Summer Reading 2017

The English Department, St Columba’s College, Dublin 16, Ireland

Reading Recommendations for Parents, Summer 2017 (extended version with previous years ) In 2010 I started an annual (sometimes biennial) list of suggested reading for the summer (mostly of recently-published paperbacks). These were originally directed at parents of our pupils, but are of course I hope of interest to lots of other people. Now here’s the 2017 version, with 26 options for your summer hammock. As a bonus, all the previous years are appended.

If you’re interested in some more recommendations, I have a fortnightly newsletter during term-time at http://eepurl.com/bYq-Br. Or scan this: Happy reading.

Julian Girdham, Head of English Department (Dates are usually for paperback publication in Ireland/UK. *in earlier lists signifies a longer review on www.sccenglish.ie).

2017 FICTION All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan (Black Swan, 2017) This year we have studied Donal Ryan's novel The Spinning Heart with Leaving Certificate candidates as one of our three comparative texts. An achievement with real bravura. 21 different narrators in post-Celtic Tiger rural Ireland, but it's not just an exercise: it's also funny and moving. In Ryan's latest novel, All We Shall Know, again he is brilliant at getting voices just right: in this case largely one rather than the multiplicity of the previous book. The book is moving, particularly in the relationship between the central character, whose life spins out of control, and her tenderly-loving elderly father. Is there anyone else writing now who gets the variety of Hiberno-English so well in fiction?

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (Arrow, 2016).

Nothing is going to match To Kill a Mockingbird, but Harper Lee’s controversially ‘rediscovered’ first version of the classic still has lots of pleasures, and is well worth reading. Perhaps piqued by it not being Mockingbird, commentators were sniffy about it on its publication a year before Lee’s death, but its evocation of the American South in the 1950s is certainly worth visiting.

Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither by Sara Baume (Windmill, 2015).

This story of a lonely man in his 50s who adopts a mutilated dog is a pleasure to read, with much lovely writing. Joseph O’Connor wrote in a review in the Irish Times, "The action begins in coastal East Co Cork, perhaps near the oil refinery at Whitegate, before narrator and dog are forced by local misunderstanding or mishap to take to the road as fugitives. Ray includes his phone number in the novel, but I was afraid to ring it.

Baume writes him so persuasively that I felt he would answer."

Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann (Pushkin Press, 2017).

Wiedermann’s novel is a re-imagining of sea-side Ostend in Belgium in 1936, where artists and intellectuals gather before ‘the dark’ descends. Central is the Austrian novelist and short-story writer Stefan Zweig, and his relationship with his friend the writer Joseph Roth. The Financial Times review had it right: “elegiac atmosphere, extreme personalities, tense political backdrop and tragic central relationships”.

Earthly Remains by Donna Leon (Heinemann, 2017).

Another excellent outing from the reliable author of the Brunetti mysteries. Here, the main character is not so much Venice itself as the lagoon and its islands, vividly evoked once again.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Set in Maine, this tells the story of a retired teacher and the people whose lives intersect with hers. A more precise description would be: it is a series of interconnected short stories, most of which feature the eponymous teacher, but its form is baggy, wandering, often surprising, always interesting.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Penguin, 2017).

Strout’s more recent short novel centres on the relationship between the main character, who finds herself in hospital and separated from her husband and children, and her mother, who had seemed estranged but who now returns to keep Lucy company. What follows is a powerful exploration of their relationship, and of Lucy’s childhood.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Fleet, 2017).

This is already a big success, winning the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and will become even more so now that Barry Jenkins, director of the Oscar-winning Moonlight, is producing a television version for Amazon. It is an alternative history of the American South, and imagines the famous ‘railroad’ for escaping slaves as an actual rather than metaphorical one. Thrilling and moving in equal turns, this is a new and powerful vision of the African-American experience.

2

Conclave by Robert Harris (Arrow, 2017).

Another winner from Harris. This is part-fascinating insight into the election of a Pope, partnonsense (especially the ending). Perfect for the beach.

Short Fiction A short section on short novels or novellas. You get the idea.

Reunion by Fred Uhlman (Vintage Classics, 1997).

