in the same place, Applecote Manor, sixty years apart. In the modern narrative Jess and Will have moved to Applecote, which is in need of much repair, in order to get Will’s daughter Bella, away from London. There has been some sort of ‘incident’ involving Bella and Jess is worried that she is not just a typical moody teen but perhaps deeply malevolent. 

 

The second narrative which runs parallel to that of Jess is set in the heatwave of August 1959.  Four sisters have arrived from Chelsea (then a rackety part of town) to spend the remains of the summer with their aunt and uncle while their gadabout widowed mother takes off to Morocco.  The girls, Flora, Pam, Margot and Dot have not seen their uncle Perry or Aunt Sybil for five years, not since their cousin Audrey went missing without trace at the age of 12. 

 

In the modern narrative Jess is left alone with her resentful stepdaughter and her own toddler Romy. Bella, who is in the room that was once Audrey’s, has found out about her disappearance and quickly becomes obsessed by it.  Jess is out of her depth and feels increasingly worried that Bella wants to recreate the vanishing using little Romy in the role of Audrey. 

 

While the modern story is perfectly well executed Dot’s narrative is far more compelling.  Chase is a talented writer and summons up an enchanted and enchanting environment – reminiscent of classic British children’s literature where the sisters, although somewhat worldly wise (due to their mother’s turbulent love life and chronic lack of money), are still products of their time – naïve about sex and relationships. When two handsome boys join them sibling rivalry rears its head. 

 

This is a study in manners and mannerisms.  The girls are too young to begin to understand their aunt and uncles’ grief – the pair are changed, physically and emotionally almost beyond recognition.  And of course, in that very British way, nobody ever talks about what happened to Audrey.

 

From the prologue the reader knows that something terrible happens at the end of the sister’s summer idyll and thus there is a pervading sense of dread in sharp juxtaposition to the carefree days of warmth and idleness. 

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/dark-secrets-surround-a-mysterious-disappearance-at-the-manor-36046751.html

 

 

My Son's First Vlog.

What happens when good women fall for bad men

 

Two conemporary Irish novels portray how public perfection often masks what goes on behind closed doors, writes Anne Marie Scanlon

 

The Sunday Independent

 

 

25/06/2017

 

If there is one thing you can depend on contemporary fiction for - it is to reflect the concerns of modern women.   One of the themes in Faith Hogan's My Husband’s Wives is domestic violence. 

 

When Paul Starr, Ireland’s leading cardiologist, dies in a car crash he leaves behind not just one but three widows.  Older posh Evie; clever and beautiful painter Grace and glamour model Annalise.  Despite the fact that Paul is so well known he has managed to dupe Grace and Annalise into thinking they were in valid marriages with him. 

 

At the time of his death he has three children, teenage Delilah with Grace and two small sons with Annalise. He has moved out of his home with the latter and is in a car with a young pregnant Romanian woman, Kasia, when the fatal accident occurs.  Is Kasia his latest squeeze?  Is the baby his?

 

If you approach My Husband’s Wives as a fairy story, then you may be able to read it with some enjoyment.  All four women are nothing short of saints – when they find out that Paul has duped them all, they are only mildly shocked. Instead of being (rightly) angry they instead moon about missing him terribly and lamenting the passing of such a fine loving man.  Grace and Evie unite to organize Paul’s funeral “they both put Paul first – in life as in death.”.

 

The three ‘wives’ all rally around Kasia and her pregnancy gives them all a focus (they’re all remarkably sanguine that she is possibly carrying his child).  I found it very hard to get past the fact that a semi-public figure could pull off bigamy twice in a country as small as Ireland. 

 

Kasia lives in terror of her abusive ex-boyfriend Vasile.  The three ‘wives’ are all full of righteous indignation about the way Vasile has treated poor Kasia – Vasile is physically abusive, controlling and coercive.  Yet, amazingly, none of these supposedly intelligent women acknowledges that Paul, who kept his life compartmentalised and his offspring apart, was just as controlling and coercive as the two-dimensional Vasile.  While Paul moves on with his life he ensures that the ‘wives’ don’t.

 

The story is told from the perspective of all four women but unfortunately the voices of the narrators all sound exactly the same.  Predictably the women all move forward towards both a collective and individual happy ending (like a good fairy tale generally does).  There is a decent twist towards the end - one which I didn’t see coming but, unfortunately, it just entrenched my views about the late lamentable Paul.

 

By contrast The Woman at 72 Derry Lane by Carmel Harrington gives a nuanced view of both the perpetrator and the victim of domestic violence.  Stella has been married to perfectionist Matt for a year and he controls every aspect of her life, from finances to diet to internet access.  No matter how hard Stella tries to meet Matt’s standards she fails and pays the price by being severely beaten

 

Grooming is a word usually associated with children but domestic tyrants also groom their victims, eroding their sense of self and self-esteem until they are rendered helpless.  Harrington has obviously done her research and manages to portray the answer to that endless question from outsiders “why does she stay?”

 

The couple live next door to Rea who suffers from agoraphobia so severe that she has to pay a neighbour’s child to bring her bins to the garden gate.  Once Rea was happily married and had two children but now she is utterly alone and spends her days having conversations with Siri. 

 

Both Rea and Stella are trapped, as the latter says  “I don’t think we are that different. Our worlds are small. And we are both prisoners.”  The two women form an unlikely friendship as Rea supports Stella in her secret plan to flee her abusive husband.  The story unfolds from the point of view of each woman and is interspersed with that of a teenage girl, Skye, ten years earlier, who is caught up in the Boxing Day Tsunami.  I quickly guessed that Skye and Stella were the same person but Harrington has plenty of plot twists up her sleeve that I didn’t see coming. 

 

Harrington doesn’t stint in her depiction of the brutality of intimate partner violence.  Similarly, her portrayal of the Tsunami and its immediate aftermath is, at times, extremely distressing.  At the same time there are moments of great fun especially when the woman across the road kicks her latest fella out because he wanted a ‘Golden Shower’.

 

Despite the rather harrowing themes of a natural disaster that wiped out almost 228,000 people and the sheer brutality of intimate partner violence The Woman at 72 Derry Lane is at heart a warm novel. As Rea says “Love doesn’t hurt. Loving the wrong person does.”

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/what-happens-when-good-women-fall-for-bad-men-35859654.html

Charlie Parker Suspense Horror Thriller
A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly

REVIEW

A Game of Ghosts

John Connolly

Hodder & Stoughton €20.99

 

The Sunday Independent

 

02/04/2017

 

A Game of Ghosts is Connolly’s fifteenth novel about the detective Charlie Parker.  Regular readers will know that Parker is no ordinary detective; that his numerous enemies don’t necessarily all reside in the world of the living. 

 

Generally fictional detectives and police officers progress from one ‘procedural’ to another, in that a crime occurs, (often a murder), suspects are presented to the reader and eventually the case is solved.  Whether the setting is a gritty modern city or the cosy country house of Agatha Christie, the basic premise is the same. 

 

Parker’s world isn’t like this and I can imagine that its sometimes a struggle for Connolly to keep imagining the unimaginable to keep his creation busy.  In this outing Parker is engaged by Agent Ross of the FBI in order to track down another PI - Jaycob Eklund.  Ross refuses to explain his interest in the missing man (he and Parker have an adversarial relationship).

 

Parker calls in his regular cohorts Louis and Angel, the latter getting to use his exemplary lock picking skills. The trio soon discover that Eklund was on a quest of his own -  investigating a series of seemingly unconnected disappearances and homicides.  Eklund was convinced that all these events were connected to The Brethren – the ghostly remains of the Capstead Martyrs and their living descendants. 

 

Connolly has created some truly frightening monsters and supernatural entities (not always one and the same thing) in his time and while the Brethren are creepy and disturbing they’re fairly mild by Connolly standards. 

 

The author has been consistently, and rightly, praised for his sinister characters but his observations of real life, the things that motivate ordinary people, and his ear for dialogue are unrivalled.

 

What makes the Parker books so gripping and unnerving is that, despite being primarily set in the US (Parker lives in Maine) they present a reality that is familiar to readers everywhere.  It is the clash between this humdrum ordinariness and the supernatural that gives Connolly's work it's edge over the competition.   

 

An ordinary man sets out to murder someone and as he drives, “Sumner didn’t have time for that talk radio shit… If he wanted to hear folk agreeing with their own opinions for hours on end, he could just stay at home and listen to his wife.”

 

A Game of Ghosts is slightly different in tone from the previous books in the Charlie Parker series.  Some of the major recurring characters are killed off and I got the sense that Connolly is impatient to get to Parker’s relationship with his daughter Samantha – a child who has very special powers and who Parker finally admits to himself, scares him. 

 

Very few writers could merge real life and the unreal as seamlessly as Connolly and even fewer could throw in jokes without upsetting the overall atmosphere as when two police officers visit a used car lot.  ““That car stinks,” said one. “It’s a Firenza,” said the other. “My sister used to have one. Piece of shit.” “No, it stinks.”” The smell is, unsurprisingly, that of a body.

 

Set in winter, Connolly’s various descriptions of the arctic conditions  in A Game of Ghosts will make readers shiver. But then, as his fans already know, Connolly is good at giving the chills.  Just make sure you read this with the doors locked and the lights on.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/lock-the-doors-put-on-the-lights-for-connollys-game-of-ghosts-35643568.html

Louise Doughty Apple Tree Yard
Black Water by Louise Doughty

REVIEW

Black Water

Louise Doughty

Faber & Faber 18.19

 

The Sunday Independent

 

02/04/2017

 

 

 

In February of this year almost everyone I know was obsessed with the televised version of Doughty’s seventh novel Apple Tree Yard so much so that we actually watched it when it was broadcast.  Doughty’s eighth novel Black Water, while sharing many of the same themes as it’s predecessor – secrets, lies, double identities, is a different beast entirely. 

 

The first part of the novel, set in 1998, centres on Harper, lying awake at night in his company’s ‘hut’ in Bali waiting to be murdered on the orders of his superiors. There’s mystery - clues are given about who Harper is and there’s many references to Jakarta in ’65.  Harper then meets a nice lady called Rita and they have middle aged sex (according to some sections of the media, middle aged people having sex was one of the more shocking aspects of Apple Tree Yard, as if we all took a vow on turning 40).  To be honest at this point I found it hard to care about Harper or Rita or their middle aged sex.  I was vaguely interested in what happened in Jakarta in 1965 but I was still able to put the book down for long periods of time.

 

Harper is a ‘researcher’ for an international organisation which looks after the interests of massive multinationals, advising them on the viability of operations in areas of instability and conflict.  Harper is not a spy as he does not owe allegiance to any one country but rather to whoever is signing off on his pay check.  However, he and his colleagues, while not spies, live double lives and do the dirty work that no country would ever officially sanction. 

 

In the second section Doughty takes us back to Harper’s birth in 1942 and his life until the awful events of 1965.   The then Nicolaas Den Herder was born in a Japanese internment camp in what was then the Dutch East Indies. At this point I became gripped, as Doughty introduces a host of memorable characters – Harper’s unstable mother who later descends into full-blown alcoholism, his adoptive Grandparents and his baby brother.  Now I found the book hard to put down because I cared about the young Harper, his brother and grandparents.  This section is not just gripping but utterly heart-breaking in many different ways.  The reader finally finds out what happened in Jakarta in 1965 and it’s far from pleasant.

 

In the final section the reader is returned to 1998 for the conclusion of Harper’s story. Doughty deals with a lot in this book – racism, difference, post colonialism, the indifference of the West to Indonesia, loss and redemption.   It says a lot for Doughty’s talent as a writer that none of this is glaringly obvious as you read. She doesn’t hit the reader over the head with the facts.  Be warned, Harper’s guilt is catching when you realise that geography dictates that some atrocities are deemed less important than others.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/heartbreaking-and-gripping-story-of-racism-loss-and-redemption-35583515.html

 

JFK & Jackie Kennedy (in the famous Pink Suit), Dallas 1963
JFK & Jackie Kennedy (in the famous Pink Suit), Dallas 1963

True-life crimes, tragedies and passions make for fascinating fictions.

 

From the Tudors to JFK our fascination with the famous predates reality TV as the popularity of historical novels shows. 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

26/03/2017

 

 

 

Commentators having been calling time on Tudor historical novels for quite a while but the public’s fascination with Henry VIII, his wives, his children, his courtiers and his era never seems to diminish. 

 

For writers like Hilary Mantel, Philippa Gregory and C.J. Sansom, the source material is a gift that keeps on giving.  For readers the era has everything a modern-day soap would have – sex, death, murder, intrigue, infidelity and political backstabbing, with the added bonus that, in historical fiction, it’s mostly true.

 

While the Tudor historical novel juggernaut continues the genre is not confined to codpieces and ruffs.  Nor does the inclusion of a real-life character necessarily a historical novel make.  George Saunders has just produced his first novel Lincoln in the Bardo and while Abraham Lincoln and his recently deceased son, 11-year-old Willie, (he is the Lincoln of the title) are both characters this is a literary novel containing real characters rather than a historical novel.

 

What marks out a historical novel is not the inclusion of real-life figures, as there are plenty of books in the genre that are entirely fictional, but the setting.  The author needs to be able to transport the reader to a completely different time and make that adjustment seemless.  Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Denise Mina’s latest book The Long Drop, where blackened sooty industrial 1950s Glasgow, the ‘Mean City’ of legend, is as much a character as the two main protagonists Peter Manuel, the infamous ‘Beast of Birkenshaw’ and William Watt. Peter Manuel, a violent psychopath, is still notorious in Scotland where he was executed in 1958 having been convicted of the murders of eight people including a ten-year-old boy.

 

Trials, like Tudor monarchs, are juicy material for the historical novelist.  Just over a century before O.J. Simpson was tried for the murder of his estranged wife Nicole Brown Smith and her friend Ron Goldman, there was another ‘Trial of the Century’ in America.  That of Lizzie Boden who in June 1893 was tried for the murder of her father Andrew and stepmother Abby. 

 

According to the famous nursery rhyme “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks.  When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.” (The rhyme is incorrect Abby Borden suffered approximately 19 blows to the head while Andrew was struck 10 -11 times with his eyeball being split in two).  While the nursery rhyme presumed Lizzie’s guilt the jury felt different and she was acquitted on 20 June 1893.  Since then Borden has stuck in the public’s imagination and has been the subject of countless dramas, films, books and even a musical.  In Sarah Schmidt’s See What I Have Done (out in May) the events of the murders and their aftermath are related from the perspective of Lizzie herself, her older sister Emma and the Irish maid Bridget, amongst others.  Schmidt is especially good at the sweltering claustrophobia in which the distinctly odd Bordens lived. She is also great at portraying the pent-up frustration of the spinster Borden sisters.

 

Like Lizzie, O.J. was acquitted and the verdict became a defining moment in time – one that people remember for where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Princess Diana’s death, two years later was another such defining moment, as was the assassination of JFK in Dallas in 1963.  Both the Kennedy assassination and Diana’s death have been the subject of a myriad of conspiracy theories.  In 12:23 Northern Irish novelist Eoin McNamee charts the events leading to the now infamous crash in the Paris tunnel.  McNamee based The Blue Tango  on events closer to home – the murder of 19-year-old Patricia Curran in 1952 in Belfast while Orchid Blue concerns the murder of another 19-year-old woman, Pearl Gambol this time in Newry in 1961. 

 

While many authors have used the Kennedy assassination as material, including Stephen King’s 11/23/63, the story of the wider Kennedy family has provided plenty of inspiration too. In The Importance of Being Kennedy (2007) author Laurie Graham presents the family from the perspective of long-time fictional Irish employee Nora Brennan.  Graham has written a series of historical novels about real people and events from the perspective of fictional minor characters.  Her 2005 book Gone With The Windsors about Edward and Mrs Simpson is a comic masterpiece that deserves a wider readership.  Jackie Kennedy, who has long fascinated the public, is a peripheral but important character in the 2014 novel The Pink Suit by Nicole Mary Kelby, the story of an Irish immigrant who is integral to making the outfit Mrs Kennedy wore on that fateful day in Dallas. 

 

A Season in Purgatory (1993) by Dominick Dunne is based on the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley which ‘Kennedy Cousin’ Michael Skakel was eventually convicted of in 2002.  In Dunne’s novel the family are called Bradley but there is no doubt as to who they are.  Dunne wrote many successful novels that were fictionalised versions of real life ‘scandals’ – most famously The Two Mrs Grenvilles.  Changing real life characters into fictional facsimiles may seem redundant but this can leave the novelist free to construct fiction rather than be hamstrung by the facts, (although Dunne’s books rarely deviate much from the events as they unfolded).  Dunne also ‘fictionalised’ the O.J. trial in 1997’s Another City, Not My Own but the novel was mostly a compilation of his monthly columns for Vanity Fair magazine, with one name changed – his own!  

 

Last year’s highly successful The Girls by Emma Cline featured a 60s Californian cult with a charismatic leader not unlike Charlie Manson while earlier this year Emma Flint’s Little Deaths was based on, but not about, the 1965 trial of New Yorker Alice Crimmins for the murder of her two children.  Both of these stories concern events within living memory so fictionalising real characters provides some some distance for people who were involved. For the rest of us all historical fiction lets us briefly live in a different world. Without consequences.   

 

 

Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders  Bloomsbury 18.20

 

The Long Drop Denise Mina Harvill Secker 18.20

 

See What I Have Done Sarah Schmidt Tinder Press (2/5/17) 18.19

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/truelife-crimes-tragedies-and-passions-make-for-fascinating-fictions-35563229.html

Emily Witt author of Future Sex
Emily Witt author of Future Sex

 

 

Exploring Brave New World of Sex and Sexuality.

 

The Sunday Independent

 

12/002/16

 

 

Around five years ago, a married friend, who lives in a Hipster enclave in the United States, told me about her neighbours, married a decade, who were Swingers.  This was proof positive to a commitment-phobe like myself that long term relationships are bound to become sexually boring.  Neither of us thought Swinging sounded appealing – rather it was a seedy throwback to the ‘car keys on the coffee table’ 1970s.  Reading Future Sex it turns out that my friend and I, and not the Swingers, are the ones that are hopelessly out of date. 

 

When it comes to love, sex and relationships, even the most cynical amongst us believe, to a greater or lesser extent, in ‘happily ever after’.  We are brought up in the binary system – where eventually two people – gay or straight – settle down with each other.  Or just settle.  The adult world is designed to accommodate couples.  (Just ask anyone who has ever had to pay a ‘single subsidy’). 

 

In her opening chapters Witt acknowledges that she too was certain that this was her fate, but finding herself single in her early 30s she began to question her both own future and that of female sexuality. “For now I was a person in the world, a person who had sexual relationships that I could not describe in language and that failed my moral ideals.  Apprehensiveness set in: that this was my future.”

 

Witt’s initial investigations take her from New York where she and most of the adults she knows enjoy ‘non-relationships’ – ones where people sleep with each other but are not officially a couple, to San Francisco, which has in the past 50 years, been associated with ideals of ‘free love’ and being ‘out there’.

 

Witt is white, went to Brown University followed by Columbia School of Journalism and Cambridge and, although she doesn’t really mention it she doesn’t appear hard up for cash. So yes, her “problems” could be easily dismissed as privilege but the themes she explores in this book will resonate to a greater or lesser extent with most Western women.

 

“I had never sought to much choice for myself, and when I found myself with total sexual freedom, I was unhappy.”  Of course the paradox is that women never truly have “total sexual freedom” as we are still judged by the standards of the Patriarchy.  For example, Witt reveals that she had the notion that the more sex she had the less likely she was going to find love.  This idea is deeply embedded in Western culture but Witt reveals just how ludicrous it is.  “The arbitrary nature of these correlations had not occurred to me.”

 

Ideas that are so deeply held for so long are not always easy to abandon and Witt admits, “I still half-expected that destiny would meet me halfway, that in the middle of all the uncertainty I would come across an exit ramp that would lead me back to all the comfortable expectations.” Yet she throws herself into the ‘Brave New World’ of sex and sexuality–sometimes with abandon, (Burning Man) and sometimes not.

 

There is more to Future Sex than one woman’s journey – Witt is first and foremost a journalist and she takes time to research the background to the various subjects she encounters and manages to relate it back to the reader without obtruding in her own story.  I was fascinated to discover that the first internet dating sites were designed specifically to appeal to women because “recruiting men had never been a problem.” She charts visits to a porn shoot, a video sex chat site Chaturbate (to paraphrase Larry Gogan, the clue is in the name) and documents the Polyamorous relationship of Elizabeth, Wes and Chris. 

 

Polyamory is a fairly recent term for used to be called ‘Open Relationships’.  Wes, Chris and Elizabeth sometimes worked 60-70 hours a week and apart from their triangle had other regular lovers and one-night stands.  To be honest, I was exhausted just reading about it.  Besides, for all the sex, there seemed to be a lot of talking involved and not much fun.

 

Witt writes in a that very American formal journalistic way which can be hard going for those used to a more casual style.  However, I’d urge readers to hang in there as she has many valid points and some wonderful insights.  The chapter on ‘Birth Control and Reproduction’ was, for me, the most interesting.  For example, while there have been “breakthroughs in everything from theoretical physics to decoding the human genome” during the past 40 years there has been and no significant change in contraception.  This sad fact, (current contraceptive choices are far from perfect), says far more about women in the present, let alone in the future. Well worth a read.     

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/exploring-brave-new-world-of-sex-and-sexuality-35441594.html

Grip Lit
Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Review: Behind Her Eyes

 

by Sarah Pinborough

 

The Sunday Independent

 

29/01/16

 

At first glance the plot of Behind Her Eyes seems like rackety, third-rate Chick Lit.  Lonely single mother Louise finally meets a man who “gets” her but after a drunken snog he pulls away.  A short while later, to her absolute horror, she discovers that David is not only her new boss, but also married to the extremely beautiful Adele (who puts everyone in mind of Angelina Jolie.) 

 

But this is not Chick Lit and although it’s extremely gripping it’s not classic Grip Lit either.  Pinborough’s latest book is a skilful blend of genres which only the most talented writer could carry off.  The action unfolds from the perspectives of both Adele and Louise with flashback’s to Adele’s troubled past. 

 

Initially David and Louise behave as professionals but soon they are having a full-blown affair, facilitated in part by the fact that Louise’s young son Adam is on an extended holiday with his father.  Adele is aware of the affair and engineers a meeting with Louise and in no time at all they become best friends.  Louise is torn as she feels genuine love for both David and Adele and her life becomes very complicated.  “I’m a mess of secrets.”

 

One thing that unites Louise and Adele is that they both suffer from night terrors.  Adele was institutionalised after both her parents died in a house fire and another patient, Rob, passed along his journal which contained a method to overcome the bad dreams.  As Louise practices this method a supernatural element gradually emerges but Pinborough’s genius is to make this development seem totally natural. 

 

While Louise is a simple straight-forward character, Adele is just the opposite.  The reader knows that she has plans but we are never sure what her motivations are.  She loves her husband obsessively but is he really the nice guy Louise thinks he is?  Is Adele a woman living under the yoke of domestic tyranny?  Is Louise just another in a long line of women to be used and abused by David?  Or is she Adele’s victim?  David and Adele share a murky past – the death of Adele’s parents was convenient for both of them as they never approved of David, and she was left a very wealthy woman. 

 

As the narrative moves forward the tension keeps building right until the end.  No doubt readers and reviewers alike are going to rave about the massive double-whammy of a twist.  You’ll get no argument here, the twist is brilliant, but even more so because the characters, even the unknowable Adele, and the seemingly mercurial David, are so well drawn and real.

 

I read this book in a fever and could not put it down.  Funnily enough, given that part of the plot is about dreams, I also dreamt about it. I defy anyone who reads it not to be tempted to attempt ‘lucid dreaming.’  If they can actually put the book down for long enough to sleep.

 

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/books-mess-of-secrets-with-a-big-twist-35404213.html

Bestselling author Cathy Kelly
Bestselling author Cathy Kelly

Feast Your Eyes on the Best Festive Book Guide

 

The world may have rocked on its axis in 2016 but literature proved as enduring and uplifting as ever, Anne Marie Scanlon asked some well-known book lovers to select their best reads of the year.

 

The Sunday Independent

 

 

11/12/16

 

Cathy Kelly, bestselling author.

 

If more people had read Jodi Piccoult’s Small Great Things, (Hodder & Stoughton) then racist Mr. Trump might not have got in.  In this novel, Piccoult writes from the point of view of a gifted African-American nurse/midwife who cares for a white supremacist’s baby in a small hospital. After the baby dies, she is put on trial for the child’s murder and race – what it means to be Black in the US -  is centre stage. Utterly compelling.

 

Dr. Harry Barry is one of Ireland’s foremost experts in depression and anxiety in people of all ages, deals with our modern bugbears in Flagging Anxiety and Panic, (Liberties Press) his fifth book dealing with stress.  Dr. Barry gives readers workable solutions. A must-have for all homes, like his brilliant Flagging the Screenager which is for both parents with teenagers.

 

Jilly Cooper is a legend; like the glorious horses she writes about in Mount! (Transworld) her latest blockbuster to feature the fabulous Rupert Campbell-Black, his darling wife Taggie, and a whole host of people – some vulnerable, some behaving very badly indeed. Give this to someone for Christmas and they will love you for it. Just don’t expect any cooking done.  Fabulous, sexy and written with Jilly’s customary brilliance.

 

Cathy Kelly’s current book, Secrets of a Happy Marriage (Orion) is out now.

 

 

 

David Murphy, RTE’s business editor and co-author of Banksters.   

 

Nutshell, Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape) is a novella narrated by a foetus who overhears his mother and her lover plotting the murder of the unborn's father. I was hooked from the first page - it came from a unique perspective. There are echoes of Hamlet but it's done with subtlety.

Family Life, Akhil Sharma (Faber & Faber) is the story of a family tragedy, which shaped the upbringing of boy from India whose family relocate to the US, deservedly won the International Dublin Literary Award whose long-list is nominated by libraries worldwide. You knew you were reading the real thing - it 's fiction solidly grounded in personal experience.

Finally, The Wolf Wilder, Katherine Rundell (Bloomsbury) is a book aimed at 9-12 year olds which I looked at because I was on the board of Children's Books Ireland. I found the story quite gripping: it centres on a young girl in Russia whose mother trains pet wolves - all the rage among aristocrats - to acclimatise to the wild. It has a strong female heroine and a kind-to-animals theme, what's not to like? 

 

 

Alex Barclay, Crime Writer

 

All We Shall Know, Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland) will forever be a special book to me; I was miserable, stressed, and unwilling to give myself a break, literal or otherwise, when the proof arrived. But I brake for Donal Ryan. I started reading. It was just so stunning, and so melancholic. The happiness I felt – which I really needed to feel at the time – was in being reminded of the power and beauty of words in the right hands. And as the story unfolded, there was further joy to be found in the quiet humanity and heart that is this gorgeous, shining thread through all of Donal’s work.

 

With Little Bones, (TWENTY7) Sam Blake had me at the premise: “baby bones found in the hem of a wedding dress”. Grim, intriguing, inspired. Little Bones is also a lesson in how to create a really likeable crime fiction heroine, and match her to a clever, layered plot. Add to that a superb, shocker ending, and this one has everything.

 

More recently, for research, I picked up It Didn’t Start With You, Mark Wolynn (Viking) – it’s a fascinating insight into epigenetics, and how family trauma can impact on later generations.

 

Alex Barclay’s latest book The Drowning Child (Harper Collins) is currently in bookshops.

 

 

Mike McCormack, Novelist.

 

I loved E.M. Reapy's Red Dirt (Head of Zeus). This is the book which spills the beans on the young Irish emigrant experience in Australia. Her tale of drink and drugs and fatal mischance is driven along by crackling energy and a brilliant ear for dialogue. The pages keep turning and it is only when the book is completed that the reader gets to sit back and marvel at how skilfully the author has told her tale. A terrific debut. 

Nothing came near Mia Gallagher’s Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island Books) for bravery and ambition this year. A skillful and fearless exploration of place, time and identity - it grapples the big themes to its heart. This is the Irish novel whose reputation will grow in the coming years.  A new generation of Irish writers may well take their lead from it. 

Finally, something about the dry, cagey intimacy of Rachel Cusk's Transit (Jonathan Cape) kept me riveted on a long flight to San Francisco....beautiful and curious and compelling.

 

Solar Bones, Mike McCormick (Tramp Press) is currently on sale.

 

 

Keelin Shanley, Broadcaster.

 

My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout (Viking) is a really interesting study of a mother daughter relationship. Very simply written but a complex story with abuse and hints of a very dark past. It also deals with memory and the difficulty of looking back and understanding a past that the protagonist has escaped. 

Operation Thunderbolt - Flight 139 and the raid on Entebbe, Saul David (Hodder) is an intriguing account of the hijacking of an Air France jet en route from Tel Aviv to Paris in 1976. The plane landed at Entebbe airport in Uganda where Idi Amin facilitated the hostage takers. David has gone back to original sources and writes an almost novelistic account of the audacious operation launched by Israeli security forces which rescued most of the hostages. There are fascinating insights into Israeli politics especially around the role of Benjamin Netanyahu's older brother Yonatan who was killed during the operation.  Hailed as a hero his legacy was instrumental in the rise to power of his younger brother. David details how rather than being a military hero, he very nearly destroyed the mission.

Another extraordinary novel from Donal Ryan. As soon as you pick up All We Shall Know (Doubleday Ireland) you're pulled into an intense story of a failed marriage and a relationship between a teacher and a teenage traveller.

 

 

E.M. Reapy, author and winner of The Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year book award 2016 for her debut Red Dirt.

 

Solar Bones, Mike McCormack (Tramp Press) is poetic, poignant and innovative. In this love story between a man and his wife, his family, his place, McCormack makes the ordinary extraordinary.

 

The Pier Falls, Mark Haddon (Jonathan Cape) is an enthralling short story collection; dark, immersive stories with lots of action. The writing is tight and inspiring.

 

I loved Sofia's narrative voice in Hot Milk Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton) and the scene stealing side characters. An eccentric, well crafted story.

 

Red Dirt (Head of Zeus) is available in paperback.

 

 

Journalist and author Martina Devlin.  

 

The Years That Followed, Catherine Dunne (Macmillan).  There’s an intensity to this novel that draws in the reader: seduction, betrayal and revenge – themes don’t come much more primal. Inspired by Greek myth, this is a modern retelling of a classic revenge story set against Cyprus, Spain and Ireland. It follows the fortunes of two women escaping from difficult home lives, but vulnerable in their new surroundings. You can smell the Mediterranean as you read.

Any new Jennifer Johnston book is a cause for celebration in my view. Her latest Naming The Stars (Tinder Press).is a novella about festering secrets and keeping up appearances. Two elderly ladies – employer and employee, although their relationship is characterised by longstanding affection – live in an imposing period house which has seen better days and “have a row over their dinner one night,” as Jennifer describes it. That argument ventilates a hurt from the past. The novella is published in conjunction with one of my favourite earlier novels, ‘Two Moons’.

I’ve bought half a dozen copies of Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent (Penguin Ireland) because any time someone drops by, takes it off my shelves and reads a few lines, they’re hooked instantly and beg to borrow it. This is a taut, gripping, psychological thriller, with vivid storytelling – no wonder I swallowed it in one gulp. Obsessional mother love is the disturbing motif at its core.

Martina’s latest novel About Sisterland (Poolbeg) is currently on sale.

 

 

Liz Nugent, author and winner of RTE Radio 1 The Ryan Tubridy Show Listeners’ Choice Award 2016 for Lying in Wait.

 

Two similarly titled and wonderful but totally different books by women caught my attention this year.  My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout (Viking) examines the life of a woman as she is visited in a New York hospital by her estranged mother. Our unreliable narrator tells her story with such subtlety and emotional disconnection that the result is compelling. A short, one-day read, more of the story here is in what is not written.

 

My Name is Leon Kit de Waal (Viking) will tear the heart out of you. Our eponymous hero is a mixed-race nine-year-old boy whose white brother is adopted when their mother goes off the rails. Leon is placed in foster-care but cannot forget his attachment to his baby brother. Set in 80’s England with the backdrop of race riots and a royal wedding, this debut novel reads as the work of a much more experienced hand.

 

Days Without End, Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber) is the story of Irish boy Thomas McNulty and his lover John Cole forced into army life by poverty in 1850s America (after a short bout as cross dressing entertainers). It is extremely brutal in places with descriptions of violence that still haunt me, but the sweet naiveté of these young men who barely know nor care for what they are fighting has us rooting for them and their surrogate Indian child as the tension racks up to the final page.

 

Lying in Wait (Penguin Ireland) is currently on sale.

 

 

Author John Connolly, casts his eye towards the coming year.

 

Two of the most interesting books I read this year will be published in January 2017 but each is worthy of a post-Yule book token.  Defender, G.X. Todd (Headline) is quite a remarkable debut novel, a violent dystopian fantasy set in a near-future United States driven to its knees by violence incited by mysterious voices in people’s heads.  After the recent election, it suddenly starts to seem somewhat prescient.  

 

Meanwhile, I predict that the twist to Sarah Pinborough’s thriller Behind Her Eyes, (Harper Collins) likely to be one of 2017’s bestsellers, will divide mystery fans, and is therefore all the more fun for it.  

 

Finally, some words in defence of The Pigeon Tunnel, John le Carré’s anecdotal memoir, (Viking) which appears to have underwhelmed critics who were expecting the author to spill the beans on his espionage career.  I found The Pigeon Tunnel to be the literary equivalent of sharing a good lunch with a raconteur, and was quite happy to have le Carré offer his memories of Alec Guinness and Richard Burton, and the unmasking of the traitor Kim Philby, as though over a glass of sherry.  If we finish the book knowing little more of le Carré himself than we did going in, then so be it.  Writers, like spies, should have their secrets."

 

John Connolly’s latest book Game of Ghosts will be published in April 2017

 

 

Zig & Zag, aliens from the planet Zog.

 

HISTOROPEDIA, Fatti and John Burke (Gill)

We are big fans of Fatti’s coo-el drawings and John’s boffin stuff. It’s a big book full of facts, figures and illustrations. If you liked their mega Irelandopedia, you’ll love this one too! It’s funny and you actually learn stuff. However, we would like to point out our one gripe; we don’t get a mention! What’s up with that Fatti? We’re much easier to draw than Bosco, who gets two mentions!

 

Santa Claude, Alex T Smith (Hodder Children’s Books)

We love all the Claude books – the beret wearing dog and his sidekick Sir Bobblysock are barking bonkers! This is a great one for this Christmas (and every other Christmas to come!) It’s all about Claude and Sir Bobblysock thinking they’ve caught a burglar when in fact they’ve handcuffed Santa and now they’ve lost the key. So they have to save Christmas! Oh, Claude you’ve done it again!

 

The Darkest Dark, Astronaut Chris Hadfield (Macmillan Children’s Books)

We kinda feel sorry for Chris Hadfield as he only ever got as a far as a space station, not even to the moon, let alone Mars or our home planet Zog. But we do like his new book about Chris when he was little and dreamed of one day going to space…which he did. It’s a book about following your dreams, which is kinda what we did when we left our home planet to travel to Earth in search of jokes back in 1987. FYI- Still the best Earth joke ever – ‘What’s red and invisible?’ No Tomato! Ha!

 

Zig & Zag can be seen on CBBC.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/feast-your-eyes-on-the-best-festive-book-guide-35282399.html

Books, Reading, Writing, Novels, Autism
Harmony by Carolyn Pankhurst

Review: Harmony

 

by Carolyn Parkhurst

 

 

Commissioned by The Sunday Independent. 

 

Thirteen-year-old Tilly Hammond, is one of three intertwined narrators in Harmony.  Her commentary on the events as they unfold is like her - smart, funny and sarcastic. Tilly is atypical, ‘on the spectrum’ (given to swearing and inappropriate sexual references) yet has no confirmed diagnosis. 

 

Iris, Tilly’s 11-year-old sister relates events as they happen while Alexandra the girls’ mother reports the family’s shared history.  Author Parkhurst manages to convey the relentless stress of being a mother to an atypical child.  The physical and mental strain placed upon Alexandra, her husband Joshua and Iris is enormous.

 

Like most parents Alexandra is willing to try anything to keep her child safe and happy.  Thus the Hammonds along with the Gough and Ruffin families, throw in their lot with charismatic ‘parenting expert’ Scott Bean.  As a collective, they go off grid and form ‘Camp Harmony’ a self-sustaining commune for families with special needs children.  Don’t be fooled though Harmony isn’t just about children with special needs – it’s about society, about how normal people under pressure will do odd things, it’s about love and desperation. 

 

The three interwoven narratives work extremely well and the plot unfolds in a gripping way.  However, the twist Parkhurst attempts with the ending just doesn’t work and after such a thrilling read it’s a bit of a let down.  Although this is a shame it doesn’t spoil what is a well written, thought-provoking and highly entertaining read.   

Dandy Gilver and a Most Misleading Habit by Catriona McPherson
Dandy Gilver and a Most Misleading Habit by Catriona McPherson

Review: Dandy Gilver & a Most Misleading Habit

 

by Catriona McPherson

 

 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

02/10/16

 

Author Catriona McPherson isn’t as well known to crime fans as Val McDermid or the late P.D. James but she should be.

 

Her series of novels following the adventures of private detective Dandy Gilver, set in the interwar years, are hugely enjoyable.  Dandy is an upper middle class, middle aged Scottish lady, but she’s no tweedy Miss Marple type.  She has a husband and two sons who remain in the background whilst she and her more level-headed partner Alec Osborne tackle investigations.

 

Dandy Gilver and a Most Misleading Habit is the eleventh Dandy book and, like the heroine, is a lot of fun.  Dandy has taken up residence in an isolated convent on the bleak Lanark Moor in an attempt to discover who has been disturbing the nuns.  Is it one of the missing inmates who broke out of the insane asylum on New Years Eve?  Or is it an inside job? 

 

A Most Misleading Habit combines great storytelling with the style of the ‘Golden Age’ of crime writing (along with the wryness of retrospect) to prove that historical fiction does not need to contain codpieces and peevish kings.  The period detail is meticulous but not overbearing.  Like previous Dandy novels the pleasure comes, not from the big reveal at the end, but from the progress of the story itself.  And Dandy herself is always a joy. 

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/mcewans-in-fine-foetal-form-and-one-dandy-new-crime-novel-35093519.html

Review: No Plus One: What to do when life isn't a romantic comedy.

 

by Steph Young &

Jill Dickman

 

 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

25/9/16

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

 

"Buying lingerie felt pointless as I didn’t have a man to wear it for.”  If that isn’t a depressing sentence, I don’t know what is.  No Plus One: What to do when life isn’t a Romantic Comedy starts out well with the author describing her gradual break from Mormonism. 

 

Later she hilariously describes how she was convinced that she and her very first boyfriend would get married and have a family that sang and danced. “We’d be like the Osmonds but less weird.” 

 

However, there are two authors and despite this the book is written in the first person. The Self-Help genre is one that is based on trust – the reader trusts that the writer is an authority on the subject.  Now plenty of self-improvement manuals have been written by two, or even more, authors, but they usually differentiate themselves in the text. 

 

By speaking with one voice Young and Dickman have done themselves and their readers a disservice.  They’ve devalued their authority as their combined experiences become overwhelming when related as happening to one person.

 

And, I was constantly trying to guess who was speaking – Jill or Steph, which is distracting. 

 

The advice is sound and it will kill you to hear bright young American women say the same thing your Mammy has always said - buck up, dress up and keep your head held high.  And, buy lingerie just because it’s nice to wear.  The author(s) realises as much, which is certainly a step in the right direction.

 

http://www.independent.ie/life/selfhelp-no-plus-one-by-steph-young-and-jill-dickman-35073810.html

Tana French, The Secret Place, Books, Reading, Writing
Tana French, The Trespasser

Review: The Trespasser

 

by Tana French

 

 

 

The Sunday Independent 18/9/16

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

 

Tana French’s last book The Secret Place was a complex mystery that evolved over two separate timelines a year apart.  There were multiple points of view and several would-be killers in the mix.  By contrast The Trespasser is very simple and straightforward in terms of timeline, crime and possible suspects.  The action occurs over a few days.  A young woman, Aislinn, has been killed in her glossy magazine-perfect home.  The cause of death is no mystery - she has been punched in the face, fell and hit her head.  There is only one suspect.  Despite the simplicity of the plot this is vintage Tana French and thus gripping. 

 

This is French’s sixth novel about the Murder Squad and like all the others it focuses in on a peripheral character from the previous work, in this case ball-breaking Antoinette Conway.  It’s nothing short of understatement to call Antoinette complex and from her point of view French is able to examine much of what modern Irish women have to tolerate. Antoinette faces a daily round of institutional sexism, racism and misogyny made worse by the fact that none of it exists officially.  While Antoinette is extremely good at her job she is harassed to the point of a colleague urinating in her locker. 

 

French also examines the relationship between fathers and daughters and what happens when that relationship goes wrong.  Antoinette and victim Aislinn, despite surface differences, have a lot in common.   With the character of Aislinn, French firmly shows that few people can successfully exert control over their own destiny.  The very modern idea that an individual can command the universe to do their bidding is revealed as a dangerous fallacy.  Aislinn is a poster girl for self-help.  She took “control”, turned her home into a picture from a magazine, lost weight, dyed her hair and transformed herself from an unattractive teen into a woman men desire. Aislinn attempts not just to manage her future, but also her past.  Yet, despite all of her careful planning she ends up dead. 

 

The Secret Place captured brilliantly the claustrophobia of a girls boarding school.  In The Trespasser French creates a different claustrophobic environment – the Murder Squad is a boy’s club, but Antoinette has also closed in upon herself, has hemmed herself in even more than her colleagues ever could.  Another gripping tale, beautifully told, by a woman at the top of her game.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/lose-yourself-in-absorbing-family-saga-and-a-vintage-french-thriller-35055059.html

The Darkest Secret, Alex Marwood
The Darkest Secret, Alex Marwood

Review: The Darkest Secret 

 

by Alex Marwood

 

Thriller: 

 

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

written for The Sunday Independent 

 

With her third physiological thriller Alex Marwood has proved beyond any doubt that her name belongs alongside those of established crime fiction writers. 

 

The Darkest Secret is a page turner centred around the disappearance of three-year-old twin Coco.  She and her sister Ruby, had been in Bournemouth for the fiftieth birthday celebrations of their father the extremely wealthy Sean Jackson.  

 

The guests that weekend included Sean’s second wife, the twins mother Claire, his two daughters from his first marriage, his old school pals Charles, a Tory MP with his adoring wife Imogen and Robert a lawyer who runs a successful PR/Reputation Management business with his second wife Maria.  The guests also include Sean’s future third and fourth wives, the latter Simone, Robert’s daughter who loves Sean with all the fervour only a teenage girl could, and Linda, Sean’s interior decorator along with her partner Jimmy a doctor who tours with rock bands and “looks as though he plays in a tribute act that tours caravan sites.”  Between them the adults have a gaggle of children who are largely ignored. 

 

The dual narrative shifts from the events of the fateful weekend when Coco simply vanishes and twelve years later when Sean dies, and the principal players in the drama all reassemble for his funeral.  The later action is all described from the perspective of Sean’s second daughter Camilla, known as Mila, who lives the aimless life of a Chelsea ‘Trustafarian’. 

 

Despite her lifestyle Mila is a sharp cookie and has some great lines.  Sean’s death has made headlines and Mila hopes that journalists will stay away from the graveside as “it’ll be like being picketed by Westboro Baptists.” Mila is under no illusions about her father and when Maria tells her that he “adored” her she wryly notes “this is how death works.  I remember Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness sucking down great gulps of crocodile tears for the press after Ian Paisley died.”

 

Marwood (a pseudonym) is a journalist and it shows.  The writing is tight, the characters well defined (and nobody in the establishment gets away without a good drubbing) and the plotting near perfect.  There are echoes of the Madeleine McCann case but this is a different and original story, one which keeps grabbing the reader and shaking them, right up to the very end. 

Century Books, Tony Parsons, Hanging Club,
The Hanging Club, Tony Parsons

 

 

Review: The Hanging Club by Tony Parsons

 

Thriller: Century

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent 10/07/2016

 

 

 

Detective Max Wolfe is back in Tony Parson’s third crime novel The Hanging Club. This time Wolfe and his team have to contend with a group of vigilantes who are administering the death penalty to criminals they think the law was too soft on.  The first victim, an Asian cab driver, was convicted for being part of a ‘grooming’ gang.  The second is a wealthy businessman who killed a young child whilst driving drunk and the third is a junkie who effectively ended the life of a World War 2 veteran.  The fourth victim… well I won’t spoil it.

 

The Hanging Club of the title broadcast these ‘executions’ on line and, despite their horrific nature, the families of the original victims and the public in general are on their side.  Wolfe and his colleagues find themselves classed as ‘bad guys’ defending the indefensible and protecting the villains. 

 

This isn’t as gripping as Parson’s last book The Slaughter Man, partly because you get the sense that Parson’s himself is conflicted.  Even the sub plot with Wolfe’s old friend, an ex-Army guy, fallen on hard times, doesn’t quite have the suspense it should.  Despite these flaws The Hanging Club is still a good yarn.  It’s also a love letter from Parsons to the city of London and the best bits of the book are when he (and Wolfe) explore the hidden layers of the city, the bits of history that are still there in bricks and mortar but hidden beneath the façade of modernity. 

Fargo
Noah Hawley author of Before The Fall

Unravelling the puzzle after a fatal flight

 

Thriller: Before The Fall, Noah Hawley, Hodder & Stoughton, €19.50

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent 19/06/2016

 

 

 

There are some books, for example Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings that stay with you long after you’ve read them.  The characters are so real and because of this their fates matter.  Before The Fall by Noah Hawley is one of these books. 

 

On a foggy August evening a private plane takes off from Martha’s Vineyard bound for Manhattan.  There are eleven people on board, media tycoon David Bateman, his wife Maggie who “was a preschool teacher not so long ago, living in a six-story walk-up, with two mean girls, like Cinderella,” and their two children 9-year-old Rachel and JJ, four; Ben Kipling a prominent Wall Street banker and his wife Sarah who wonders about herself “was she staying alive now just to move money around?” 

 

The passenger list is completed by two middle aged men - struggling painter Scott Burroughs who has hitchhiked a lift and Gil, the Israel who provides “domestic security” for the Batemans. There are three crew, pilot James Melody, first officer Charlie Busch and flight attendant Emma Lightner.  

 

Sixteen minutes after take off the plane hits the water and only two people – Scott and JJ survive the crash.  What follows is a multi layered narrative that follows the events after the crash, how Scott managed an epic 8-hour swim which ensured his and JJ’s survival, the investigations to determine why the flight crashed and the media circus that soon surrounds the tragedy. 

 

Interspersed with the ‘after’ Hawley relates the ‘before’, of each character.  As the author states “everyone is from someplace.  We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.” Each person on the plane is so  fully realised that the reader cannot but care about each of them. In many ways this mirrors a real-life tragedy, when the public become intimately acquainted with the lives of dead strangers.

 

Before the Fall is, broadly, a thriller -  the investigations (both FBI and Homeland Security) to find out why the plane crashed – was it pilot error, mechanical failure, industrial espionage or terrorist plot, is engrossing and gripping.  But there is much more to this novel than the unravelling of a puzzle. 

 

Hawley paints an excruciatingly accurate picture of modern American life, from the crazily rich to the illegal immigrant cabbies and especially 24-hour news media.  David Bateman runs  ALS, a news channel where “nothing was simple except for the message.”   (In ALS editorialising and opinion have replaced facts.)  The star turn at ALS is Bill Milligan “an angry white guy with withering wit,” When Scott Burroughs saves the life of four-year-old JJ he is immediately hailed as a hero.  Everyone wants his story but Scott isn’t keen on the idea of instant celebrity and goes into hiding. 

 

Despite that Ben Kipling was about to be indicted by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and Milligan himself has been phone tapping (something that David Bateman found out the weekend he died) the right-wing pundit decides to focus his own “investigation” on Scott.  The painter was never meant to be on the plane, he is not rich and, with the logic of an old-style ‘Witch Trial’ he survived.

 

This novel is beautifully written. When the puzzle surrounding the crash is solved it is heartwrenching.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/unravelling-the-puzzle-after-a-fatal-flight-34810966.html

Charlie Parker
John Connolly, A Time of Torment

Review: A Time of Torment, John Connolly

 

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent 15/05/2016

 

 

There are no bit parts in a John Connolly novel.  No matter how lowly the player nor how brief their appearance Connolly takes time to flesh them out and make them matter.  This is only a part of what makes Connolly a master storyteller and A Time of Torment, his 14th outing with ‘the detective’ Charlie Parker is as fresh and inventive as his first. 

Parker has evolved over the course of all the intervening books and he is, in many ways, more unknowable and intriguing than ever. 

 

Few, if any other, writers could weave action, thriller, social commentary, the supernatural and, at times, laugh out loud, humour into a cohesive narrative but Connolly delivers all those and much more in A Time of Torment. 

At the heart of the tale is ‘The Cut’ a community not unlike that of Prosperous in The Wolf in Winter, who live apart from the rest of society and operate by their own rules.  (They're like a cross between The Amish and Jonestown.)  The Cut answer to no one except the very strange entity that they worship - a being seldom heard of outside their world but greatly feared by the few who know of it.   

 

The Cut fund their self-sufficiency with ‘ranging’ – raiding and robbing people who live outside their community.  When Jerome Burnel unwittingly crosses the insular group his entire life is upended and he is successfully framed for possessing child pornography. 

When Burnel is released from jail, a broken man, (in all senses), he knows he won’t have long to live so he pre-emptively hires Charlie Parker to find out who, and why, he was set up. 

 

Parker along with regular companions Louis and Angel delve into the strange community - there is redemption for some, death and damnation for others.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/crime-a-time-of-torment-by-john-connolly-34712777.html

Sara Pascoe, Comedian, Feminism
Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body.

Comedian’s funny and wise take on the female body

 

 

Animal: The Autiobiography of a Female Body, Sara Pascoe, Faber & Faber 20.55

 

Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent 01/05/2016

 

 

It isn’t news of any sort that we, modern man (as it were), are basically prehistoric creatures living in a world that our bodies and brains were not designed for.  While civilisation and technology has evolved at an ever-quickening pace, our bodies are still those of basic cave men and women. With this in mind comedian Sara Pascoe has written her first book, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body. 

 

Given the woman’s day job this isn’t a dry scholarly work but it does contain a fair bit of research as Pascoe tries to understand if “perhaps our cultures, religions and societal pressures had concealed our animal natures, even from ourselves.”  Pascoe does her best to break down the science-y bits for her reader.  There lies one of the problems, Pascoe uses words like ‘science-y’ which makes her sound like a 14-year old school girl rather than a woman of 34.  She should learn to trust herself more, as she’s very good at breaking down what can be confusing, or frankly dull, information about hormones and basic instincts.  Some her writing style is extremely irritating – crossing out words to make a joke.  For example, an hour after giving birth “Could you run from a scary zombie vampire predator?”

 

Similarly, the diversions that work so well when spoken as a stand up don’t make the transition to the written word.  You can see what she’s trying to do and on stage, with the appropriate tone and gestures, no doubt some of these asides would be hilarious. On the page, like the crossed out words they’re just irritating. 

