The Green Road, the new novel by Anne Enright, the first laureate of Irish Fiction, was always going to be one of the Irish fiction highlights of 2015 and, fellow author Belinda McKeon reports, it doesn't disappoint.
“What Enright has done with this novel is fascinating. It is Irish, or rather Irish-novelly, in such an unashamed fashion – the Mammy, the homeplace, the emotionally-banjaxed siblings, the booze and the boom and the pill and the Pope – as to be provocative. It does not simply take on, but briskly and grinningly grabs hold of, all the stuff that, these days, seems too embarrassing to bring up at the dinner table of Irish fiction.”
Also on the fiction front, Sarah Gilmartin reviews Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, the latest offering from Stinging Fly Press.
Eileen Battersby reviews The Birthday Buyer by Adolfo Garcia Ortega.
Writer and comedian Kevin Gildea reviews Satin Island by Tom McCarthy.
Critic Sinéad Gleeson reviews The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave.
Robert Dunbar casts his critical eye over the Children's Books Ireland awards shortlist.
Word for Word by Anne O'Neill of Listowel Writers Week celebrates imprints that revive classics and neglected gems that have gone out of print.
In non-fiction, author Mary Russell reviews The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East by Eugene Rogan.
Author Molly McCloskey reviews After the Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction by Renata Adler.
Fionnuala Fallon reviews The Irish Garden by Jane Powers.
Nicholas Canny reviews A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia by Richard S Dunn.