This evocative short novel tells the story of the friendship between Hans (Jewish) and Konradin (aristocratic), starting in the early 1930s, a relationship which of course becomes shaped by the massive turmoil of history. It is extraordinary how much power Uhlman packs into 80 pages.

The Visitor by Maeve Brennan (New Island, 2006).

This is Brennan’s 'rediscovered' 1940s novella The Visitor. It is perfectly made, quite depressing, claustrophobic and evocative. Joyce in Dubliners is an echo, and the Henry James of Washington Square (Clare Boylan in her introduction references The Turn of the Screw).

Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor (Penguin, 2015) In our Arts Week in March we held an event to mark the passing of this most distinguished Old Columban writer. The novelist Joseph O’Connor spoke about Trevor’s work and read (beautifully) his story ‘Another Christmas’. I spoke about Trevor’s connection with SCC (you can read this talk here). If you want a way into Trevor’s fiction, this perfect book is a great start.

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (Picador, 2015) A very short novel which takes on, as it says on the lid of the tin, an entire life. Set in the Austrian Alps, Seethaler evokes the life of Andreas Egger in a remote mountain village, which in the course of that life he rarely leaves. The author’s view is steady and unsentimental. Read it in one unbroken afternoon or evening to appreciate its skilful arc.

And finally, Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf (Picador, 2016) The 2016 SCC English book of the year: As Kent Haruf was dying he wrote this final short novel, a beautifully-created story of the surprising relationship between two older people, Addie Moore and Louis Waters. Within the relatively few pages Haruf packs the sense of the amplitude of entire lives. It is told in his characteristically understated manner, and its ending is sad, beautifully modulated and deeply moving. Highly recommended.

3

2017 NON-FICTION Sapiens: a brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (Vintage, 2015).

The great skilful sweep of this book’s stories of Homo Sapiens on our planet is a fine prompt to sit back and reflect in the summer holidays. It’s also quite an antidote to what seems like a constant wave of horror in the news. Any mere current event looks puny in the perspective of all of human history. Particularly important is Harari's emphasis on how the stories we tell ourselves shape our history (rather than, necessarily, actual events).

The Cyber Effect: a pioneering cyberpsychologist explains how human behaviour changes online

by Mary Aiken (Spiegel and Grau, 2017).

The influence of what Aiken called ‘the cyber effect’ is a cause for anxiety for many parents, and in this book she looks at it in informed and great detail. She admits that the 'cyber effect' on all of us, but particularly children, is still uncertain: there has not been enough time yet to gather data. There is plenty of food for thought here (the chapters cover topics such as 'cyberchondria', online dating, the Deep Web and pornography), but the most compelling parts are about children and teenagers: "We have a shallow end of the swimming pool for children. Where is the shallow end of the pool on the Internet?" And for all of us: "Once behavior mutates in cyberspace, where a significant number of people participate, it can double back around and become a norm in everyday life, something I call cybermigration. This means that the implications of the online experience and environment are ever evolving and profound, and impact us all—no matter where we live or spend time."

Reading for Pleasure by Kenny Pieper (Independent Thinking Press, 2016) Although designed primarily for English teachers, there is plenty here of value for parents too. How do you encourage your children to read? More and more parents are asking for advice in the screenage. Kenny is a teacher in Scotland who writes with engagement and passion about this vital matter.

SPQR: a history of ancient Rome by Mary Beard (Liveright, 2017) Sometimes it is good just to be in the presence of a particular sensibility, and Mary Beard's seems just right just now: calm, sceptical, amused, balanced about history.

There are lots of great stories, of course, but the main note is her relentless clarity about how true history can be when evidence is relatively scanty. A fine work of popular but deeplyinformed history.

4

The Return: fathers, sons and the land in between by Hisham Matar (Penguin, 2016) This is a gripping, anguished, powerful story of Matar's attempts to find out what happened to his father, Jaballa, who disappeared during Gadaffi's long and terrible rule in Libya, a country which since the dictator's death has taken a still more terrible turn.

Cleverlands by Lucy Crehan (Unbound, 2016) Subtitled “The secrets behind the success of the world's education superpowers”, this is an accessible perspective on the school systems of Finland, Japan, Singapore, Shanghai and Canada. Prompted by the disproportionately-influential PISA results, Crehan set off on this insightful and always interesting journey around these education systems. Lots to think about for parents and teachers.