 

The best bits are when Pascoe delves into her own life for examples of what she’s talking about.  Her description of her first love at 16 and it’s all consuming nature is funny, familiar and heart breaking.  Leaving aside all the books and research she’s done on her subject – the female human body, Pascoe is genuinely wise as when she notes “There’s such a personal shame in being cheated on, like you failed by not being enough to share.”

 

It was during this first ‘big’ relationship that Pascoe became pregnant and she is so honest about what happened that it should be mandatory reading for every teenager who is having sex.  The comic had an abortion on the morning of her 17th birthday and actually takes time to try to get the readers to understand the perspective of the protestors outside the clinic.  Yet, she is no apologist. "A woman like myself - if I am pregnant and I don't want to be, it's top trumps and I win...if you want fewer abortions (help) women who don't want to be pregnant."

Don't let the silly bits put you off.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/comedians-funny-and-wise-take-on-the-female-body-34691862.html

 

Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic
Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic To The Rescue

Shopaholic returns with a wild road trip to Las Vegas

 

 

The Shopaholic is back - words that might inspire both joy and terror in the most ardent of Sophie Kinsella’s fans.  It’s fifteen long years since spendthrift Becky Bloomwood charmed readers and critics alike in Confessions of a Shopaholic.  Since then there have been many sequels that have both pained and delighted fans.  (Let’s not even mention Shopaholic and Sister). 

 

In Shopaholic to the Rescue Becky is now married to hunky Luke Brandon, has a two year old daughter Minnie and is based in L.A.  Becky along with husband, child and a cast worthy of Ben Hur (Becky’s Mum, her Mum’s best friend, Becky’s best friend Suze, her worst enemy Alicia Bitch Long Legs and Danny, a top fashion designer, who despite being so in demand, can just take off on a whim apparently) have taken to the road in an R.V. (Recreational Vehicle) to track down her father who has departed on a mysterious quest along with Suze’s husband Tarquin. 

 

En route they encounter many many more characters and there are various plots involved and none of them bear too much scrutiny least of all the fact that Becky can no longer bear to shop.  Becky is feeling guilty, unworthy and introspective and not a word of it is convincing. Her child Minnie is also the best behaved two year old anyone could hope to meet - she spends miles upon miles on US highways in a vehicle stuffed with adults and never a cross word, a tantrum or an ‘accident’ of some sort. 

 

However, the most fanatical of Kinsella’s devotees and anyone who can suspend disbelief for an extended period of time might well enjoy it.  The descriptions of the lovely hot places the crew visit like Las Vegas and Sedona are just the tonice for rain-battered Irish readers.  And Kinsella, despite some of the plot limitations, is very funny.  Her digs at New Ageiness fall short of satire but they’re still good for a giggle.  “Wow.  I didn’t realise Sedona had age-old vortexes.  Let alone mystic forces  I glance around the hotel lobby, half-hoping to see evidence of a mystic force, but all I can see in an old lady tapping at her iPad.  Maybe you have to go outside.”  Both the road trip and the adventure conclude with an Ocean’s Eleven style ‘heist’ at the Bellagio.  

 

Fun but frustrating.

 

http://www.independent.ie/life/shopaholic-returns-with-a-wild-road-trip-to-las-vegas-34611169.html

The Widow, Fiona Barton
The Widow, Fiona Barton

Books: Rip-roaring read that will keep you on your toes.

 

* The Widow, Fiona Barton, Bantam Press €20.

 

The Sunday Independent 26/2/16

 

Since it began the ‘Grip Lit’ genre has been characterized by girls – they’re gone, on trains and wearing red coats.  It’s a sign of the genre’s growing maturity that The Widow is a grown woman. 

 

Yet in many ways, Jeanie, the wife and widow of the title is still a girl.  Jeanie married Glen aged 19 and has spent her married life placating and deferring to her husband, a man who likes to be in control.  And that was OK by Jeanie because “it felt so safe being loved by Glen.”

 

But now that Glen has died Jeanie finds herself under scrutiny by the press because before his death Glen was accused and tried for the abduction of still missing ‘Baby Bella’. 

When the details of Glen’s "hobby" and secret life were revealed at the trial Jeanie has to suddenly grow up and take a good look at the man she thought she knew, the man she sacrificed everything for – especially her desire for a child. 

 

Jeanie’s certainty and safety are shattered.  Glen’s secrets have been exposed but Jeanie has a few of her own.  The Widow is a stunning debut by journalist Fiona Barton.  Apart from being a classic ‘Grip Lit’ page turner The Widow has tapped into a perennial part of the public consciousness. For every married man that is tried in a court of law there’s a woman being tried in the court of public opinion.  “She must have known,” is a common refrain.  Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted in 1981 and Sonia Sutcliffe’ (his wife at the time) is still almost as infamous as he is despite the fact that she was never accused of a crime.

 

Barton has obviously done her research and doesn’t hold back on the (often cynical) workings of the press, the police and even the public. “A neighbour tells a reporter that Glen had ‘evil eyes’.  He had nice eyes actually,” Jeanie muses.  

 

The Widow is also a highly accurate portrayal of the nature of denial and delusion and the lies people tell themselves.  The story unfolds via different narrators and evolves over separate timelines – prior to and after Glen’s death.  There are plenty of twists along the way which make it hard to put down.  

 

I read it twice and even the second time round, knowing what was going to happen, I still couldn’t put it down.  I can’t wait for Barton’s next book because this is a woman who knows how to spin a good yarn. 

 

http://www.independent.ie/life/books-riproaring-read-thatll-keep-you-on-your-toes-34489724.html

 

John Connolly Short Stories Night Music Nocturnes Scary Supernatural
John Connolly's second book of short stories, Nocturnes II Night Music

Books: Thrills, chills and blood spills, just in time for Halloween


* The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Stephen King, Hodder & Stoughton €18.99

* Night Music, Nocturnes Vol 2, John Connolly, Hodder & Stoughton €20.99

* Little Sister Death, William Gay, Faber €20.55

* The Loney, Andrew Michael Hurley, John Murray €22.50

* Dark Corners, Ruth Rendell, Hutchinson €17.99

* Splinter the Silence, Val McDermid, Little Brown, €19.99


The Sunday Independent 25/10/2015


Before the advent of television, Halloween was a time when people told each other stories, stories intended to scare, to frighten, to warn and to leave the listener in no doubt that there are things out there beyond understanding.


The short story is the natural successor to this oral tradition and the scary story suits the short form perfectly. Stephen King, a writer who knows how to make the blood tingle and the flesh creep, gives us 20 shorts in The Bazaar of Bad Dreams which reflect his ability to create supernatural horror or show the nastier side of human nature.


Like King, John Connolly is a virtuoso who can go from eerie and threatening to eccentric and funny - sometimes in just one sentence. His second collection of short stories, Night Music, Nocturnes Volume 2, opens with The Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository, about the ur-library where famous literary characters come to life. This marvellous institution, which all book lovers will privately hope is real, also appears in another story later and both are wonderfully funny. In many ways the final story, I Live Here, is the most intriguing - a supposedly true story involving Connolly himself, where he talks about his personal experiences with reading, writing and the supernatural.


For those who like their suspense to last, the Gothic novel is the place to find sustained thrills.  William Gay's 'lost' Gothic novel Little Sister Death is pages and pages of unsettling, sinister stuff. Typically, there's a house at the centre of it all. Writer David Binder becomes intrigued by a famous 'haunted house' and in order to immerse himself in his subject he moves in with his pregnant wife and their small daughter.


Binder's first sight of the house would be enough for most sane people to turn tail and leave.  "A great graywhite bulk looming against the greenback of the riotous summer hills, tall and slate roofed and stately and, he thought instantly, profoundly malefic… Part log, part woodframe, part stone, it seemed to have grown at all angles like something organic turned malignant and perverse before ultimately dying, for Binder saw death in its eyes…" This is not a cosy night-time read.


Nor is The Loney, a stunning debut from Andrew Michael Hurley, a modern Gothic tale, set on the north-west coast of England in 1976.

The Loney of the title is a stretch of the coast overlooked by Moorings, the decrepit house where 15-year-old Tonto, his mute and possibly learning disabled brother Hanny, their very Catholic mother, father and others are staying over Easter.

The group are on a pilgrimage to a local shrine, where Tonto's mother hopes Hanny will be ‘cured'.


Hurley is a master at provoking uneasiness. Hanny's mother is a domestic tyrant with a manic belief in the power of prayer and priests.  The death of the old parish priest haunts everyone on the pilgrimage but in different ways. He died in suspicious circumstances, and what sort of man was he really?  The action unfolds in a series of flashbacks and memories from the now adult Smith (Tonto) and the tone is set immediately when, in the present day, the body of a baby is unearthed on Coldbarrow in the bay of The Loney.


The supernatural isn't the only way to get the adrenaline pumping and psychological thrillers are often more frightening than imaginary ghouls.  Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell are both renowned for documenting the darker side of the human personality.  Sadly, Rendell died earlier this year and Dark Corners is her last book.


Unfortunately, it's far from her finest work with coincidences occurring far too frequently and odd, unresolved plotlines - one featuring an absurd unexplained kidnapping.  Similarly McDermid's latest instalment in the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, Splinter the Silence, will test reader loyalty.  Carol Jordan is invited back to the police and given carte blanche to form her dream team. The plot centres on the very topical subject of cyberbullying and particularly the trolling of outspoken feminists. It's a fascinating subject but the hunt for the killer is a sterile affair using the near magical powers of the team's resident computer whizz.  Val: your fans know you can do better.


Sunday Indo Living


http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/books-thrills-chills-and-blood-spills-just-in-time-for-halloween-34136679.html

Diving into a life of crime for the summer time

* Black-Eyed Susans, Julia Heaberlin, Penguin/Michael Joseph €19.50

* Preserve the dead, Brian Mcgilloway, Corsair €19.99


Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent  03/08/2015


No summer holiday is complete without a juicy crime novel, from classic crime to thriller to police procedural to the currently fashionable 'Grip Lit' (the genre spawned by the success of Gone Girl). Is there any better way to relax than with a bit of murder and mayhem, from the vicarage to the underside of the big city?


Since Jack the Ripper the serial killer, both real and fictional, has exerted a macabre grip on the public imagination. In most cases, when the multiple murderer is caught, his name, and more often his nickname (The Yorkshire Ripper, The Boston Strangler etc.) becomes infamous while the names of the victims are often forgotten.


At 17, Tessie becomes that very rare thing (both in real life and fiction), a victim who survives a serial killer. Julia Heaberlin's powerful debut novel Black Eyed Susans tells Tessie's story through two interweaving timelines.


In the first timeline, it's 1995, and shortly after Tessie has been found alongside the corpse of another young woman in a field of Black-Eyed Susan flowers. These flowers are the killer's signature and his victims have become known as 'The Susans'. As the surviving 'Susan' Tessie is subject to a lot of unwanted attention, from the court system, school-friends, neighbours, counsellors, her therapist, and of course, the media.


The teenage Tessie has been physically and emotionally traumatised by the attack, which she cannot remember. As a result she is angry, resentful and scared as she sees a therapist and tries to remember the facts.


In the present timeframe, Tessie is now called Tessa and is a single parent to teenage daughter, Charlie. She lives as anonymously as she can, safe in the knowledge that the killer is behind bars and that she helped put him there.


Yet Tessa is still haunted by her past and her inability to recall the missing hours between being abducted and found alive. She also hears the voices of the other 'Susans' in her head.


As the execution date looms for Terrell Darcy Goodwin, the man convicted of the ''Susan' killings, Tessa starts having doubts about his guilt. These doubts are exacerbated when she finds a bed of (out of season) Black-Eyed Susans planted outside her bedroom window. How could a killer who is incarcerated send her such a message?


Terrified for her own safety and that of her teenage daughter, Tessa finally agrees to help the group of lawyers who believe Terrell's conviction for the killings was a miscarriage of justice.


The narrative takes a while to get going and that's partly down to a lot of unnecessary and confusing detail about Tessie's grandfather and the extremely odd house he has built. Also, Tessie is hard to warm to being by turns angry, petulant, unco-operative and aggressive. You can't help but feel sorry for the poor therapist who tries to help her recover lost memories and for her ever loyal friend Lydia. But stick with it, because once the story gets going properly Black-Eyed Susans is about as good an example of Grip Lit as you could read.

While Grip Lit has been garnering all the headlines another genre has been quietly growing and slowly seeping into the public consciousness. The slow seepage hasn't been helped by the fact that nobody can agree on a name for it, with both Ulster Noir and Northern Noir being used. Personally I prefer Nordie Noir.

Emerald Noir - Irish crime writing - has been thriving for well over a decade, and while most Northern Irish crime writers have been selling books for years, it's only recently that Brian McGilloway, who has been penning magnificent thrillers since 2007, has started getting the attention he so richly deserves. The fact that his first Lucy Black book made the New York Times bestseller list has helped.


Many crime novels, by their very nature, deal in the past and buried secrets, but McGilloway's latest novel Preserve the Dead (the third Lucy Black novel) is very much about the present - about how society is today.


Though the book is set in Derry, the themes could apply to any modern city as the issues DS Lucy Black addresses and uncovers in the course of her investigation into the body of an already embalmed man found in the river, are very contemporary. Preserve the Dead is like a snapshot of modern society and it's not a pretty picture.


However, McGilloway, as he has proven before, especially with his Inspector Devlin series (set in Donegal) knows how to tell a good yarn and Preserve the Dead is just as engrossing as any 'Grip Lit'.


http://www.independent.ie/life/diving-into-a-life-of-crime-for-the-summer-time-31418967.html

Summer reading has just got more exciting

Anne Marie Scanlon has sorted your holiday reading with a look at what's on the book shelves


The Sunday Independen

08/06/2015 


Not everyone gets to jet off to the sun during the summer holidays, and if you are stuck at home, or somewhere not particularly warm, then pick up Catherine Alliott's latest, Wish You Were Here (Michael Joseph, €12.65). Restaurant reviewer Flora and her doctor husband James have scored a freebie holiday in the villa of famous opera singer Camille. Unfortunately the couple are joined by their large extended family, Flora's first love and the Diva herself (Camille). Alliott's description of the South of France is wonderful and you can almost feel the heat on your face as you turn the pages.



Alliott's Flora is middle-aged as are many of the heroines of the latest crop of fiction. It's about time as thanks to cosmetic enhancements, Pilates and modern makeup the days are gone when women over 35 gently recede into the background.

In Fiona Walker's The Woman Who Fell in Love for a Week, (Sphere, €10.99) Jenny, a professional house sitter, has been divorced for a few years and despite dating Roger is finding it hard to move on. When Jenny begins house-sitting for well-known author Geraldine Scott, and discovers the follow-up to the best-selling book that she and all her teenage friends devoured, she begins to remember passion. But will she act on it? Is the handsome artist Euan even interested in her, or do his loyalties lie with married Geraldine? This is a departure from Walker's usual jolly nice English folk, with jolly nice dogs and horses. There is a dog, Gunther, who is quite mad - in total contrast to buttoned-up Jenny. As this is new territory for Walker it is not without flaws (for a professional house-sitter Jenny seems clumsy and gauche) but, when it comes to the theme of a middle-aged woman starting out again romantically after a long relationship, Walker is bang on the money. Die-hard Walker fans may be disappointed at the lack of horsiness but they should give it a chance.

Like Walker, Marian Keyes is staking out new territory with The Woman Who Stole My Life (Penguin, €10.99). Stella Sweeny is middle-aged and married with two almost-adult children. She and her sister run a successful beauty business and her husband Ryan, who aspired to being an artist, has fallen into being a sought-after bathroom designer. Then Stella becomes ill with a very rare condition and has to spend months in hospital. Her domestic life is shattered and she becomes emotionally attached to her handsome doctor Mannix. Stella's life changes dramatically and then changes yet again. The story is told in two interweaving timelines - from the humbled Stella's position now and what happened to her when she became ill. The characters are classic Keyes, fully rounded and real. Ryan, Stella's husband, is hilarious albeit in a cringe-worthy way. (Most women readers have at some point in their lives entertained a Ryan.) This is a grown up book, sexy and funny and well worth a read.

Rachel Johnson's Fresh Hell (Penguin, €18.99) is the third of Johnson's books set in and around a fictional community garden, surrounded by outrageously priced houses, in Notting Hill (or Notting Hell as the first book was titled). Journalist Mimi Fleming has returned to Lonsdale Gardens after a sojourn in the country with husband Ralph (pronounced Rafe) and their four children. They are now living in a smaller house as Clare, the woman who had Ralph's fifth child, Joe, by IVF, now lives in their old and much missed house. Mimi is having a mid-life crisis and falls, truly, madly and deeply (but mostly madly) in love with another woman, 'Conceptual Artist' Farouche. "Can't you just leave lesbianism to the real lesbians? Are you sure you haven't just been listening to Woman's Hour too long?"

At first glance Johnson seems light and superficial, her targets, the super-rich -"the haves and have yachts", their 'Iceberg' houses (the top is only the tip, they have tunnelled down to create huge basements) and the fads of this elite group are arguably easy targets. But Johnson does a first class job of evoking the panic and obsession that new love brings - no matter what age it happens at. The reader can see Farouche as the ghastly fraud she is but poor Mimi is blinded. Johnson is hilarious but a shocking death near the end shows that she is a talented writer who can go deep when she wants to.

