Tag Archives: fiction

My Favourite Irish Authors

Happy St Patrick’s Day! I thought today would be a perfect opportunity to highlight some of my favourite Irish authors, some of whom I’ve probably already mentioned before.

After the Silence by Louise O’Neill

By now I’m sure I’ve mentioned Louise O’Neill’s work numerous times, but there was no way I could put together a list of titles by Irish authors and not include her. Although I would recommend any of her novels, I’ve chosen to include After the Silence in this list, as her most recent release.

After the Silence takes place on a small Irish island, twenty years after the unsolved murder of Nessa Crowley. A documentary team arrive to investigate the mystery around her death and everyone struggles to keep the past in the past.

Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

If you hadn’t heard of Naoise Dolan before, then you probably have now. Her breakout novel, Exciting Times, was recently longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and it’s easy to see why. Exciting Times is modern love story, filled with social commentary and written with a razor sharp wit.

Ava is a young TEFL teacher in Hong Kong and is torn between her relationship with emotionally distant Julian and Edith, who listens but makes her feel too much. Will she be able to move beyond seeing relationships as a power game? See my full review here.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney experienced an overwhelming amount of success last year, after the popularity of the BBC adaptation of her novel, Normal People. However, you may have missed her earlier novel, Conversations with Friends. It is a highly intelligent novel about to ex-girlfriends who become entangled with a wealthy married couple. If you love Normal People, then definitely check this out.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes

The queen of Irish fiction, Marian Keyes, has a wealth a work to pick from, but it’s her most recent novel that I’ve chosen to include. I listened to the audiobook of Grown Ups last summer and thoroughly enjoyed it. Keyes manages to tackle hugely important issues, such as eating disorders, whilst maintaining a light-hearted feel to her book.

Let me know who your favourite authors and titles are, I’m always looking for more recommendations! And follow this blog for updates every time I post.

Weekly Reading: 14th March 2021

We’ve reached the end of another week which means it’s time for another review of my weekly reading. This has been a good week for reading as I read 2 excellent books, several newsletters and a textbook for my MA.

This week there was no doubt about what would take the top spot:

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo!

This book was a birthday gift which turned out to be just what I needed this week.  The book is written in narrative verse which makes it both beatiful and easy-to-read. It is told from the perspective of Xiomara, a 15-year-old girl dealing with her family conflict by writing slam poetry.

This is beautiful story that takes on what it is to be a teenager with no control, trying to figure out who you are whilst you are forced into the wrong box.

This Week’s Runner Up….Memorial by Bryan Washington

This week I’ve also read Memorial by Bryan Washington. I read it to write a reader report for a freelance literary reader position that I’ve applied for. This means I read this very attentively, really considering my thoughts and feelings as I’m reading. I have a much better understanding of my opinion of the book after reading this way so I hope to approach books like this more often.

Honourable Mention: Leena Norm’s Newsletter

I recently signed up to Lenna Norm’s weekly newsletter and I’ve been really enjoying it. She’s worked in publishing and makes content about the industry and books, so subscribing to her newsletter has been a real joy. Check out her youtube channel here and her instagram here

I hope you enjoyed having a look at my weekly reading, follow my blog to get updates every time I post.

2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist

The 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist has just been announced and it includes some incredibles books. I thought I would run through which ones I’ve read (and my thoughts), which are on my tbr and which ones have been brought to my attention.

Read:

  • Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

I first read Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan last summer and thoroughly enjoyed it. It follows Ava, a, Irish 22 year old TEFL teacher in Hong Kong, as she meets Julian, an English banker who likes to spend money on her. Then Julian goes to London and Ava meets Edith, who actually listens to her. Ava’s two worlds collide when Julian announces his return to Hong Kong. I found this novel strongly reminiscient of Sally Rooney’s work and thoroughly enjoyed it. Read my full review here.

  • The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

I absolutely adored The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett when I read it last year. The novel spans 5 decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s, following the lives of twin sisters, and their daughters, who take very different paths in life. This novel explores issues of race, sexuality, identity and the controversial topic of passing. I would definitely recommend this book and I am thrilled it has been nominated. See my fully review here.

My To Be Read:

The following titles are the nominations that I want to prioritise reading. I’m hoping to read at least a couple of them before the shortlist is announced on April 28th. Ideally I would read them all, but even I know that’s probably too ambitious.

  • Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Detransition, Baby has been on my radar for a while now, having seen a lot of positive things about it. It deals with issues of sexuality, gender and forming an unconventional family. Read all about on the Women’s Prize for Ficiton website.

  • Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

I can’t count how many times I’ve almost bought this book and it’s not quite made the cut. I definitely regret that now. Small Pleasures is set in 1957, following reporter Jean Swinney as she attempts to unravel the truth behind a claim of a virgin birth. Find out more here.

  • Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

Whenever I’m on the Waterstones website (which is too often), Burnt Sugar is a common recommendation. But for a reason I can’t explain, I was never compelled to read it, even after it was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. However, I have decided to listen to the universe and accept that this is a book I should read. It is described as a poison love story between mothers and daughters, find out why here.

  • Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

I was vaguely aware of this title before the longlist announcement but I hadn’t taken the time to find out more about it. Now that I’ve looked into it more, it’s definitely on my tbr list. It’s a story of immigration, the opioid crisis and life in modern America. Read about it here.

  • Luster by Raven Leilani

I’ll hold my hands up to not knowing about this book until the longlist came out and it was all over twitter. However, after reading the blurb I knew I wanted to read it (plus the cover is gorgeous). It follows Edie, as she is thrust into a world of white suburbia and the life of a family with an adopted black daughter. The full description can be found here.

Undecided:

The below titles on the longlist are ones I haven’t made up my mind about yet. That’s not to say that I won’t read them or I don’t think they are worthy of a nomination. I simply haven’t been pushed to read them yet, whereas the ones mentioned above I know I want to read.

  • Because of You by Dawn French
  • Consent by Annabel Lyon
  • How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House by Cherie Jones
  • No One is Talking about This by Patricia Lockwood
  • Nothing but Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon
  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  • Summer by Ali Smith
  • The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
  • Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

Let me know your thoughts on the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist this year. Are there any you aren’t impressed by? Or any titles you wish had made the cut?

And keep an eye out for the shortlist announcement on April 28th.

The Shelf by Helly Acton: 3.5/5

If you love reality tv and are looking for a fun, easy-read then The Shelf is for you. Told from the perspective of Amy, the book follows 6 women who are dumped on the new reality show ‘The Shelf’ and then compete in different challenges to be named The Keeper (and winner of £1 million) whilst living together in a house for 4 weeks.

Although this book wouldn’t have been my first choice in a bookshop, I got it through a book subscription service and it was the perfect book for a busy week. It was light-hearted, funny and I couldn’t put it down. It was truly as addictive as any good reality tv show is and that is the genius behind it. It is not trying to be anything but fun.

I’ll admit there are a few heavy-handed comments on sexism and less than subtle commentary on the more toxic aspects of reality tv, but it all comes from the right place. You are not being told to give up binging love island or stop talking about love is blind, instead this book fully appreciates the joy those shows can bring you. The Shelf knows that at the end of a long day, vegging on the sofa to some mindless episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians is exactly what you need, it just also shows how quickly things can escalate for those more directly involved in some of the shows being aired.

At the times the book also leaned a bit further into being cheesy than I usually go for, particularly in the final few chapters, but that didn’t surprise me. I knew what I was getting with this book and it definitely delivered.

For me this book was a solid 3.5/5 stars because I enjoyed it and that’s all. Was it one of the best books I’ve ever read? No. But did I have fun reading it? Yes. I couldn’t put this book down, reading it in just a couple of days, and would definitely recommend it.

Olive

Emma Gannon

I saw Olive floating around book Twitter for a while and will admit to completely falling for the cover and being more drawn in by that than anything else. I guess sometimes I really do judge a book by it’s cover and so huge credit to the cover designer of Olive. However, once I started reading the novel I was immediately captivated.

Olive centres a group of four female friends who have known each other since childhood but are now in their mid-thirties, and three of them are either mothers or are on the journey to becoming mothers. This leaves the titular character, Olive, feeling isolated as a result her recent conclusion that she did not want to have children and the subsequent end to her relationship with her partner of 9 years.

By comparison, of Olive’s closest frinds, one is married with three young children, one is married and about to give birth to her first child and one is suffering from endometriosis and going through the rigorous process of IVF treatment.

As someone who has very mixed feelings around the prospect of motherhood and the process of becoming a parent, I really enjoyed this book because it considered aspects of the choice to not have children that I had not previously considered. As a 21-year-old the decision of whether to become a mother is purely a personal one that I have a lot of time to consider and don’t need to worry about for the next 10 years. However, I had never thought about the aspect of not choosing to have children that would differentiate you from those in your life who do choose to have them.

This is brilliantly dealt with in the book because at no point do you feel like any of the characters have done anything wrong. Each character is dealing with vastly different issues in their personal lives that make it very difficult for them to relate to each other. Olive is going through an incredibly difficult break up and struggling with the choice not to have children and just wants to talk to her friends about it but it’s impossible to talk about not wanting children with a friend who is desperately trying to have kids and in the midst of invasive IVF treatment.