Dadland: a journey into uncharted territory by Keggie Carew (Vintage, 2017) This won the 2016 Costa Book of the Year Award. As Keggie Carew’s father started to slide into dementia, she began to try to secure the details of his past, particularly his role as a special agent in Burma in the Second World War. The memoir moves between past and present, and will strike a chord in any ‘child’ whose parent has moved into their final years.

The Hurley Maker’s Son by Patrick Deeley (Black Swan, 2017) Patrick Deeley’s lovely memoir is set in rural East Galway in his prompted by his father’s early death in an accident. This world has now but Deeley (a poet and retired school principal) recreates it beautifully, semi-wild area called the Callows where children ran free.

childhood, largely gone, especially the

The Shepherd’s Life: a tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks (Penguin, 2016) This book tells the story both of Rebanks himself as he grows up in a shepherding home in the Lake District, and of the community. He writes that 'there is a poetic fantasy that shepherds, and farmers, live a kind of isolated existence alone with nature... At times this is physically true ... but the whole landscape is a complex web of relationships between farms, flocks and families.' It is a book about deep expertise, rootedness in a place, and a commitment to a way of life.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Text Publishing, 2015) An outstanding book, which takes the form of a letter from Coates to his teenage son, advising on what awaits him as a young black man in contemporary America. Naturally this involves the author’s analysis of his own earlier years.

5

Essential reading for anyone wishing to think about one of America’s constants, and indeed for anyone interested in parents and children.

The House by the Lake: one house, five families and a hundred years of German history by Thomas Harding (Picador, 2017) This excellently tells a century of stories about Berlin, and Germany; this is history by a vertical drilling down through the events which happen to a single summer house near the German capital. The First World War, Weimar, the Third Reich, the DDR, reunification - all in such a short period. Harding's Hanns and Rudolf is also worth reading.

H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald (Vintage, 2015) McDonald’s Costa Prize-winning extraordinary story starts in grief (the death of her father) and moves on to her attempts to tame and train a goshawk. Beautifully written, this is an intense and unusual read.

6

2015 FICTION The Free by Willy Vlautin (Faber and Faber, 2015). In a previous list we recommended Vlautin’s heart-breaking novel Lean on Pete, about a boy and a horse.

This time the central character is Leroy, a soldier wounded in Iraq, as he tries to come to terms with his shattered life. Vlautin (also a musician) gives tender attention to the lives of marginal Americans, writing about them in a direct clear style that does justice to the complexities of human character.

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland, 2013). Parents with children entering Fifth Form next year might like to read this excellent novel too (it is part of a comparative module with The Great Gatsby and Oedipus the King). A technical tour de force told by no fewer than 21 different narrators, it is also a funny and evocative story about rural Ireland just as the economic boom of the last decade came to a shuddering halt.

Falling in Love by Donna Leon (Heinemann, 2015). The latest Brunetti mystery set in Venice is as enjoyable as the 23 previous ones. The setting is opera, the emotions operatic. Pure pleasure. *Longbourn by Jo Baker (Transworld, 2013). This would be an enjoyable read if you don’t know Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but is even more so if you do: an account of ‘below stairs’ at the house of the Bennet family. It is particularly good on the texture of everyday living, something Austen often skates over.

Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe (Penguin, 2015). The first novel from the author of the very funny letters collected as Love, Nina: despatches from family life. In the unpromising environment of an English village in the 1970s, 9 year-old Lizzie (partly precocious, partly clueless) sets out to net a man for her newlydivorced mother.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin (Penguin, 2014). Not a sequel to his enormously popular Brooklyn (which is being released as a film in November, starring Saoirse Ronan), but still following on from it, since it is set in the same town, Enniscorthy, and also in the 1960s. A beautifully written account of a woman coming to terms with grief following the death of her husband.

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (Penguin, 2015). Maud, an elderly woman, is losing her mind to dementia. Emma Healey skilfully uses this most unreliable of narrators in a story about memory. She is particularly good at evoking the anxiety and bewilderment of the story-teller herself.

An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell (Vintage, 2014). A bonus for fans of the Swedish detective Kurt Wallander following the end of the series.

This earlier long novella is classic Mankell - evocative, melancholy, highly readable.