Death is just the start for Rosie Potter in The Happy Ever Afterlife of Rosie Potter (RIP) by Kate Winter (Sphere, €18.99). This is a whimsical book with a great concept. Rosie is dead but her spirit remains, in her hideous pjs, to witness best friend and flatmate Jenny discover her corpse, the arrival of police at her house, their conclusion that she was probably murdered and their subsequent interrogation of her beloved boyfriend Jack. Rosie cannot make her presence felt initially but eventually she discovers how to move objects and communicate with one individual. Rosie doesn't know how she died but she begins a campaign of revenge on the person she thinks responsible. This is Irish writer Winter's debut novel and she would have been better advised to leave it as a lively (or deadly) romp. Instead she has attempted to deal with some darker issues and unfortunately does not yet possess enough skill to successfully marry 'reality' with the comic form. The 'serious stuff' feels like a contrivance and no doubt many readers will be offended by the perceived superficiality.

The latest fad in publishing is what Marian Keyes has dubbed 'Grip Lit' - books like Gone Girl (which I loved) and The Girl on the Train (which I wasn't so gone on). Now popular author Lisa Jewell has turned her hand to a bit of Grip Lit with The Girls (Century, €16.99) and the results are great. I was utterly gripped from the start when Pip discovers the battered body of her not-much-older sister Grace in the communal garden that their flat backs on to. The novel then travels back a year to when the girls and their mother Clare first arrived in the area. The 'girls' doesn't necessarily refer to Pip and her sister, there are other girls who are part of the community garden and some who haunt it. Basically a great read.

As is The Slaughter Man by Tony Parsons (Century, €16.99). This is the second book featuring Detective Max Wolfe. The first, The Murder Bag, was critically acclaimed and popular with readers and this one is even better.

The Slaughter Man of the title is an ex-con who has served his time and is now old and dying, but is he incapable of the brutal murder of an entire family and the abduction of a small child? Or is there a copy cat on the loose? Parsons had me gripped from the first chapter to the last sentence.

All prices quoted are as at time of press and for paperback copies


Sunday Indo Living



http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/summer-reading-has-just-got-more-exciting-31281236.html

A chronicle of changes and a personal journey



Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent

25/05/2015


Kate Atkinson's 2013 novel Life After Life was a genre-defying sensation and that very rare thing - a book that was both popular and met with critical acclaim. Life After Life followed the many incarnations of Ursula Todd who died and was reborn over and over again.


A God in Ruins follows her younger brother Teddy, who in Life After Life died whilst on a bombing raid during the Second World War. Atkinson calls A God in Ruins a 'companion' piece rather than a follow up and she departs from the theme of multiple versions of the one life.

But of course each of us experiences multiple 'lives' during our lifetime as we age and change and so does Teddy.

A God in Ruins depicts Teddy from his idyllic 1920s childhood at Fox Corner - a childhood thinly disguised by his aunt Izzy in her 'Augustus' books, through to his active service as a bomber pilot during World War Two to his quiet, almost dull, post-war existence.

A God in Ruins isn't just Teddy's story but also that of modern Britain. Through Teddy's life Atkinson maps out the, sometimes traumatic, changes that Britain has undergone from the settled 1920s - when everyone 'knew their place' through the disruption and horror of the Second World War and its confusing aftermath.

Viola, Teddy's rather unlovable daughter, spends most of her life on a painful search for a personal identity (often reflected in her wardrobe).

Viola not only rejects her father but everything he and his generation stand for - Teddy put duty first, Viola puts Viola first. Yet, despite her vilification of her father, Viola is a less than perfect parent herself often abandoning her children, Bertie (christened Moon in Viola's hippy phase) and Sunny (Sun), whilst she seeks out fulfilment.

At one point, Sunny, her son, is left with his paternal grandparents, fading gentry who are desperately clinging to their vision of the world, and deliberately blinkered to anything that doesn't fit with it, something that has dreadful consequences for both their son and grandson. As Teddy's grandchildren move into adulthood their lives and beliefs are very different but both are reflective of modern British society.

Teddy's war is central to the whole story and Atkinson manages to celebrate the dutifulness of Teddy's generation whilst at the same time portraying the horror of war for those on both sides. "They were burning burnt-out towns, bombing bombed out cities… Defeat them in the air and save the world from the horror of land warfare, from Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele. But it wasn't working. When they were knocked down they got up again, the stuff of nightmares, an endless harvest of dragon's teeth sprouting on the plain of Ares."

If A God in Ruins were a straightforward chronology of Teddy's life alongside those of his daughter and grandchildren it would be, thanks to the wartime details, powerful and moving, but rather than telling the family stories straight, Atkinson instead mixes up time and place.

In lesser hands this disruption of chronology could easily be messy and confusing but Atkinson is a genius at weaving the past, present and future together.

Sometimes the reader alone is privy to the actual future of the character whilst they wish and hope for something else. Other times the thoughts come directly from the characters' heads such as when Viola, who stops fictionalising herself and finds success as a novelist, thinks about her own life as she and her dying father watch the Diamond Jubilee celebrations on the TV.

"Viola was barely a year old when the Queen was crowned and had never known another monarch. She would see Charles ascend to the throne, she supposed, possibly William if she lived long enough, but she wouldn't see that fat baby become George VII. Life was finite. Civilizations rose and fell and in the end everything was dust and sand, even that fat royal baby. Nothing beside remained. Hotels, maybe." The fat baby wasn't born until a year after the Jubilee, but this is no oversight on Atkinson's behalf.

Images of dust, sand and water, all signifying the transience of life appear throughout the novel. After the war Teddy "found it difficult to look at the North Sea without thinking of it as one enormous watery graveyard, full of the rust and bones of aircraft and youthful bodies."

The ending is a shock which left this reader both angry and grief-stricken (but at least explains Atkinson's faux pas about the baby prince). But these strong emotions are testament to the talent of Atkinson who has built a world and characters who are wholly convincing and believable.


A God in Ruins

Kate Atkinson

Doubleday,

€18.99


http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/a-chronicle-of-changes-and-a-personal-journey-31245638.html

India Knight In Your Prime
In her prime, India Knight

Books: A knight in sensible flat shoes

In Your Prime: Older Wiser Happier, India Knight Fig Tree €25.35

Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent 02/02/2015

 

Thank God January is over and we can all stop trying to be "good". For some of us though, 'women of a certain age', being "good' will never be enough as nothing short of a surgeon's knife and permanent low lighting will give us back the body of our svelte 20-year-old selves. Author and journalist India Knight proposes a rather radical idea in her non-fiction book, In Your Prime: Older, Wiser, Happier, to accept how we are and make the best of it.

 

Before reading this book I wouldn't have agreed that I am happier now than I was a decade ago in my 30s. Early on, Knight remarks that with age comes less anxiety, less judgement and less willingness to 'take crap'. This rings true to me but I have a young child and could just be exhausted rather than mature.

Then again, a lot of us 'older gals' now have young children, something that is a fairly modern phenomenon. As Knight says, being a woman of a 'certain age' is not a new concept but after centuries of knowing our place we are now in uncharted territory.

In the not so distant past, a woman in her mid-forties would probably be a 'Nan' or a spinster. These were clear cut roles with corresponding uniforms and hairstyles. These days, a woman in her mid-forties might have a toddler, be a Nan, or both. Modern women in their prime know that they don't want to look or behave like either 'Nans' or 'Spinsters' but we're not quite sure what the alternative is. Thankfully, Knight is happy to guide us through these tumultuous years with lots of useful information and personal recommendations.

Most women over the age of 35 live in terror of being 'Mutton' (dressing too young). "There's no individual garment that forces mutton upon you with the possible exception of the miniskirt." At the opposite end of the spectrum, and to be even more feared than Mutton, is 'the Mother of the Bride', "an abyss… and it's quite hard to climb out again once you've fallen in." There's also the option of 'Letting Yourself Go' which Knight is not in favour of. "It's annoying me that this feels like a controversial, maybe even un-feminist thing to write."

To be fair, she is very clear that love does not depend on appearances but says wouldn't it be ideal to be loved and desired.

In other hands this could have become preachy, patronising and downright depressing but Knight is so funny and immediate that it's like having a chat with a friend. A friend who is very English in her brisk way of jolly well getting on with things "middle-age … is a time of shedding all the crap and forging ahead. It is very much not the time to sit brooding furiously… Leave that to teenagers and be glad you're old enough not to be a twat."

In Your Prime offers great advice which any, woman regardless of age, could do with and it's a jolly good read.  

 

Sunday Indo Living

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/books-a-knight-in-sensible-flat-shoes-30951529.html


Alexandra Jamieson
Alexandra Jamieson

Books: New Year, old you? Self-help yourself

*Women, Food and Desire, Alexandra Jamieson, Piatkus, €19.40
* Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin, Two Roads, €20.85
*13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, Amy Morin Morrow, €15.75
* 5:2 Your Life, Emma Cook, Arrow, €16.40; Getting to Yes With Yourself, William Ury, Harper Thorsons, €17.25

The Sunday Independent 04/01/2015

The New Year is here and we've all woken up after a long month of partying like it's the end of days, rather than just the year. Oh the damage - the straining waistbands, the strained bank accounts, the even more strained family relationships - nobody ever accused January of being a fun month.

Probably the only people who love January are the authors of self-help books and the people who publish them as this is the time of year when we resolve to put things right - to become better people, to have better relationships, to get out of relationships (divorce lawyers tend to be busy this time of year), to find love, to get a better job or work harder at the one we have, to learn to manage our money, or to earn more.

And then there are those vows that are so ubiquitous they're practically mandatory - to eat less, drink less, lose weight, take more (or some) exercise and to stop smoking. We're all familiar with these pledges - God knows some of us return to them faithfully every year. January is miserable enough but the fact that our good intentions generally become more bricks in Satan's driveway as we, yet again, fail to keep to our promises to ourselves makes it even more intolerable.

I could probably paper every room in the house, twice over, with all of the self-help and diet books I've read over the years and yet, here I am, overweight, under-exercised and still smoking. According to Alexandra Jamieson in Women, Food and Desire: Embrace Your Cravings, Make Peace With Food, Reclaim Your Body - diets don't work, at least not in the long term. Anyone who has spent their adult life perpetually trying to shift that last 10 lb will know all about the cycle of losing the lard, regaining all the weight (and a little bit more besides) and then starting the whole awful cycle over again. "We grab on to whatever diet plan is currently all the rage. Like a drowning person, we hold on for dear life, convinced that this diet, the one we've grabbed like a life preserver, is the one that will save us," Jamieson, who was married to Supersize Me filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, tells us.

Jamieson's book is ostensibly an examination of the nature of cravings and what we can learn from them. While she does indeed deliver on this premise, this is more than an ordinary self-help tome being part memoir ("I had a much easier time accepting that I wanted and needed kinky sex than I did breaking my veganism and eating meat.") and part feminist polemic ("body shame keeps an invisible glass wall between us (women) and life. It hampers our ability to thrive in all areas; in the boardroom, the bedroom, the backyard."

Denial, says Jamieson is the main reason why diets fail and she is critical about the way the diet industry portrays women in general. "I'm just not comfortable encouraging any woman to compare herself to a piece of fruit (I don't know any women who look like an appleor pear)." Jamieson divides women into three different categories and I didn't recognise myself in any of them.

Luckily I'm not stuck with being a piece of fruit as Gretchen Rubin in Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Everyday Lives (these self-help lassies love a good long title) has also categorised people into various types. It turns out that I'm an 'Obliger' so while I am driven and hard-working to external motivation (bosses, authority and having to pay the bills) I have no internal motivation. I am almost incapable of doing anything to help myself! This isn't quite the awful news it sounds as Rubin has plenty of other categories and sub-categories of people and their motivations. It turns out I'm also a fan of 'Tomorrow Logic' - putting off things till a future date, with the unquestioning knowledge that the future me will not experience the same setbacks and problems that the present me and past me have encountered. When you see that written down you realise just how mad Tomorrow Logic is.

For many of us, that 'Tomorrow' was the New Year and now that it's here we find ourselves automatically looking for reasons to put off all those epic changes we promised ourselves for a wee while longer. This is, after all, our usual habit.

Both Rubin and Jamieson agree that habit is destiny. Change your habits and you change yourself and your life. In order to change 'bad' habits or adapt to new ones knowing yourself, and your 'type' is key. Rubin and Jamieson cover a lot of the same ground and at times even use the same phrases ("Sitting is the New Smoking" - which does not bode well for those of us who still smoke. And sit). However they are both worth a read because there are plenty of areas where they don't overlap and they both have very useful insights to impart.

Both Amy Morin in 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success and William Ury in Getting to Yes with Yourself: (and Other Worthy Opponents) also agree about habits and the fact that you need decent self-knowledge before attempting to change them. They also point out that most people find change difficult and uncomfortable - even if the changes make their lives better. Both of these titles are pretty straight forward, practical manuals with examples, questions and exercises for the reader.

According to Morin "Mental strength is about improving your ability to regulate your emotions, manage your thoughts and behave in a positive manner, despite your circumstances," and she is quick to remind readers that "mental strength" is not synonymous with mental health.

With that in mind I can't help but thinking that these two books would be of more use to the 'steadier' type of reader - who would put the information to good use. Unfortunately I recognised myself in Morin's book when she told the story of a woman who had read hundreds of self-help books yet never took any of the actions recommended in them!

5:2 Your Life: How the revolutionary 5:2 approach can transform your health, your wealth and your happiness by journalist Emma Cook may just be the book that changes all of that. Cook takes the principal of last year's runaway success the 5:2 Diet - eating what you like on five days of the week and doing a 'fast' on the remaining two, and applies it to other areas of life - finances, exercise, productivity and even worry. As she says in the introduction 5:2 can change habits but not addictions so you can't 5:2 smoking. Any book that tells me I can effectively exercise in short bursts only two days a week is a book I will treasure forever. Or until the next life-changing title catches my eye.

Sunday Indo Living

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/books-new-year-old-you-selfhelp-yourself-30878393.html


 

Lady killers queens of the Irish crime scene

The Sunday Independent, 31st August 2014

 

A decade ago, when Ireland was still riding the Tiger, Irish women were the leading writers in the 'chick lit' genre. Fittingly, in the current period of austerity, Ireland's newest female writers have turned their talents to the darker world of crime. One of the first Irish women to start examining the sinister side of society, with In the Woods in 2007, Tana French, is now the undisputed queen of Irish crime fiction.

 

The Secret Place is set in St Kilda's, a posh Southside boarding school for girls. A year earlier, the body of Chris Harper, a 16-year-old boy from the neighbouring St Colm's, was discovered in the grounds. The case had been cold until pupil Holly Mackey, daughter of a high ranking policeman, finds a note on 'the Secret Place' (a noticeboard for Kilda's girls to anonymously express their thoughts) saying "I know who killed him". Holly, like any good copper's daughter immediately delivers the note to ambitious young detective Stephen Moran and he is co-opted to help the difficult and unpopular Antoinette Conway to investigate.  It soon becomes apparent that the killer is one of two quartets of girls who had access to the art room on the night Chris died and Holly herself is one of the suspects.

 

The plot jumps back and forth from the present day investigation which takes place over a day and the events leading up to the murder and as both the present and the past draw closer to each other the tension increases.  The action takes place almost entirely within the confines of St Kilda's and French is masterly at evoking the claustrophobia and isolation of such a closed environment. At the risk of sounding like a fan (which I am) French is simply a brilliant writer. Like her contemporary John Connolly, her books transcend genre. Her prose is 'literary fiction', her plots are intricate, her characters and dialogue compellingly real.

 

While French has carved out a genre that is very much her own, the latest crop of Irish women crime writers are producing more traditional crime novels and police procedurals. Louise Phillips, Claire McGowan and Jane Casey have followed in the footsteps of Ian Rankin (Rebus), Mark Billingham (Thorne) and Val McDermid (Dr Tony Hill) by following the fortunes of a serial protagonist. McGowan's Dr Paula Maguire is a forensic psychologist, Phillips Dr Kate Pearson, a criminal psychologist and Casey's Maeve Kerrigan is a detective in London's Metropolitan Police Force.

 

The Paula Maguire series is set in the small border town of Ballyterrin where Paula grew up and has recently returned. Paula's father, now retired, used to be one of the few Catholics in the RUC. Her mother vanished when Paula was a teen and nobody knows why, whether she went of her own accord or she was 'disappeared'.

 

The Dead Ground, is Paula Maguire's second outing and begins with the abduction of a new-born baby from the local maternity unit. Soon another child goes missing and a pregnant woman disappears. The investigation leads Paula into the realm of an alleged psychic with a huge flock of believers and a militant anti-abortion group. Abortion, Paula observes, is "one of the few issues that hardliners on both sides might unite on,". It's also personal as Paula is struggling with an unplanned pregnancy.

 

McGowan, like French, knows how to spin a good yarn, she has a wonderful ear for dialogue, writes believable and compelling characters (Paula is no paragon, she's a normal woman doing an extraordinary job) and is able to go from describing absolutely gruesome crime scenes to injecting her narrative with well-placed and subtle humour. "It wasn't strictly necessary to drive an armoured Jeep in these days of peace, but he seemed to like it. He also liked playing Bon Jovi at high volume in the car. It was disconcerting to go to crime scenes with 'Shot Through the Heart' ringing in your ears."