The main conflict of the book is found in Olive’s friends finding her self-centred and overly focussed on the idea that having children is simply terrible (which is obviously not what you want to hear if you have kids). However, because we read the book from Olive’s perspective, and likely because I am somewhat sympathetic to Olive’s feelings towards motherhood, I did not find her either selfish or too critical . I think that the style of writing plays a role in achieving this as we spend a lot of time reading about Olive’s thoughts, with less time on interations between her and her friends, who are currently very busy with children, and only a minimal sense for how the dynamic between them has changed. This leads us to sympathise with all the characters, and simply highlights the difficulty of your life diverging from those of your friends rather than making any comment on whether or not a person ought to have children.

Overall, I would consider this an excellent novel for any young person wrestling with the question of whether to have children or facing the prospect of their life diverging from those of their friends and would definitely recommend it. This is an enjoyable book which makes for a fairly easy read that you can’t put down.

Little Fires Everywhere

Celeste Ng

I was recently prompted to read Little Fires Everywhere after watching the trailer for the TV show. I was intrigued by the concept but knew I wanted to read the book first and I am so glad that I did.

The novel centres around two families living in 1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio, who are brought together through they’re children. However, the matriarchs each take vastly different approaches to parenting. Mrs Richardson is committed to the rules, believing that if everyone simply conforms to the right way of doing things then there will be a perfect community, whereas Mia is an artist who has moved from place to place with her daughter, Pearl, living how she wants to and never staying in one place for too long.

This unspoken conflict between Mia and Mrs Richardson ultimately comes to a head in a custody dispute between family friends of the Richardson’s and a co-worker of Mia’s. After Bebe hits rock bottom and doesn’t know where to turn she leaves her baby at a fire station, where a social worker is called and the baby ends up being placed with the McCulloughs, who have been trying have a baby for almost a decade. Once Bebe finally receives the help she needs she desperately wants her baby back and so beings the tense custody battle and the catalyst for the downfall of Mia and Mrs Richardson’s relationship.

The story at the centre of the novel was what primarily caught my attention as it allows for exploration of the intersection between motherhood and socio-economic circumstances. This book considers how we as a society punish mothers simply because they have less money or struggle from social difficulties, such as being a single mother or an immigrant. If a mother feels unable to care for her child and abandons them, at what point does that become an irreversible decisions?

Finally, I think part of the brilliance of this novel is also found in how well Ng writes about Shaker Heights. On the surface, Shaker Heights seems like an idyllic place to live, where everyone has a nice house and every child goes to a good school, but the more I found out about it, the uneasier I became. The way Ng was able to create a building tension around seemingly harmless aspects of the community was very impressive. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the bins being kept at the back of the house, rather than the front, but every time a little rule like this is mentioned I was left feeling slightly more unsettled. This ever-present tension meant I couldn’t put the book down, always on the edge of my seat, waiting to find out what was going to happen.

This book is well-written with a simple story of motherhoos at its heart that still keeps you turning the pages, desperate to find out what will happen next. I would definitely recommend this book.

Before the Coffee gets Cold

Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Before the Coffee gets Cold is a Japanese bestseller about a small cafe in Tokyo which offers the customers the chance to travel back in time. In this book we meet four customers, all of whom have reason to time travel, one to speak to a lover who left, one to read a letter written by her husband with Alzheimer’s, one to see her recently deceased sister and one to meet the daughter she never got to know.

This is a charming exploration of missed opportunities that begs the question; who would you travel through time to see? This novel is deeply moving, however my favourite part of reading it was finding out about the various regular characters found in the cafe. Learning about the intriguing stories of the cafe staff is a is gradually told at a pace that always keeps you on edge to find out more.

When it comes to translated fiction I generally don’t comment on the language because I am not reading the book as it was written. Therefore, although I found some of the language slightly repetitive at times, I would credit the translation as being intelligently written.

I will admit that I found there to be slightly more exposition than necessary in the first chapter which meant that it took getting through this chapter before I started to really enjoy the book. However, I also think that may be a tricky pitfall to avoid with a book fo this nature as there are various rules for the time travel that must be explained in order for the rest of the book to be as good as it was.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this unusual concept found in a charming piece of translated fiction. I would definitely recommend this quick read.

Exciting Times

Naoise Dolan

I’d been seeing this book everywhere and the cover is so beautiful that I decided to read it as part of the 2020 reading rush and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. Ava is a 22 year old TEFL teacher in Hong Kong when she meets Julian, a rich English banker who likes to spend money on her and lets her move into his guest room. Then Julian goes to London and Ava meets Edith, who actually listens when she talks and openly cares about her. But when Julian announces he will be returning to the apartment in Hong Kong, Ava’s two worlds collide.

On the one hand, this novel captures what it is to be young and not know who you are or what you want with a healthy dash of social commentary thrown in, but on the other there were many instances where I was just deeply frustrated with Ava, the protagonist.

