Popular Fiction: Bernice Harrison on the latest crop of authors.
Turning Turtle. By Denise Deegan, Tivoli, 382pp €9.99
Denise Deegan has written a hugely enjoyable book that delves with an assured, smart tone into the big themes of marital fidelity, trust, ambition, money, and motherhood. Kim Waters is a power-dressing, busy PR executive in Dublin, with two small children and a handsome, successful and adoring husband. She's smart enough to know that you can't have it all and anyway flogging toilet cleaner is starting to get a bit old, so before she cracks up entirely she gives up her job to combine being a stay-at-home mom and a budding novelist. It's a disaster. She very quickly finds that she can't get started on the book, her marriage breaks up, she piles on weight, and she starts becoming someone she doesn't recognise or even like. Deegan weaves in several sub plots and diverse characters from Kim's glamorous and giddy friend to her wise mother, so the story never flags and she carries the snappy pace right through to the end of this entertaining and funny first novel.
Half Moon Lake. By Una Brankin, Pocket/Townhouse, 402pp, €8.99
There are secrets in every family that have the insidious power to change the lives of even the most unknowing members of that family. Una Brankin has set her powerful and lingering tale of buried secrets and lost opportunities in the 1970s, in a close-knit lakeside community not far from Belfast. The Troubles and deep local sectarian divisions are a shadowy, ever present backdrop, but this is Grace's story. As the reclusive woman lies in hospital in a coma, her niece and nephews gather for a death vigil - the sooner she dies, the sooner they think they will get their hands on the farm they have always believed was rightfully theirs. But Grace hangs on and the story explaining the big secret that dominated her life is told mostly through her thoughts. Meanwhile her niece Georgina snoops around the older woman's house and becomes intrigued by the hints of her aunt's interesting and complex past. Grace is a beautifully drawn character. A woman dominated in her girlhood by a cruel, bitter mother and whose only love was a man who she believed betrayed not just her but her entire community. Brankin tells an intriguing story full of vividly drawn characters and she carries it through right to the poignant end.
Back after the Break. By Anita Notaro, Bantam, 445pp, £5.99
Anita Notaro's first novel is set in a world she knows well, a televison station. She is a senior producer in RTÉ and her glamorous, stunningly attractive fictional heroine, Lindsay, is just starting out in TV land as an assistant producer. As the pressure piles on, she is given solo control of the station's flagship talkshow - a thinly disguised Late Late Show - and her ideas and cool control drag the ratings out of the doldrums. Meanwhile her personal life has gone off the rails. She's pregnant by Ireland's heart throb news reporter but he's ditched her and she starts a sexual relationship with the country's most famous Hollywood star. The one constant in her life is her friendship with her two ever-supportive girlfriends.
Unusually for a book in the popular fiction genre, Notaro has opted for a discriptive prose style. There's more narrative than dialogue which slows the book down considerably.
Bernice Harrison is a freelance journalist