In this Saturday’s Irish Times, Elizabeth Strout tells Sarah Gilmartin about her latest novel, Tell Me Everything. And there is a Q&A with Martina Devlin about her new novel, Charlotte.
Reviews are Michael Cronin on Intermezzo by Sally Rooney; Patsy McGarry on Lower than the Angels: a History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch; Declan Ryan on the best new poetry; Neil Hegarty on A Cold Eye by Carlo Gebler; Adrienne Murphy on A Life Among the Dead: Stories from an Irish Funeral Director by David McGowan; Pippa Conlon on Feeding the Monster by Anna Bogutskaya; Henrietta McKervey on Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout; Afric McGlinchey on The Inheritance by Cauvery Madhavan; John Walshe on From Holywood to Hollywood by Paul Tweed; Nicholas Allen on Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals by Maurice Casey; and Eoghan Smith on What is it Like to be Alive? by Chris Arthur.
This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is Holly by Stephen King, just €5.99, a €6 saving.
“Our children need to see themselves in books, whether they trace their lineage back to Fionn Mac Cumhaill, or have only recently arrived on our shores,” says Laureate na nÓg Patricia Forde, who will launch Children’s Books Ireland’s newest reading guide at a special event on Culture Night.
Families are invited to join the launch of Recommended Irish Reads 2024 at Dubray Books on Grafton Street, at 5pm on Friday, 20th September. The free event will feature readings and book signings by children’s authors such as Sadhbh Rosenstock, Chris Haughton, Sinéad Moriarty and Alan Nolan. A free Book Clinic will also be available, where children will be prescribed their next read by a team of expert Book Doctors.
Curated by Children’s Books Ireland, the reading guide spotlights authors, illustrators and their publishers from or based in Ireland and features 200 titles, in Irish and English, for readers aged 0–18 years.
Forde said: “This reading guide is an essential resource for parents/carers, educators, librarians and booksellers, and of course, our young readers themselves!
“Why does it matter that the writers and illustrators featured call Ireland home? Because our children need to see stories that reflect their identities and surroundings, from artists who understand and can relate to their lived experiences. Children need role models to pave pathways that will help them to realise their dreams. We see it in sport, we see it in theatre and film, and we need to see it in the realm of children’s books.”
Also reading at the Culture Night event is presenter and reporter Zainab Boladale, whose debut novel features in the guide. Braids Take a Day explores the complexities of identity and heritage in a small town in the West of Ireland.
Boladale said: “I’m delighted to join authors and illustrators like Paul Delaney, Shane Hegarty and Erika McGann this Culture Night to brings stories to life, and spark a new love of reading and a new appreciation for the wide range of Irish children’s books among young readers and their adults!”
The Recommended Irish Reads 2024 guide is available to download from the Children’s Books Ireland website. With 25,000 copies distributed across the country, it will be widely available free of charge through local libraries and participating bookshops.
Sceptre is to publish Wendy Erskine’s debut novel The Benefactors next June. Erskine’s “brutal, tender and rigorously intelligent” debut novel follows Frankie, Miriam and Bronagh, all mothers to 18-year-old boys, in contemporary Northern Ireland. “They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social standing of their own, they’ll leverage all the power of their position to protect their children.”
Ansa Khan Khattak, who published Erskine’s short story collections Sweet Home and Dance Move at Picador, said: “Wendy Erskine is one of the greatest writers at work today, and I was just blown away by The Benefactors – a novel about family and goodness, about privilege and entitlement, and the transformative power of money. But most of all, it’s about the people involved – you feel for them, you hate them, and they make you laugh. I’m honoured and beyond excited to be publishing it here at Sceptre.”
Erskine said: “Ansa was the first person in UK publishing to ‘get’ my particular literary sensibility, so it was a dream come true when a 24-hour pre-empt came through, and it was from Sceptre – and her! I feel privileged to be working once more with such a talented editor and great person. And it’s very exciting to be part of the Sceptre team. I’ve loved the experience so far.”
After the success of international bestseller Boys Don’t Cry, Faber is to publish May All Your Skies Be Blue by Fíona Scarlett next February – a story of love, loss, regret and the indelible marks one person can make on your life.
Set in Dublin in the summer of 1991, it’s the story of Dean and Shauna. Dean sun-stung and sticky with cool ice-pop juice, walks to the middle of The Green to get a good gawk at the new salon. And at the owner’s kid. Hands deep in his pockets, his jet-black mop of hair hides the tension in his face and shoulders at the thought of going back home.
Shauna stands well hid behind her ma – her eyes dark and haunted like the rest of her. The salon is theirs, a fresh start. The smell of her ma’s Body Shop perfume clings to her jumper – Shauna can’t be anywhere other than here. Instantly inseparable, their friendship blooms. But as time passes and tell-tale blushes and school fights develop into something deeper, conflicting responsibilities threaten to pull Shauna and Dean apart.
Scarlett said: “I’m incredibly excited to finally be able to share my second novel May All Your Skies Be Blue with readers, a story very close to my heart. To be published again is a gift, to be published again by Faber and the extraordinary Louisa Joyner is something I deeply cherish.”