 

Dr Kate Pearson, like Paula Maguire, is an ordinary woman but her work takes her to some very dark places. The prologue of Last Kiss, the third book by Louise Phillips to feature Kate, is set in 1982 when an unnamed teenager gives birth alone in the woods. The girl dies but her baby daughter is saved. But for what fate?  The story begins in the present day when married art dealer Rick Shevlin is found murdered in a grand Dublin hotel. Kate quickly detects that the dead man has been posed like 'The Hanged Man' tarot card, and soon links are made with other similar murders in Europe. The action moves from Dublin, where Kate lives and works, to Paris and Rome. While abroad, Kate and her police colleague DI O'Connor finally acknowledge that their relationship is more than just a professional one.

 

Phillips is superb at suspense, at conjuring up a dark menacing atmosphere, but her underlying humanity stops it from becoming too bleak. The baby girl from the prologue, after being brought up in a loveless, violent and sexually abusive household, now kills the lovers she thinks have let her down. Edgar, her latest, might well be the 'keeper' and she's not going to let his wife Sandra get in the way.

 

Jane Casey is from Dublin but all five of her Maeve Kerrigan books are set in London. The latest The Kill sees Maeve and her throwback boss DI Josh Derwent trying to find a spree killer who is targeting members of the force. The murders are differently executed and the victims appear random, but are they? Maeve's long-term policeman boyfriend Rob narrowly escapes death but the repercussions leave their formerly good relationship in tatters. The themes, especially that of historical police corruption, are very current and Casey is particularly good at weaving in the 'procedure' part of the narrative without it appearing clunky.  These criminal masterminds are so good at story-telling that not reading them should be against the law.

 

The Secret Place, Tana French, Hodder & Stoughton, €21.50

 

Last Kiss, Louise Phillips, Hachette, €14.99

 

The Dead Ground, Claire McGowan, Headline, €11.95

 

The Kill, Jane Casey, Ebury, €15.99 Sunday Independent

 

See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/books-lady-killers-queens-of-the-irish-crime-scene-30543949.html#sthash.sKq3zxZ7.dpuf

 

Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran

 

Dolly daydreams and Wilde sexual adventures

 

The Sunday Independent

 

20 July 2014  

 

 

 

It's 1990 and Johanna Morrigan, a socially awkward, fat 14-year-old is obsessed with masturbation, making money (to help support her large family who scrape by on benefits) and getting a boy to kiss her. It's not looking too good for Johanna, as her only friend is an elderly woman whom she quickly alienates.

 

By 1992, the now 16-year-old Johanna has transformed herself into Dolly Wilde, a journalist working for a top music weekly and 'Lady Sex Adventurer' whose romantic exploits are dictated by geography - precisely the distance to Euston Station "where I will invariably have to return in the morning, to get back to Wolverhampton… If it's more than twenty-five minutes in a cab from whatever inevitable Soho venue we're in, I will, ultimately decline sexual intercourse."

 

Johanna has killed 'herself' and built Dolly out of scraps of aspiration and gallons of eyeliner. The plot seems largely improbable - a fairy story for the modern era - goofy bookworm from Wolverhampton becomes her own Fairy Godmother, and with a flick of a pen becomes one of the most feared music critics in the London press.

 

It just wouldn't happen in real life - except that it more or less did. Author Caitlin Moran goes to great lengths to advise the reader that although she too comes from a large family in Wolverhampton that Johanna/Dolly is not her. The fact that Dolly looks, sounds and dresses like Moran, who started her writing career in her teens in the early 1990s, is merely coincidental.

 

To be honest, it doesn't matter. How to Build a Girl is a highly entertaining read from start to finish. Johanna is by turns endearing, exasperating and utterly annoying. Another trait that Johanna/Dolly shares with her creator is an absolutely wicked turn of phrase - "I feel as offended as a Christian who's just walked into a conversation on whether the cross that Jesus carries at Calvary secretly had retractable wheels - like carry-on luggage and that Jesus has, in effect, cheated".

 

There's more to How to Build a Girl than the standard 'coming of age' story, as Moran tackles class and sexual politics. "You wouldn't denigrate a plumber with a lot of experience in fitting bathrooms." Dolly reasons when confronted with double standards. A fun read, especially for those familiar with the 1990s, but not for anyone easily offended.

 

HowTo Build a Girl, Caitlin Moran, Ebury Press €21.50

 

 See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/dolly-daydreams-and-wilde-sexual-adventures

 

Stephen King Mr Mercedes
Stephen King Mr Mercedes

 

Miss your bus stop with King

 

In this departure from King's usual supernatural and horror novels Bill Hodges is a recent "Det. Ret." - a retired detective who spends his days on his La-Z-Boy recliner watching trashy TV shows ("the lady judge and the Nazi psychologist"), stuffing himself with unhealthy snacks and contemplating suicide. Hodges is suddenly jolted out of his apathy when a letter, purporting to be from the 'Mercedes Killer', who deliberately mowed the high-end car into a crowd, killing eight and seriously injuring dozens more, arrives in the mail. The case was a big one that Hodges failed to solve before leaving the force.

 

The letter -writer obviously knows a lot about Hodges and his state of mind, as he very subtly encourages Hodges to take his own life. The letter has the opposite effect, as Hodges gets out of his chair and sets about finding the "random bundle of homicide" that is Mr Mercedes.   

 

Soon Hodges meets Janelle 'Janey' Patterson, whose older sister Olivia's stolen carwas the one used by Mr Mercedes.  Olivia always claimed the car was locked but the investigators were convinced she left the keys in the ignition.  After becoming a public hate figure Olivia committed suicide.   Janey wants to vindicate her dead sister and hires Hodges to investigate.

 

King lets the reader know early on who the elusive killer is.  Brady Hartsfield is an obviously highly intelligent man yet he's stuck in two dead-end jobs - peddling discounted electronics in a store that is quickly becoming obsolete and selling ice creams from a van.  Somewhat predictably he lives with his mother, an alcoholic who "once, in a rare moment of self-appraisal, …told him she didn't go out to the bars because they were full of drunks just like her."   

 

While Brady still living at home may be a cliche he is no standard cold calculating psychopath, far more frighteningly he is, despite his past and planned atrocities, a 'there for the grace of God' character.  King reveals Brady's story very gradually - one that is by turns chilling, heart- breaking and a very subtle, but nonetheless damning, indictment of modern American society.  Mr Mercedes has every-thing a good thriller should - a great fast-moving plot, well-rounded utterly believable characters and taut, at times hilarious, prose.   The frantic finale is real miss-your-bus-stop stuff. You have been warned.

 

Anne Marie Scanlon Sunday Independent - See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/miss-your-bus-stop-with-king-30424375

 

 

Summertime ... and the reading is easy!

 

Buckets, spades, bikinis and books, It’s that time of year again. So Anne Marie Scanlon dons her shades and selects some summer reads.

 

The Sunday Independent 14/06/20140Comments

 

 

The Irish summer can, let’s face it, be a series of unmet expectations as we can’t rely on the weather. A good book can provide some much needed distraction and so you don’t add a dud read to your woes I’ve taken a look at five of the latest.

Go To

For a proper summer read you can’t go wrong with Fiona Walker and her world of posh English people, pretty country villages, horses and dogs. Kat, the heroine of The Country Escape, an ex-nurse from Watford, has inherited a small piece of the massive Eardisford estate after nursing the last owner, the aristocratic Constance Mytton-Gough, for the last years of her life. 

Kat can stay on the land until she dies, or marries.  The new owner, a billionaire businessman, isn’t too pleased and dispatches his Bondesque PA, the beautiful Dollar, to get rid of Kat and her menagerie.  Dollar employs movie star, charmer and equestrian Dougie Everett to take care of the estate’s horses and to seduce Kat into marriage. This is a jolly nice romp but Walker also tackles some darker issues. She has such great skill that she’s able to blend the comic light tone with the darker material without ever compromising either. 

 

Catherine Alliott covers similar territory in My Husband Next Door as her characters are often nice English people who like dogs and horses and live in picturesque little towns. Ella is a typical Alliott woman, jolly nice and decent — the kind of girl who finds “a kind and wealthy investment banker to marry and have children with, and live in a tall Chelsea townhouse”. Instead Ella married celebrated painter Sebastian Montclair when she was 19 and pregnant with their first child. 

Ella, now in her mid-30s, and her two teenage children live in a farmhouse in Oxfordshire while her estranged husband lives in one of the holiday cottages in the back garden. Ella is enjoying a romantic flirtation with dishy landscape gardener Ludo yet is devastated when Sebastian moves out of the back garden and into Oxford. 

As ever, Alliott is brilliant at painting an exact picture of the English middle class whilst at the same time gently satirising them. Alliott’s books are far too easily dismissed as mere ‘fluff’ but like Walker she is, apart from being entertaining, an exceptionally good writer and great at producing a wonderful summer read. 

Rosie, the heroine of After The Honeymoon by Janey Fraser shares many similarities with Alliott’s Ella — she’s in her mid-30s and runs a hotel with guest chalets. Like Ella she became pregnant as a teen, (unlike Ella conception occurred the first and last time she had sex). Having been disowned by her father the pregnant teenager ended up in the Greek island of Siphalonia where she now part-owns and runs the Villa Rosa. 

As the action kicks off, Rosie has rediscovered sex and has started a relationship with a handsome local.  Her feelings for the Greek are suddenly thrown into jeopardy when three sets of newlyweds arrive to spend their respective honeymoons in Villa Rosa. The first couple are celebrity fitness guru Winston and his new bride Melissa.

The second new bride, Emma, is a school dinner lady and devoted mother of two small children, who felt pressured into marrying their father Tom and doesn’t want to be on holiday without her children.  The third couple are a mysterious French pair who spend their days making l’amour. 

Rosie is horrified to realise that Winston is her son Jack’s father. Winston doesn’t recognise Rosie. Should she tell him? Does she still love him?  And what about his brand new wife? Winston has his own problems as his teenage stepchildren have joined their mother on honeymoon. Once you suspend disbelief this is a good holiday read. With many ‘chick lit’ books you can see the outcome from page one but Janey Fraser doesn’t fall into the trap of formula.

In You’re The One That I Want by Giovanna Fletcher, Maddy, Ben and Rob have been best friends since they were nine. They are all lovely people who always do the right thing. At the start of the novel Maddy is walking up the aisle to marry Rob but desperately wants Ben to speak up and declare his love for her.  The novel then begins with the trio meeting, aged nine, and the story of their tripartite friendship is told from each of their perspectives. 

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no difference in voice between Maddy, Ben and Rob and that voice does not change as their ages do from 9 to 26.  The story really doesn’t get going until half way through when Ben confesses his love to Maddy. If you want a book that’s not going to distract you in any way shape or form then this could be the one you want. 

The Irish immigrants in Kate’s community in Nicole Mary Kelby’s narrative have an exaggerated small town mentality and fear people talking about them. Oh yes, people will indeed talk about The Pink Suit but I can’t imagine anyone having a bad word to say about it. On the other hand if you like a fully engrossing read this is a must have novel.

It is beautifully written and utterly fascinating. Ostensibly this is the story behind the famous pink suit worn by Jackie Kennedy on the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963 and the Irish seamstress Kate who plays a pivotal role in its creation. In fact it is so much more, it’s a story about passion, fashion, Irish immigration to the States, the ‘American Dream’ and like the suit itself full of subtle nuances.

I was so engrossed by the story that I completely forgot about the ultimate fate of the pink suit. This is an utterly fabulous book and one that I cannot recommend highly enough.

The Country Escape Fiona Walker,  Sphere, €11.50

My Husband Next Door Catherine Alliott Michael Joseph, €18.75,

After The Honeymoon Janey  Fraser Arrow, €11.50

You’re The One That I Want Giovanna Fletcher Michael Joseph, €9.50

The Pink Suit Nicole Mary Kelby Virago,  €20.00

Sunday Indo Living

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/book-reviews/books-summertime-and-the-reading-is-easy-30354353.html

 

 

WHAT I READ THIS WEEKEND.

 

A Killing of Angels, Kate Rhodes, Mulholland Paperback, 22 May, £7.99

 

 

 

This looked so good - the cover a lovely misty gothic graveyard scene.  And what is that old cliché about books and covers?  Like a lot of crime fiction A Killing of Angels is right on the zeitgeist with a plot around the killing of bankers from the incongruously named Angel Bank, in the heart of the City. 

 

Obviously there is little sympathy for fat cat bankers at the moment and a banker-murdering serial killer would probably be awarded folk-hero status, if not an actual medal, by the general public.  This is Kate Rhodes second book and behavioural psychologist and avid runner Dr Alice Quentin is called in to help discover who is killing the employees of Angel Bank and why.  The murderer leaves an image of an angel and some feathers with each corpse.  Very per-syke-er-logical.

 

It sounds great but honestly I found it hard going.  Dr Alice wasn’t, for me, the most engaging of characters (maybe because I’m bone idle and can’t identify with someone who turns to running as a consolation/release of tension/pleasure/social outlet) and the plot was far too Midsomer Murders for my taste. 

 

So if you’re a fan of Chief Inspector Barnaby or want something that you can read at will, rather than being unable to put it down, then give it a go.  If neither, look elsewhere for thrills. 

 

 

Three Tiny Book Reviews

 

Before You Die, Samantha Hayes, Century Hardback, £12.99 

 

You have to hand it to Samantha Hayes she’s doing her best to tap into the zeitgeist in Before YouDie.  There’s suicide, there’s a learning disabled man, there’s homelessness and disaffected youths.  But despite all of that there’s something missing.  This isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read – not by a long long way.  The writing is fine, the characters are, for the most part, fairly believable but yet…

 

I can’t even say that it’s a bad book.  The plot just seems to take FOREVER to get going and then as soon as it has it’s all rather quickly and not entirely convincingly resolved.   I can see where the writer wanted to go but unfortunately she didn’t get there.  This reads more like a close-to-the-end draft rather than a polished final product. 

 

 

 

Who is Tom Ditto? Danny Wallace, Ebury Press, £12.99

 

I don’t know where I stand on ‘Lad Lit’ or even if Tom Ditto qualifies as part of the genre.  What I do know is that I enjoyed it enormously.  Wallace is very funny and the plot was not the usual boy likes girl, boy likes music, boy likes football, boy likes beer – how can boy reconcile beer, football, music and his mates with the fact that he’s fallen for some chick?

 

The novel starts with Tom realising that his girlfriend of two years Hayley is gone.  She’s left a note telling him that although she has gone she has not actually left him and to carry on as normal. Tom sets out to find her and finds out some rather interesting facts about Hayley.  I won’t give the plot away because it’s a good one.  Well worth a read.

 

 

 

The Broken, Tamar Cohen, Doubleday £14.99

 

I’ve left the best one till last.  I spent a lot of time quite annoyed with the main characters of this just published book Josh and Hannah.  I couldn’t understand why in hell they put up with such nonsense from their newly separated friends Dan and Sasha.  The two couples have been besties for years doing almost everything together.  Suddenly Dan decides that he’s had enough of his wife and for a while ends up on Josh and Hannah’s sofa (even though he already has a new girlfriend in place).  The relationship is further complicated by the fact that both couples have daughters the same age, in the same school.

 

As Dan and Sasha’s breakup becomes more acrimonious Josh and Hannah’s own relationship begins to suffer.  When Sasha becomes more unhinged by her husband’s rejection things start getting dangerous.  I should put ‘professional twist-spotter’ on my CV as I usually see them coming but in The Broken I was taken completely by surprise by the absolutely genius twist at the very end. 

 

 

A very pacy thriller with a twist in the tale

 

The Boy That Never Was, Karen Perry, Penguin/Michael, Joseph €14.99

 

http://cdn4.independent.ie/entertainment/books-arts/article30260765.ece/8f7f7/ALTERNATES/h342/LIV_2014-05-11_ENT_023_31553898_I2.JPG

 

The Sunday Independent 11 May 2014

 

Karen Perry is the pen name of two writers, Paul Perry and Karen Gillece who have combined their talents to bring us The Boy That Never Was, a psychological thriller told from the perspective of both Harry and Robin, a couple who lost their only child, Dillon, five years earlier when he was three. The couple, both painters, were leading an idyllic life with their small child in Tangier when the tragedy occurred.

 

After the death of their child the pair managed to stay married and returned to Dublin. Robin has given up painting to do a 'proper job' while Harry continues to attempt to make a living from his art.

 

The story kicks off in 2010, when Harry has just moved out of his studio when he gets caught up in a huge protest in the city centre. In the midst of all the chaos Harry spots a child that he thinks is his son Dillon.

 

Despite losing sight of the child, Harry becomes obsessed with finding Dillon again and manages to get hold of CCTV from the protest.

 

At first the reader has no need to doubt what Harry believes but, as the story develops, it becomes apparent that he is a truly unreliable narrator. Harry lies – he cheats on his wife, he drinks too much and he was more than a little culpable in what happened to his small son. Is his obsession with finding the child at the protest fuelled by guilt?

 

Of the two, Robin appears more level-headed. She has made her peace with the past and desperately wants her marriage to work, especially now, when she had given up hope of it ever happening again, that she is pregnant. Robin, when she at last finds out that her husband has been chasing a ghost, thinks, and with pretty good reason, that he is delusional.