In this witty, debut novel, Ava views relationships as a power struggle, frequently proclaiming herself to be ‘good at men.’ In her mind, relationships are an emotionless transaction of other, often more material, goods (such as luxurious and deeply expensive apartments). She sees her relationship with Julian as a bizarre competition of who can seem the most disinterested in the other while they live together and have sex. Yet she also makes it her primary goal to get him to admit to having deeper feelings for her. In contrast, Ava relaxes around Edith and learns to trust in Edith’s feelings for her (even if she fails to understand the reason for them). It is Ava’s continued obsession with Julian after having met Edith that is so frustrating, because she is so clearly much happier with Edith (which she acknowledges multiple times).

However, Ava’s character is best summed up by a line in the book itself when Edith says to Ava ‘I don’t think you’re interested in having a nice life’ and this is often how Ava’s choices seem. She obsesses over what her thoughts and feelings say about her identity but never appears to question why she behaves in ways that she fundamentally disagrees with or stop her from being happy. She makes every action into a political statement but is never satisfied with the statements being made. My developing frustration with Ava as a result of this is likely why I felt a slight relief at Edith’s section of the book because someone finally calls Ava on her determination to be unhappy.

Overall, my enjoyment of the story but growing frustration at Ava’s character led to some mixed feelings about the novel. Although it is still a poignantly written assessment of class and sex and if you are fan of Sally Rooney then you will love Naoise Dolan and should absolutely read Exciting Times.

The Five People you Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom

I recently came across this novel on my parents’ bookcase and I am thrilled I picked it up. Eddie is a war veteran, who dies in a tragic accident on his 83rd birthday in an attempt to save a young girl.

This is perhaps one of the most thought-provoking books I have read recently, asking questions of why we live the lives we do and the meaning behind them. The book follows Eddie, after he dies and wakes up in the afterlife, continuing with his journey through heaven where he meets five people who each had an impact on the course of his life. Despite several of these people being unknown to Eddie himself, they all altered the course his life significantly and when he arrives in heaven they are there to explain the reasons for why his life turned out how it did.

This novel concept led to an intriguing story that I couldn’t put down, particularly since the simplicity of Albom’s writing results in a quick read that requires no effort on the part of the reader. The book addresses philosophical questions around the meaning of life and the afterlife in a remarkably concise manner that forces you to confront the impact you want your life to have on those around you.

Throughout the book we are also given snapshots of different points in Eddie’s life, spending brief chapters on earlier various birtrhdays of his. This allows us the opportunity to understand why Eddie feels the way he does about his life as well as giving us greater insight into his thoughts at the time when he encountered some of the people who are waiting for him in heaven.

This is an excellent book about forgiveness, acceptance and lost love that I would whole-heartedly recommend.

Frankissstein: A Love Story

Jeannette Winterson

Jeannette Winterson has written a fascinating reimagination of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ in her most recent novel, Frankissstein. Winterson successfuly brings together romanticism and science through her exploration of current technological advancements and developments in artificial intelligence juxtaposed with speculative chapters of how Mary Shelley came to write Frankenstein and her views, and the views of her peers, regarding life, death and the soul.

The novel begins with Shelley composing Frankenstein, before skipping to the present day and the life of Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor. We read how Ry meets Victor Stein, a mysterious professor who is working on ‘accelerating evolution’ to live forever as a consciousness in a machine, and Ron Lord who is on the road to launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men. The interaction between these three characters, all of whom have vastly different views on life, death, gender and sex allows any reader to maintain any opinion whilst insisting that they question their beliefs on all these issues. For instance, whilst I am thoroughly opposed to Ron Lord’s attitude, I found it enlightening to gain insight into how he perceived the world and why he chose to run a business producing sex dolls.

Winterson beautifully explores some of the problems we may face as a society if we continue on this quest to live forever through technology. For me this was the most interesting aspect of the book because it both highlighted different concerns that I had not previously considered and forced me to confront my instinctual resistence to certain forms of artificial intelligence. In particular, Victor Stein’s obsession with existing without a physical form fascinated me (likely because of my interest in Philosophy and consciousness). The concept of existing simply as a consciousness is an immediately unappealing one to me and so to read about a character whose life’s work centres around this goal was deeply intriguing.

Finally, I would like to praise Winterson’s ability to seamlessly switch between Ry’s 21st Century world and Mary Shelley’s 19th Century one. The way Winterson is able to create two vastly different worlds and successfully draw meaningful parallels between the two is truly incredible. I found myself thoroughly absorbed in each world without ever being thrown when switching from one to other.

This is a novel I would definitely recommend for anyone interested in the questions surrounding artificial intelligence and how it may intersect with issues of sex, gender and how we understand the difference between life and death.