Book-review post!
A quick roundup of some of those ‘books for adults’ you might have heard of…
Doreen Finn – My Buried Life
A disclaimer: Doreen was in a workshop I taught years back and wrote gorgeously; she’d send around her excerpts and we’d be all there seething in envy at the prose. Also, she’s lovely. So I am biased about this book, her first to make it out into the world, and not only that but it’s about a poet-academic-type woman returning to Ireland after her mother’s death and dealing with her past, including her brother’s suicide and her own troubled relationship with alcohol. Eva, the main character, is not necessarily likeable, but she’s immensely relatable; the subject matter isn’t especially original but it did, more so on reflection, strike me that this is the story we typically hear from the male perspective. This is a troubled, alcoholic woman coping with the sins of the fathers and the changing society, and the prose is – as indeed I suspected – terrific.
Maire T Robinson – Skin, Paper, Stone
This is another one from New Island’s Fiction Firsts series – good year for Irish literary women, this is. Young people in Galway, linked in different ways, and mainly focusing on the love story between PhD student Stevie and tattoo artist Kavanagh. Wonderful portrait of the city, even though I’d have loved more on Stevie’s doctoral research (looking at sheela-na-gigs) – she is the most intriguing character in the novel, and I was more fascinated by her than the others. Looking forward to seeing what Robinson does next.
Fionnuala Kearney – You, Me and Other People
This debut focuses on what happens when a marriage breaks up, and the secrets that keep unravelling. The narration is split between songwriter Beth and her husband Adam, who’s been having an affair; Adam comes off as an asshole right from the beginning (judging Beth for swearing – like, dude, you keep cheating on your wife, what’s with the superiority complex?) and even though we learn a lot about the traumas of his past, I couldn’t quite warm to him or to Beth either. Some of the plot twists were a tad familiar, too. Not a bad read exactly, but not one I’d be urgently pressing into people’s hands either.
Sinead Crowley – Are You Watching Me?
(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)
This is just out in the world now, the second in Crowley’s series about Sergeant Claire Boyle, now juggling a six-month-old baby with investigating what’s going on at a drop-in centre for unemployed/retired/homeless men, and how that relates to the threatening messages its public face – the young-with-a-troubled-past Liz – has been receiving. Liz is a really intriguing character and her backstory is handled well; she’s utterly indebted to the owner of the centre, Tom, who seems as though he might be behind the mysterious death of one of the regulars… Plenty of twists and turns here, with the mystery angle well balanced with Boyle’s strained home life and the difficulties of having a demanding job and a small child. I hope we get to see more books in this series soon.