 

This is a novel that moves pretty quickly, with plenty of twists in the tale as the reader's opinion of both protagonists changes rapidly as more information is divulged.

 

It turns out nice normal Robin has a few secrets of her own. Even regular readers of crime and thrillers should be surprised and delighted by the unexpected twists at the end.

 

 

Darkness that lies at the heart of Prosperous

 

The Wolf in Winter, John Connolly, Hodder & Stoughton, Hardback €25.99

 

 

 

The Sunday Independent 06 April 2014

 

NEAR the start of The Wolf in Winter, the reader is introduced to a quartet of old geezers playing poker in Pearson's General Store & Gunsmithery in the town of Prosperous, Maine.

 

The older gentlemen are the epitome of ordinary, each with their own quirks and habits, all well known to each other. The scene is pure Edward Hopper – small-town America at its best. Prosperous is different from its neighbours. While other towns are hostage to fortune and the fluctuating economy, the citizens of Prosperous and the town itself always manage, as the name implies, to prosper.

 

However, as this is a John Connolly book, it soon becomes apparent that underneath the seemingly blessed surface there is darkness at the heart of the town – quite literally as the old church the original settlers moved brick by brick from the north of England to Maine shelters a very powerful force.

 

Most of the townspeople are descended from those original settlers and, while newcomers are not welcomed, defecting is not an option either, as hapless couple Harry and Erin Dixon soon discover. The four ordinary, almost banal, poker-playing gentlemen at the start of the book turn out to be anything but; their actions are doubly shocking as they at first seemed so harmless.

 

The Wolf in Winter is Connolly's 12th novel featuring private detective Charlie Parker. The detective is drawn towards Prosperous after the alleged suicide of a homeless man he's befriended. The town 'elders' don't want anybody looking too closely at Prosperous, and make it their business to put a stop to Parker's investigation, even if it means killing him.

 

The breadth of Connolly's knowledge, which includes dog squads in Vietnam, firearms and homelessness is astonishing. "It's a full-time job being homeless. It's a full-time job being poor. That's what those who bitch about the underprivileged not going out there and finding work fail to understand. They have a job already and that job is surviving."

 

Connolly's descriptions of places, like hipster capital of the world, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, are not only visually accurate but atmospherically exact. There are few writers who could manage to merge hard-boiled detective fiction with the supernatural and social commentary, but Connolly makes it seem easy. He blends everything so seamlessly, you can't see the joins. Most importantly, with the social commentary elements, the reader never feels lectured, it's instruction by stealth.

 

Fans of the Charlie Parker books will not be disappointed with the latest instalment about his odd life, as it contains Connolly's usual brilliance with plot, dialogue, setting, humour and writing that is at times poetic: "Now, as a chill rain fell on the streets, specks of light showed through the moth holes in the drapes, and they glittered like stars ... " only Connolly could sprinkle stardust on dingy drapes.

 

The Wolf in Winter also works equally well as a stand-alone novel. In fact, it might be an easier read for non-fans as those who have stuck with 'the detective' since the beginning won't be able to read it without a growing sense of unease. There is a fin de siècle feeling as everyone from Charlie Parker's past, friends and enemies, all return in one guise or another. As a result, unlikely alliances are formed and inconceivable deals are made. Most disturbingly, Parker's continued existence hangs in the balance which, for fans, is the most horrifying thing Connolly could ever write.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laughs lift tale of a lone mum's life

 

The One Plus One: Jojo Moyes, Michael Joseph, €21.50

 

 

 

 

 

PARENT TRAP: In The One Plus One’, author Jojo Moyes captures the plight that many single mothers find themselves in

 

PARENT TRAP: In The One Plus One’, author Jojo Moyes captures the plight that many single mothers find themselves in.

 

 

Anne Marie Scanlon – The Sunday Independent, 09 March 2014.

 

Jess, the heroine of Jojo Moyes' latest novel, The One Plus One, is a single mother and Moyes, who is married with three children, has obviously done her research.

 

Jess is responsible for nine-year-old daughter Tanzie, a maths prodigy, and 15-year-old Nicky, her stepson who, along with the rest of the family, has been abandoned by his feckless father Marty. After being on her own with the kids for two years, Jess is doing her very best; she holds down two jobs, as a barmaid and a cleaner, she buys cheap 'special offer' food and makes most of her daughter's clothes, but, no matter how hard she tries, she is chronically short of money and always in debt.

 

Despite living with two children, Jess is alone, "worse than the endless, relentless, bloody exhausting financial and energy-sapping struggle ... being a parent on your own ... was actually the loneliest place on earth". Jess is convinced she will remain single for the foreseeable future: "No man would ever fall in love with a single mother of two ... Jess had got angry ... because deep down she knew (that) was probably right."

 

Moyes can be commended for getting to grips with the realities of life for many single mothers: "If you were a single parent, there were certain things you could not do. Which were basically all the things that everyone expected you to do: claim benefits, smoke, live on an estate, feed your kids McDonald's. Some things she couldn't help, but others she could."

 

The worst plight Jess faces is that she is stuck – no matter what she does, she cannot improve her position in life or her children's prospects. For Jess, her children and most who live on her estate, terrorised by the awful Fisher family, there is no such thing as 'social mobility'. In order to move on, Jess is driven to act irresponsibly. She and her unusual family (including large smelly dog, Norman) end up on an impromptu road trip to Aberdeen with one of the people she cleans for, Ed Nicholls. From this point on, Moyes gives us a rollicking good read, some laugh out loud scenes and a very touching love story.

 

 

Curl up with King's truly terrifying tale ... if you dare

 

Comments

 

 Anne Marie Scanlon

 

The Sunday Independent  27 October 2013

 

Doctor Sleep Stephen King Hodder & Stoughton €20.00

 

The Wolves of Midwinter Anne Rice Chatto & Windus, €27.50

 

Bellman & Black: A Ghost Story Diane Setterfield Orion, €21.50

 

The Medici Mirror Melissa Bailey Arrow, €10.00

 

Eleven Days Stav Sherez Faber, €11.50

 

Lock the door, draw the curtains and pull up a chair. I have a tale that is strange but true to tell you this night. Come closer that I may whisper in your ear. Ready? OK, and be warned what I have to say is shocking. In all my born days I have never read a book by Stephen King. I know! It's not like I've been living in a cave. And, even more shocking again, although I have seen loads of films based on King's books, I have not seen The Shining. I've seen clips and they put the fear of God into me, so that's why I gave it a swerve.

 

Doctor Sleep, King's latest novel, is the much-awaited follow up to The Shining, and my first Stephen King.

 

Five-year-old Danny from The Shining has grown up, his mother is dead and with no other family he is rootless and wanders from place to place as he sinks deeper into alcoholism. Salvation comes in the form of the small New Hampshire town Frazer and AA meetings. Dan gets a job in a hospice, where he uses his psychic abilities (his Shining) to help the residents pass over, earning himself the nickname Dr Sleep.

 

Meanwhile, a band of nomads, calling themselves the True Knot, travel in convoy around the States looking for children with psychic abilities so they can torture them to death in order to inhale their "steam" which rejuvenates them. The True Knot are terrifying, but they look benignly normal as they pilot their RVs (motorhomes) from town to town, "the men wearing floppy golf hats or long-billed fishing caps, the women in stretch pants (usually powder-blue) and shirts that say things like "ASK ME ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN". The Knot are closing in on Abra, a teenager Dan has never met but has had a psychic link with since her birth.

 

While there are obvious parallels between the True Knot and their endless quest for "steam" and alcoholism, King never labours the point. In AA, Dan learns compassion, something King has in abundance – even though the Knot are not human (they once were) King manages to imbue them with enough humanity that at times they had my sympathy. Realising that you've been empathising with hideous child-torturing monsters, however briefly, is utterly terrifying. The ending of Doctor Sleep is so full of kindness and genuine humanity that it had me in tears. I can't imagine any King fan being disappointed by this book, I couldn't put it down and am now trying to work up enough courage to tackle The Shining.

 

It used to be that Vampires were only let out at Halloween, but these days they're everywhere. It's easy to forget that before Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire the undead were very much creatures of the dark and the niche market. Now the Grand Dame of Gothic Horror has turned her attention to "morphenkinder". You and I would say werewolves, and we'd be wrong, because Rice has created creatures that turn in to "man wolves" at will. The Wolves Of Midwinter is the second in the Wolf Gift series, and I have to say life as a morphenkinder looks kind of sweet – they are not evil, they fight for good and punish the wicked, they can eat, drink and have as much sex as they want, and they have shedloads of money. There are one or two scary scenes, but with the men wolves being such good guys there's very little tension. Fans of Rice will probably love it, as will fans of spirited debate about the nature of good and evil, a topic that has always fascinated Rice.

 

Bellman & Black: A Ghost Story is the second book by Diane Setterfield, and what a talented writer she is. This is an extraordinary book that defies genre. Part of the beauty of it derives from the fact you're unsure whether it is a ghost story or not. William Bellman is a fine example of the Victorian work ethic, a self-made man who is charming, well-liked and lucky. However, despite all his success, his life is blighted by death. I don't want to give the plot away, but this book is not only a mystery but also a quite detailed historical novel. The research is meticulous and yet the many facts are blended so easily into the narrative that the reader hardly notices just how much authentic information Setterfield manages to impart, a talent she shares with Hilary Mantel. Read it and judge for yourself whether it's a ghost story.

 

I had high hopes for The Medici Mirror by Melissa Bailey – an abandoned Victorian shoe factory in London; a secret underground room containing a spooky mirror which once belonged to Catherine De Medici ... it sounds like perfect reading for Halloween. Unfortunately it failed to deliver and was less scary and less entertaining than the average episode of Scooby Doo.

 

Eleven Days by Stav Sherez also has a secret room – this one in a small London convent. Convents are always spooky and this one is no different. After a fire has killed all 10 nuns the police find an 11th body, which they then have to try to identify in order to find out why the convent was torched. There's no supernatural element to this thriller but plenty of frights and scares and enough action to keep you on the edge of your seat.

 

Now grab a book, lock the doors and make yourself comfortable. When darkness falls don't answer the door especially if there's an innocent looking aging American wearing polyester and a slogan T-shirt on the other side.

 

 

Random Recommendations

 

This coming Sunday (27th October) I will have a Halloween book feature in The Sunday Independent.  Just ahead of that I want to tell you about a few titles that didn’t make it into the feature (mainly for reasons of space).

 

The Doll’s House Tania Carver (Sphere paperback) is a terrifically spooky thriller.  I wasn’t all that gone on the last Tania Carver book, Choked, but I have no hesitation in recommending this one

 

The Orphan Christopher Ransom (Sphere paperback) is plenty scary and a great page-turner.

 

The Orphan Choir Sophie Hannah (Hammer paperback).  Not that long ago I swore off Sophie Hannah’s thrillers because invariably I found the resolution of the plot frustrating and I never really warmed to the character of Charlie Zailer.  On top of that I’ve always found Charlie’s relationship with Simon Waterhouse really hard to believe.

As Simon and Charlie were nowhere to be seen I relented and let myself read The Orphan Choir and I’m so glad I did.  It’s a wonderful, old-school scary story which I could not put down.  I would definitely have included it in my Halloween books feature if I’d gotten hold of it in time.

 

Finally, Charlotte Street Danny Wallace (Ebury paperback).  This has nothing at all to do with Halloween or scary stories.  It’s Lad Lit but don’t let that put you off.  I enjoyed it immensely. 

 

 

The Sunday Independent

 

 20 October 2013

 

Darcy's gone and so has a bit of satire

 

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

 

Helen Fielding

 

Jonathan Cape, €24.50

 

Spoiler alert – look away now. Personally I don't like reviews that give the plot away but with all of the advance publicity Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy generated I knew before I even opened my copy that top barrister Mark Darcy was dead. This news generated outrage among some Bridget fans. Bridget wouldn't be Bridget without Mark, they claimed and that was that, they were boycotting the book.

 

On the contrary Bridget Jones is the epitome of the single girl; hell, she even coined the term "Singleton"' in the first Bridget Jones Diary back in 1996. Would even the most loyal fan want to read about a married Bridget, happily middle-aged and asking top human rights lawyer Mark Darcy to pass the marmalade? I doubt it. For Bridget to return, Mark had to go, but is the end result worth his making the ultimate sacrifice? On the whole, yes.

 

Although Darcy didn't go in vain, and while Mad About The Boy is a very entertaining read, overall it's a bit scattershot. The widowed Bridget is now 51 and mother to two small children. Fielding wastes no time in embracing the battle with nits, a theme as prevalent in Mum Lit as the actual parasites are in primary school, and about as tedious.

 

Mark Darcy has been dead for some years and although his death was sudden and unexpected he had the foresight to leave Bridget and his two children well provided for so Bridget has no need to work, has a nice home, a nanny and a cleaner.

 

As a result, Bridget has plenty of time to devote to her diary and record her daily struggles with time-keeping, weight and worrying about the hidden meaning in texts from her 30-year-old toy boy Roxster (a name which I found inexplicably annoying).

 

Like India Knight's wonderful Mutton before it, Mad About The Boy is a timely reminder that "women of a certain age", a phrase Bridget understandably detests, do not cease to exist both as people and as sexual beings. Being single and negotiating the world of dating doesn't get any easier with age but as Bridget points out: "One advantage of widowhood is that – unlike being single in your thirties, which, because it is ostensibly all your own fault, allows Smug Marrieds to say anything they like – it does usually introduce some element of tact."

 

Ironically, as this is a comic novel, Fielding is at her very best when she has Bridget talking about death, grief and loneliness. Though a lot of the book is like a remix of the earlier Bridget, the constant lateness, the endless lists and resolutions, the self-help books, the slapstick and messing up important meetings, it lacks the sharp satire of its predecessors. When Fielding does take aim though she usually hits her target, as when a woman says to Bridget that it's: "Not often I meet someone your age who's still got a real face."

 

Fans of the first two books will be glad to know that Bridget's old friends Tom and Jude are still around and still, like Bridget, basically the same. Daniel Cleaver, Bridget's sleazy ex-boss and ex-boyfriend is also shoehorned in, in a rather grotesque caricature of himself and Bridget has acquired an eccentrically dressed neighbour who seems to exist for no other reason than to wear bizarre headgear. And yet, despite all of these niggles, Mad About The Boy is a bit like Bridget herself, irritating and downright maddening at times but hard to ignore and impossible to dislike.

 

Perfect summer reads for airport or deckchair

 

The Sunday Independent – 02 June 2013

 

The Summer Wedding, Fiona Walker Sphere, €11.50

The Hive, Gill Hornby Little Brown, €14.99

The Desperate Wife's Survival Plan, Alison Sherlock Arrow, €8.99

The Shambling Guide to New York City, Mur Lafferty, Orbit Paperback, €11.50

And When She Was Good, Laura Lippman Faber, €11.50

 

While we might have to change our ideas of what comprises a summer, we can still count on a proper summer read to deliver a much-needed escape. For a good old-fashioned 'beach book' look no further than The Summer Wedding, by Fiona Walker. For starters, it looks like an old-school beach book – big and bulky, a proper blockbuster that will withstand suntan lotion, sand and being dropped in the pool. At nearly 600 pages long you could pretty much stretch it out for a full fortnight, but I enjoyed it so much I read it in under a week.

If you don't like posh English people and/or horses, then this might not be the book for you. I don't hold strong views on either species and I loved it. The plot, which centres around two couples who attended drama school together in the early Nineties and have now gone on to various degrees of public success and celebrity, is utterly improbable, and some of the characters are too luvvy-darling to be true (which means they probably are). However, Walker is wonderful at creating whole self-contained worlds where the improbable and unlikely appear reasonably normal – for example, an errant hot-air balloon disrupts the summer wedding of the title.

Mind you, having said that, although the book carries the usual 'all of these people are fictional' disclaimer there are a couple of characters that reminded me of some real-life celebs. Purely coincidental, I have no doubt.

Writing romantic fiction is no easy matter. It's all too easy to pander to the lowest common denominator and give your readers a by-the-numbers story with a traditional happy ending. Walker is so funny, that although you can see the 'happily ever after' coming a long way off, the journey there is engrossing and often hilarious. Also, if austerity is biting and you can't afford to get away this year then this is the perfect book, as the plot takes us through Oxfordshire, Andalucia, LA and Africa.

Every couple of years, a writer comes along that we are told is revolutionising popular women's fiction. This year that writer is Gill Hornby and the book is The Hive, which was the subject of a bidding war between publishing houses (practically unheard of these days). The title of the book refers to the small coterie of women who run the PTA at St Ambrose primary school, in a small idyllic English village. The aptly named Bea is at the very centre of everything – she dictates fundraising, fashion, hairstyle, who's in, who's out and all the mothers live in fear of offending her. Newly single Rachel, whose husband has found himself a younger model, finds herself frozen out of the inner circle while Bubba, new to village life, tries her hardest to out-Bea Bea.

I was so looking forward to reading The Hive but, after all the hype, I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, the book isn't awful, the Mum-Mafia is a rich area for any writer to explore and Hornby does a great job being both entertaining and insightful. She also has a great way with words and phrases, (I have shamelessly nicked her expression 'lesbian tea' for herbal infusions and now use it as often as possible) and her observations of village life and playground politics are spot on. Unfortunately, her characters are a bit two dimensional. Most frustratingly, while Bea is the central character, we are never privy to her perspective or given any sort of clue as to what motivates her, so she is little more than a boo and a hiss away from a standard issue Pantomime villain. Given Hornby's obvious talents, it's a shame this isn't a better read.