New Island has signed Seán Farrell for his first two novels. Frogs for Watchdogs is told in the unique voice of a wild boy with a ferocious imagination who will stop at nothing to protect his family from the darkness of their unstable rural life. Louise Kennedy has called it ‘a very special novel’, Una Mannion said it ‘felled me’ and Donal Ryan has called it ‘an ineluctable slide towards love ... a stunning novel’.
Already a seasoned literary editor, Farrell has worked with Nuala O’Connor, Kevin Curran, Estelle Birdy and Adrian Duncan among others. Farrell now steps into his own spotlight with a debut that Booker Prize winner John Banville has described as ‘an enthralling novel, and a remarkable imaginative feat – the narrative voice is wholly convincing, and utterly compelling.’
His second novel, The Best Boy in the World is a contemporary, commercial novel about a London-based European family caught in a violent disintegration when two half-brothers, with very different ideas of what it means to be a man, go to war with each other.
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Hachette Books Ireland is to publish Sarah Corbett Lynch’s memoir A Time for Truth: A Daughter’s Search for Justice and Healing next February. It tells how her father Jason Corbett was brutally killed by his wife, Sarah’s stepmother Molly Martens, and her father Tom Martens in the family’s North Carolina home in August 2015. Eight-year-old Sarah and her brother Jack were asleep upstairs at the time.
Jason’s death left Sarah and Jack orphaned and started a nine-year judicial nightmare as the Corbett family fought for justice for Jason. Last November, an appeal by Molly and Tom Martens saw a second-degree murder conviction overturned and the Martens accepting a plea deal of voluntary manslaughter. In the absence of a second trial, Sarah was denied her chance to take the stand to give evidence against the Martens and to have her voice heard. Now, in her powerful memoir, she finally speaks her truth.
Irish author and 2024 Rooney Writer Fellow Paul Murray will explore what it is to be a 21st-century person with drama expert Nick Johnson, lawyer Neville Cox, neuroscientist Shane O’Meara, historian Jane Ohlmeyer and others at a free public event in the Trinity Long Room Hub on Thursday, September 26th.
The discussion forms part of the weeklong Trinity Arts and Humanities Research Festival running from Monday to Friday, September 23rd to 27th.
Other events include a public talk on how literature can change legal mindsets by legal expert David Kenny (From Henry James to Star Wars: Why Lawyers Should Read Literature), a discussion on why heavy metal matters led by poetry expert Philip Coleman (Going out with a (Head) Bang), a critique of ‘The Critic’, Irish-born composer Charles Villiers Stanford’s comic opera in partnership with Wexford Festival Opera, and a talk by Amy Prendergast exploring the overlooked literary capabilities of women and girls in Ireland between 1760 and 1810.
There is also a launch at 5pm on Monday 23rd of Ireland’s Border Culture, a new research project which has developed a ground-breaking open access digital archive of the literature, visual art, memoir and film of Ireland’s “cultural borderscape” from 1921 to the present day.
All events are free and open to the public. See the hub’s website for a full list of events.
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Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation will host an interview with bestselling Irish author Anne Enright and two of her translators, Kaja Gucio (Polish) and Iulia Gorzo (Romanian), to discuss the delicate art of translating her work for readers of other languages. The event will be hosted by Michael Cronin, Professor of French, at 6.30pm on Thursday, September 26th, in the Naughton Institute, Trinity College Dublin. This is a hybrid event and in-person or online tickets may be booked at this link. All are welcome and admission is free.
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The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, which honours writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding, has announced President Jimmy Carter as the 2024 recipient of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch has won the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction, and Built from the Fire by Victor Luckerson the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. The Postcard by Anne Berest has been named the runner-up in the Fiction category, and Red Memory by Tania Branigan has been named the runner-up in the Nonfiction category.
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The Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland, whose theme this year is Wor[l]ds of Change, opens on September 27th at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, and returns there for Children’s Literature on the 29th. All festival events on the 28th take place in the Trinity Long Room Hub. Admission is free to all events on first come/first served basis.
The festival is an initiative of the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin, Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and Trinity College Dublin, in partnership with Literature Ireland, the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, the Trinity Long Room Hub and the Society for Italian Studies.
Co-curated by Catherine Dunne of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann, Enrica Maria Ferrara of TCD, and Marco Gioacchini of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the festival will highlight the work of more than 15 Italian and Irish poets, translators and writers. Details here.
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Simon O’Connor is stepping down as director/CEO of the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI), which celebrates Ireland’s rich literary culture, and University College Dublin (UCD) in collaboration with the National Library of Ireland (NLI) are recruiting a successor.
The museum opened in September 2019 and has won a number of national and international awards for its innovative and inclusive programming. The successful candidate will have a proven track record in building, leading and sustaining an innovative artistic/cultural/public outreach centre or similar initiative, and in establishing an effective and sustainable model for that organisation’s financial operations. The Director/CEO will lead, shape and implement the artistic, cultural, marketing, financial and management operations of the Museum. The closing date for applications is October 4th. Details here.
