Since Jonathan Swift, Ireland has brought us hundreds of amazing Irish authors. This St.Patrick’s Day we are raising a glass to a few of our favourites here at Parade’s End Books.
Roddy Doyle
We have been fans of Roddy Doyle ever since The Commitments. His humour and effective use of dialogue have the reader captured within the first few pages.
In his latest novel Love, we join old friends Davy and Joe as they meet up one summer’s evening and decide to revisit the haunts if their youth.
As they make their way through the Dublin pubs and one pint turns to five, the old friends, now married and with grown-up children, discover that their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he has to tell Davy, and Davy a grief he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be.
With the ghosts of Dublin entwining around them – the pubs, the parties, the broken hearts and bungled affairs – the men find themselves face-to-face with the realities of friendship.
The book observes that some of the best moments in life are often the most mundane and will leave you reflecting on those moments of your own.
Love by Roddy Doyle – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
Anna Burns
All Anna Burns novels draw on the author’s background in conflict-ridden Belfast but it is her third novel, Milkman, which won the Booker prize in 2018 which most readers will know her for.
The Milkman is set in an unnamed city during an unnamed era and the lack of character names gives it an almost dystopian, futuristic quality. The narrator is a teenager, simply known as “middle sister” who is in a relationship with a much older man whilst also attracting the attention of a senior paramilitary figure – the Milkman.
Middle sister attempts to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.
Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
Milkman by Anna Burns – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
Colm Tóibín
As with most novels turned into movies, Colm Tóibín is best known for Brooklyn but this prolific writer has explored many themes in his books, all of which tell compelling tales of life and identity.
His latest novel, The Magician, is no exception. It is a fictionalised biography explores the life and times of the exiled German Nobel prize winning author Thomas Mann.
Mann’s life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.
He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.
Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.
The Magician by Colm Tóibín – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue’s novels are set in a variety of times and places from the French Riviera in Akin, to Victorian London in The Sealed Letter, to 19th century York.
In The Pull of the Stars, the author returns to her native Ireland to tell the story of a Dublin nurse during the 1918 flu pandemic.
Expectant mothers have come down with an unfamiliar flu and are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
Together, these three women work tirelessly to try and save the mothers and their babies, not always with the happy ending they hope for.
Julia also learns about the hardships the women have had to endure in a world where they are told they are not good wives if they haven’t borne at least twelve children.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over the course of three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
John Boyne
John Boyne is probably best known for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but he has written over 20 novels with a variety of themes.
His novels have tackled issues on homosexuality, transgender, the Catholic faith and persecution, all handled with his characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation.
His latest novel, The Echo Chamber follows the Cleverley family on a journey of discovery through the jungle of modern living. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.
They are just one tweet away from disaster and destroying their carefully curated reputations forever.
The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter-skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.
The Echo Chamber by John Boyne – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
Marian Keyes
Marian Keyes is a prolific writer who is much loved the world over for her works pf popular fiction and her unique sense of humour.
Although written in a light and humorous style, her novels cover themes including alcoholism, depression, addiction, cancer, bereavement, and domestic violence. The topics are handled sensitively through relatable characters and dialogue.
Grown Ups is about three very different women tied to three very different men, where every family occasion is a party – until the day the secrets spill out.
In the subsequent aftermath, the six adults find themselves wondering if it is finally time to grow up.
Grown Ups by Marian Keyes – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
Sally Rooney
Sally Rooney rose to fame after her novel Normal People became a hit TV series in 2020 followed by her first novel Conversations with Friends also hitting the small screen in 2022.
Her third novel, Beautiful World Where Are You follows novelist Alice and her best friend Eileen.
Alice meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young – but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in.
It’s a story of friendship, love and missed opportunities. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
Beautiful World Where Are You by Sally Rooney – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk
Anne Enright
Anne Enright holds the accolade of first Laureate for Irish Fiction and also won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering.
Her 2020 novel, Actress is a moving story about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths.
This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O’Dell, as told by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings.
But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage. As Norah uncovers her mother’s secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime.
Actress by Anne Enright – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk