Fugitive: The Michael Lynn Story by Michael O’Farrell (Merrion Press, €19.99)
Notwithstanding that we all know how it ends (5½ years’ imprisonment) this tale of theft of €18 million from six financial institutions, still reads like a fictional thriller. Journalist O’Farrell chases Lynn’s shadow all over Europe, catches up with him until Lynn again disappears. He finally surfaces in a hell-hole prison in Brazil where he languishes for 4½ years. Over the intervening 16 years, Farrell came to know Lynn quite well, and found him full of bonhomie, Irish charm and a shifty man who revelled in childish humour. He was also disillusioned: “Yes, I was a chancer, absolutely — not a thief.” This is a thoroughly engrossing read of yet another embarrassing Irish financial scandal. — Owen Dawson
The Morningside by Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20)
It was not surprising to learn that this novel was born during disquieting Covid-19 pandemic times. An 11-year-old climate refugee and her mother have fled “Back Home” to move to a decaying metropolis as part of a government “Repopulation Program”. But if this is climate “dystopia” the resulting feeling is not doom but acceptance. Things will change, we’ll get on with it, the author seems to say; kids will always be kids. With elements of folklore and magic realism, this novel contends with interesting philosophical questions such as the relationship between superstition, guilt and grief. It is also a moving exploration of the immigrant’s tale whereby the daughter must instruct her mother in their new world. An accomplished novel. — Brigid O’Dea
Among Others: Friendships and Encounters by Michael Frayn (Faber, £12.99)
“I’ve usually been the least clever in any group I’ve been part of,” author, playwright and journalist Michael Frayn writes in his intriguing patchwork memoir Among Others: Friendships and Encounters. Each essay recalls a person who had an important impact on him. Some were friends, some not. Some he kept in touch with for decades (Frayn was born in 1933), others came and went. Yet each person was significant, such as his childhood friend, David (whose life Frayn once envied, too young to understand the influence of David’s brutish, controlling father); Liza, Frayn’s first great love, who he meets one “sweltering night” in June 1957; and Berlin artist Sarah Haffner, with whom he has a “slightly wary friendship” for three decades before “something goes wrong between us”. He doesn’t claim to remember every detail, often giving himself permission not to. An unpretentious, thoughtful way to recall a life well lived. — Henrietta McKervey
