Reviews in brief: Love These Days, The Language of Trees and A Ramble About Tallaght

Love These Days by Brian Leyden (Lepus Print, €16.99)

Young divorcees are hot! In millennial pop culture at least, they are glamorous, exuberant, if a little chaotic, as in Monica Heisey’s novel, Really Good, Actually. It comes as a bit of a surprise then, that at the age of 31, our childless, soon to-be-divorcee protagonist would seem to be considered “over-the-hill”. Love These Days is the author’s third novel, and the second fiction title from Lepus Print, where the author is also its publisher. It follows Tara, a humanitarian aid worker as she returns to her small Atlantic Island hometown to process the ruins of her marriage to a feckless criminal. The novel explores the politics, romantic entanglements and petty tensions that one could imagine in a tight-knit community. Set against the larger canvas of the west of Ireland, Brexit and the candidacy of Donald Trump, Love These Days, is a little tepid. Brigid O’Dea

The Language of Trees: How Trees Make Our World, Change Our Minds and Rewild Our Lives by Katie Holten (Elliott & Thompson, £16.99)

Holten is an Irish artist and environmental activist, andher book is an exceptional compendium of arboreal art, prose and poetry. In exploring what could be a weighted issue, in the current climate emergency, the tone is awe not doom. “People exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love,” Robert Macfarlane quotes Wendell Berry. Contributors include Ursula K Le Guin, Zadie Smith, Kerri Ní Dochartaigh and surprising guests, Plato and Radiohead. Topics explored are as diverse as the migration of trees, the importance of fungal duff, a recipe for acorn bread, and a particularly interesting call for the animacy of a language of nature and a proposed third pronoun for non-human living beings. All this, in addition to a tree alphabet, devised by the author. A forest of writing to be cherished. Brigid O’Dea

A Ramble About Tallaght: History, People, Places by Albert Perris (O’Brien Press, €29.99)

Towards the end of the 20th century the once-tiny village of Tallaght in Dublin’s foothills changed dramatically with modernisation and a population explosion of more than 80,000. In 13 illuminating chapters, Albert Perris presents the narrative sweep behind this ancient place mentioned in legend in the Book of Invasions. Readers are taken through early Christian monastic settlements, castles and big houses to the arrival of the Dominican priests in 1855. The curious story of what Charles Dickens made of the Battle of Tallaght is recounted. The author considers periods of strife but also spotlights transport, industry, commercial vicissitudes, and the coming of age of Tallaght as a new town. This attractive work is accompanied by period photographs and Michael O’Brien’s original drawings, complemented with an elegant ribbon bookmark. Paul Clements