The Desperate Wife's Survival Plan, by Alison Sherlock, deals with a similar array of middle-class women dealing with money and man problems. In many ways, this book is the perfect holiday read, because if you leave it behind on the beach, you won't lose any sleep wondering what would have happened. This is pretty much standard (and tame) Mills & Boon-style romance. It's grand; it will pass the time while you wait for the plane to take off.

For something a little bit different, check out The Shambling Guide to New York City, by Mur Lafferty, which is best described as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Sex and the City. Travel writer Zoe Norris has returned to New York in disgrace after having an affair with her old boss. She thinks she's found the perfect job, writing a guide to New York City, but most of her colleagues are zombies, her boss is a vampire and her new best friend a water sprite. If things weren't odd enough for poor Zoe, her past comes back to haunt her in the shape of her old boss and his vengeful wife. This isn't one for people with no patience for the supernatural and while the writing can be a bit cliched at times, overall it's a lot of fun.

I wouldn't call Laura Lippman's latest And When She Was Good fun, but I would call it gripping. Heloise is a classy lady, a single suburban mother whose understated style and life would lead no one into suspecting she's a call girl and a madam.

The story unfolds via two interchanging timelines – one outlining how Heloise got into 'the life' and the second showing the rapidly unfolding events of the present day which lead Heloise to think her carefully constructed life is about to crumble.

Lippman is a former journalist and you can see the reporter at work in the tightly constructed prose that carries the reader easily along from chapter to chapter all the while building tension.

There's a twist in the tale, too, which I always like.

Seeing the sun occasionally is also something I like, but at least if it fails to make a guest appearance this summer there are plenty of good books to get lost in.

Irish Independent

Review: The Age of Miracles

by Karen Thompson Walker

Simon & Schuster, €19.80

The Sunday Independent

Sunday August 05 2012

 

The problem with hype is that we know we shouldn't believe it (yes, I'm looking at you Fifty Shades of Grey). Occasionally, however, you can believe the hype and sometimes the hype doesn't even come close to letting you know just how great something is. That's definitely the case with Karen Thompson Walker's stunning debut novel The Age of Miracles.

On the surface, it is another dystopian tale of catastrophe and the 'end of life as we know it'. On a very ordinary Saturday morning, 11-year-old Julia and her family, and the rest of the world, are informed that the earth's rotation has started to slow. You could be forgiven for thinking that's a good thing, as Julia herself says everyone wants more time and complains that there aren't enough hours in the day but as the hours of light grow so do the hours of darkness. The phenomenon becomes known as "The Slowing" and nobody seems to know why it's happening, or more importantly, how to stop it. The climate is adversely affected, birds start dying, the insect population increases and crops fail. "One soccer practice was cancelled when a million ladybugs descended in the field at once. Even beauty, in abundance, turns creepy."

In an effort to impose some sort of order on chaos, governments around the world agree to remain on 'clock time' to adhere to the 24-hour day without regard to the rising or setting of the sun. On the second day, Julia has to get up in darkness to go to school. "My mother waited in the car at the curb until the bus arrived, convinced that danger, like potatoes, breeds in the dark." Some people opt to stay on 'real time' their days and nights growing longer and more out of sync with 'clock time'. "It was like a haunting: two dimensions of time occupying a single space."

'Real timers' are regarded with suspicion by 'clock timers', labelled freaks and ultimately ostracised. As the days become longer, some people, Julia's mother among them, become affected by 'gravity sickness'.

While the planet is struggling with great changes so is Julia. Eleven is a horrible awkward age and Julia struggles with all the physical, emotional and mental difficulties of pre-adolescence -- her body is changing (but not rapidly enough for her liking), she's noticing boys and wanting them to notice her.

The amazing thing about this novel is that you could separate out the two strands without losing anything -- as a dystopian nightmare alone The Age of Miracles would be a great story, and it is so acutely observed that it could just as easily stand alone as a coming- of-age novel. The two plots are woven together seamlessly and the end product is more than the sum of its parts because aside from being a great storyteller Thompson Walker is a genius at crafting words into beautiful sentences.

QUICK RECOMMENDATION

 

Come to the Edge Joanna Kavenna, Quercus £12.99 Hardback.

 

This book defies pigeonholing.  On the one hand it's a meditation on the huge gap between rich and poor and urban and rural life in modern Britain.  On the other it's a slapstick comedy.  Either way it's highly entertaining.  Kavenna is HILARIOUS, one of the funniest, and edgiest, writers I've read (and that's saying something). 

 

The end was a bit of a shock, and a downer, but I didn't let it undermine the enjoyment I got from the rest of the book.  Have a wee read and tell me what you think. 

Beach books that leave the rest in the shade

By Anne Marie Scanlon

The Sunday Independent

Sunday June 03 2012

Summer has brought a crop of quality reads that will make you sad to leave your sunlounger

Whether you are off on a fancy vacation or doing a budget stay-cation, the essential holiday must-have is a good read. When all else fails (weather, airlines, holiday companions, over-active volcanoes spewing ash) a gripping read can make you forget, and indeed forgive, a lot. We all know the old cliche about not judging books by their cover and it's never been more apt than in the case of The Love Letter, by Fiona Walker. Between the wishy-washy cover art and mundane title I thought I was in for a huge helping (it's over 660 pages) of wilting heroines and weak heroes. Instead The Love Letter is a fabulous romp with great characters, lots of twisty-turny plots and plenty of laughs.

Allegra 'Legs' North is a refreshing heroine who has not one, but three, love interests -- her ex-fiance, Francis, her boss, Conrad, and enigmatic Irish man Byrne. Legs works for a literary agency, and her job takes her back to the seaside town of Farcombe, where she spent her childhood holidays, home to her ex, his eccentric family and their exclusive annual literary festival. Walker obviously loves words, and I felt I could feel the sheer fun she had writing this book rising off the page -- which made it an absolute pleasure to read.

The notion of three women whose lives are intertwined is a standard motif in contemporary women's fiction. Clare Dowling's Would I Lie to You? follows the lives of three girls who shared digs as students. Hannah has just been dumped by Ollie, her long- term partner and father of her daughter, Cleo; heartbroken, she heads to France where her friend, Ellen, and her husband, Mark, are living the rural dream. Barbara, who is in the middle of a torturous adoption process, goes along for the holiday. But things in Ellen and Mark's rural idyll are not all they seem and when Hannah uncovers the cracks in their relationship she risks losing one of her oldest friends.

Alexandra Shulman's three heroines in Can We Still Be Friends? are also roomies from college. When we first meet Sal, Annie and Kendra it's 1983 and they've just graduated from university. The novel follows the trio over the next five years as their individual romantic lives and respective careers test their friendship to its limits. Even though the book is set in the Eighties, it could just as easily have been set in the present, so don't be put off if you think you're too young for a retrospective.

Bel, Violet and Max in White Wedding by Milly Johnson are brides-to-be who have only just met. Max is determined, despite the wishes of her long-term boyfriend, to have an over-the-top extravaganza, Violet isn't looking forward to her 'Big Day' just as much as you'd expect, and Bel has discovered something shocking about her fiance. Fans of chick lit should love this, but anyone who likes a bit of revenge-lit will adore it --Bel acts out a delicious comeuppance scene that many of us would love to emulate, but would never dare.

Louise Millar's stunning debut The Playdate also focuses on three women, but, in the case of this impossible-to- put-down psychological thriller, their lives don't simply intertwine, they collide, with disastrous consequences.

Single parent Callie finds herself isolated after the breakdown of her relationship, but unlike the lassies in Would I Lie to You?, Callie doesn't have any friends and appears to have been ostracised by all of her neighbours except for vivacious American Suzy. When teacher Debs moves in next door to Suzy, Callie makes a concerted effort to befriend the woman and, as a result, things begin to rapidly unravel for all three women. I was utterly gripped by this story and would highly recommend it for the holidays because, trust me, once you've started reading it, you won't want to stop. The Playdate is an amazingly accomplished work for a first- time author and I can't wait to read Louise Millar's next book.

The cover of Tyringham Park, by Rosemary McLoughlin, announces: "If you like Downton Abbey, you'll love this", which isn't a statement I'll argue with. The Tyringham Park of the title is the aristocratic Blackshaw family's country house in Ireland.

In 1917, heroine Charlotte is eight years old when her baby sister, Victoria, goes missing in suspicious circumstances. I'm quite fond of Downton myself but would warn fans of 'proper' historical fiction that it's probably best to give this one a miss as it's more Thorn Birds than Wolf Hall.

In spite of the fact that not one of the characters is in any way sympathetic (they are all, with the exception of romantic interest Lochlann, downright nasty) McLoughlin spins a good yarn and the central mystery of what happened to Victoria kept me reading till the end.

I wouldn't call Laurie Graham's A Humble Companion 'proper' historical fiction either, because Graham has created her own genre (part chick lit, part historical fiction and wholly brilliant) retelling famous moments in history from the perspective of (fictional) bit players whose own stories are just as compelling as those of the real historical figures. Previously, Graham has covered Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson in Gone With The Windsors and focused on the early years of the Kennedy family in The Importance of Being Kennedy (both page-turners and excellent holiday reads).

Graham's latest novel follows the fortunes of Nellie Welche, the daughter of a royal steward, who in 1788, at the age of 12, becomes the 'humble companion' of Princess Sofy, one of George III's 15 children. The novel follows Nellie and Sofy for the rest of their long lives -- they live to witness the reign of four sovereigns, the French Revolution and the advent of the steam train.

Graham is fantastic at creating solid believable characters while at the same time conjuring up the historical period and producing a gripping plot -- Nellie and Sofy have a lot more than hat trimmings or good holiday reads to worry about.

 

The Love Letter, Fiona Walker, Sphere, €5.99. Would I Lie To You? Clare Dowling, Headline, €13.99. Can We Still Be Friends Alexandra Shulman, Fig Tree, €17.15. White Wedding, Milly Johnson, Simon & Schuster, €5.99. The Playdate, Louise Millar, Pan, €8.99.Tyringham Park, Rosemary McLoughlin, Poolbeg, €15.99.A Humble Companion ,Laurie Graham, Quercus, €22.45.

I LOVE books and reading.  Sometimes I even get paid to read - isn't that fabulous!

 

On this page I will share links to published reviews and book features like this one from the archives.  I found it today and tweeted it and it had a very positive response so here you are!

 

Chick-lit's lost its fluff and grown into a wise bird

The popular genre has come under attack, yet its smart and funny writers have a lot to teach us about women's lives, writes Anne Marie Scanlon

 

By Anne Marie Scanlon

Sunday April 26 2009

 

RECESSION, leg-warmers, Spandau Ballet and Ultravox on tour, shoulder-pads, Boy George and George Michael in the news -- God help us, the Eighties are back.

There's one crucial difference though. The first time around we didn't have chick-lit to entertain us. No, back then a girl had to make do with Mills & Boon-style romance or Jackie Collins-type blockbusters. What a choice: either you were reading about someone's bodice being ripped or a leggy blonde called Montana jetting from LA to Paris and back again. The heroes were all handsome, rugged and rich. Nobody ever got off with an accountant or wrestled with trying to fit in to their jeans during their time of the month. Is it any wonder I read so much Anita Brookner?

I can still remember my excitement at getting my hands on Dublin 4 by Maeve Binchy, published in 1981. Imagine being able to read about places that were familia. What a novelty! Dublin again played a starring role in 1990 with the publication of Patricia Scanlan's first book City Girl. Five years later, in 1995, two books were published that changed the landscape of women's fiction forever. In Bridget Jones's Diary and Watermelon Helen Fielding and Marian Keyes respectively presented us with women who were "just like us". Far from mere chicks, these girls were independent, had bills to pay, work issues, men issues, mother issues and fitting-into-jeans issues. They didn't jet off to St Moritz for the weekend or buy their knickers on Rodeo Drive. If they did go mad on holidays or fancy underwear, then they, like the rest of us, had to face the inevitable credit-card bill. They may have been looking for Prince Charming, but they'd be quite happy to snog a pharmacist or a bricklayer. Keyes describes these books and the ones that followed as "the literature of post-Feminism," charting the lives of a generation of women who were out on their own, being told they were equal to men but knowing that in reality they were still being asked to sit at the back of the bus.

The most distinguishing characteristic of chick-lit and what set it apart from the women's fiction that had preceded it was, and still is, the humour. But nowadays, chick-lit has a bad name. A recent article in the New York Times defined chick-lit as "pink-covered books festooned with high-heels or Birkin bags or Martini glasses". The same piece goes on to say that American writer Sarah Dunn's latest book, Secrets to Happiness, is most definitely not chick-lit as it "is smart, bitingly funny, laced with sitcom-sharp dialogue and bittersweet. Far from a confectionery tale, it reads more like a spiritual journey, one that follows (the heroine) and a cast of supporting characters as they try to turn their lives around." Funny, that sounds like classic chick-lit to me.

Aussie comedian Wendy Harper recently told the Brisbane Courier Mail that she made the decision to write chick-lit because she "has no desire to tackle a perfect work of fiction ... I wouldn't trust myself to write a literary novel because I'd want to make it funny." Why does humour devalue the perfection of a book? The short answer is, it doesn't. What about Jane Austen? Her books are all pretty much "perfect works of fiction" and they are hilarious. Is Austen taken more seriously than women writers today simply because she is dead?

You betcha. Austen did exactly the same job as Keyes, Cathy Kelly, Maeve Binchy and Patricia Scanlan -- she documented the lives and concerns of the women of her day. Love her or hate her, most readers will agree that Austen's books are both funny and clever. Yet, if Austen were around today, her works would be slapped between pink covers and she'd be dismissed as just another silly girl writing for equally silly girls. Austen's female characters were primarily motivated by the same things that motivate most chick-lit women -- money and mating. The main difference between Austen's women and the modern chick-lit woman is that for the former finding a man wasn't just a romantic goal, but also a financial one.

A "good marriage" had little to do with romance and everything to do with financial security. Ironically, Austen was one of the very few women of her social class who earned her own living. Oh yes, it was a man's world back then in the bad old days.

But have things really changed all that much? Is it purely coincidental that the boys like Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby who write lad-lit don't come in for a fraction of the criticism their female contemporaries get? Could it be, maybe, that plain old-fashioned sexism is at work here? Marian Keyes certainly thinks so. "Those who want to make women feel more guilty than they already do will try to demean the genre with the fluffy title of chick-lit."

Chick-lit has moved on since the early days -- the writers are getting older and the subject matter reflects their (and our) changing lives. Money and men still play a part in most modern women's lives but we have other concerns pressing for our attention -- ageing parents, childcare, infertility, infidelity, marital breakdown, menopause, divorce, troublesome teens, problems with our career and our work/life balance, illness and death.

The nominees in the Eason Irish Popular Fiction Book of the Year all reflect these changes and concerns. Many of the characters in the pages of these books are divorced or separated -- even uber-dude Ross O'Carroll Kelly is single again. It is a measure of how far Irish society has come since the divorce referendum of 1995 that in Cecelia Ahern's The Gift the imminent divorce of one of the characters is mentioned as an aside and is not a drama in itself. Similarly, quite a few of Maeve Binchy's characters in Heart and Soul are on their second attempts at wedlock.

This Charming Man by Marian Keyes tackles many serious issues -- domestic violence, alcoholism, serious illness and ageing parents. Cathy Kelly's Lessons in Heartbreak confronts depression, marital breakdown and attempted suicide and Kelly's description of Anneliese's attempt on her own life is both heartbreaking and enlightening. In Forgive and Forget Patricia Scanlan deals with the problems of "blended families" and ageing parents.

Women's lives seem to remain unchanged when it comes to caring for ageing parents. Take Judith in Forgive and Forget, who has sacrificed her own life to take care of her widowed mother. Although Judith has two siblings, they are married and therefore it falls to her, the spinster, to take care of the mammy. Judith is bitter and resentful, and who can blame her? Her single status left her with all the responsibility and ensured that she remained single. There are plenty of readers who will empathise all too well with Judith's plight.

Chick-lit, like contemporary crime fiction, is a reflection of our world and the way we live today -- only with nicer shoes and less grisly murders. But, like contemporary crime fiction not all chick-lit books are good. Unfortunately, for every decent hardworking author around, there are just as many hopping on the bandwagon and producing formulaic nonsense. However, as PT Barnum noted, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time and those on this year's list reflect that by having a loyal readership built up over many years.

If future historians want to know what life was really like in Ireland in the early 21st Century, they can pick up any of the books on this year's list and come away with a fairly good idea. That's the thing with contemporary chick-lit -- for most readers the themes are not remote and exotic, they are either a dry-run or a re-enactment.

The genius of these stories is not just identifying with the reader but also giving bit of insight. Understanding the emotional landscape of other lives is a valuable tool for anyone -- why should it be dismissed as trivial? So come on girls, say it loud -- we're pink, we're proud, get used to it.

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/chicklits-lost-its-fluff-and-grown-into-a-wise-bird-1720236.html 

 

I'm also going to recommend books that I like - just because I can!