7

Two More Pints by Roddy Doyle (Cape, 2014). These page-long conversations between two middle-aged men propping up a bar are being published by Doyle on Facebook in the first place.

Often very funny, the book captures perfectly the nonsense spoken by men to each other when they are trying to fill a void. *Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate, 2014).

An intelligent and engrossing read for the holidays from this excellent Nigerian novelist, author of the earlier Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. In one sense, Americanah tells a single story, that of the enduring love of the central character, Ifemulu and her teenage boyfriend Obinze, ('The Zed') but from this central strand Adichie spins much more - keen and often funny observations on race in America (Ifemulu 'becomes black' on arriving in the US) and Britain, sharp descriptions of contemporary Lagos, blog entries and literal strands in the form of a recurring scene set in a hair salon in Trenton, New Jersey. In the latter, Ifemulu's uncertainty about her own identity is to the fore. When she returns home, cultural and romantic uncertainties provide the climax of the novel: "She was no longer sure what was new in Lagos and what was new in herself".

Dominion by C.J. Samson (Pan Books, 2013). From the author of the popular Shardlake series comes a standalone novel set in 1952 in a Britain which succumbed to a German invasion (Winston Churchill leads the British Resistance). This is a convincing, enjoyable, evocative work of imaginative fiction.

The Greenhouse by Audur Ava Olafsdottir (Amazon Crossing, 2011).

An unusual and surprising Icelandic novel. This ‘official’ blurb describes it well: “For Lobbi, the tragic passing of his mother proves to be a profound catalyst. Their shared love of tending rare roses in her greenhouse inspires him to leave his studies behind and travel to a remote village monastery to restore its once fabulous gardens. While transforming the garden under the watchful eye of a cinephile monk, he is surprised by a visit from Anna, a friend of a friend with whom he shared a fateful moment in his mother’s greenhouse, and the daughter they together conceived that night. In caring for both the garden and the little girl, Lobbi slowly begins to assume the varied and complex roles of a man: fatherhood with a deep relationship with his child, cooking, nurturing, and remaining also a son, brother, lover, and…a gardener. A story about the heartfelt search for beauty in life, The Greenhouse is a touching reminder of our ability to turn the small things in everyday life into the extraordinary”.

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (Arrow, 2014). The latest historical novel from one of the most accessible writers in this genre today (Fatherland, Pompeii, Imperium…). This takes on the extraordinary true story of Alfred Dreyfus and the scandal that hit France in 1895. Harris’s central character, Georges Picquart, gets drawn down into very deep waters.

The Lives of Women by Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic, 2015) The main character returns from exile in the US to the suburban Irish housing estate she grew up on. Watching the house that backs on to her family's being prepared for its new owners prompts her to relive the mysterious 8

circumstances that led to her exile. The style is fresh, and the gradual piecing together of past events makes the novel a compelling one.

2015 NON-FICTION Do No Harm : stories of life, death and brain surgery by Henry Marsh (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2015). Now for two thought-provoking works by practising doctors. Marsh’s essays and stories on his work as a brain surgeon are powerful and packed full of extraordinary detail. However important most of us consider our jobs to be, we can at least console ourselves with the fact that our own failures and mistakes don’t bring with them the consequences of a brain surgeon’s...

Being Mortal: illness, medicine and what matters in the end by Atul Gawande (Profile Books, 2015). Gawande is an American doctor of Indian descent who has written some of the most interesting books on our approach to medicine in recent years (and also gave the BBC’s Reith Lectures this year). This book looks at Western attitudes to treating and looking after the very old and the very ill. This might seem to be a depressing subject, but the author’s humane intelligence is a welcome companion in confronting dilemmas which almost all of us will face in due course.

Maggie and Me by Damien Barr (Bloomsbury, 2014). The ‘Maggie’ of the title is Margaret Thatcher. She is not in fact a central figure of the book, more the figurehead of the 1980s culture in which young Damien grows up. Two complications: he’s gay and he comes from a really rough working class Scottish background. The resulting memoir is really funny (and partly horrifying).

Karl-Ove Knaussgaard: The My Struggle series (Vintage. So far in English translation, in order: A Death in the Family, A Man in Love, Boyhood Island, Dancing in the Dark). This recommendation comes with a warning: you might well hate these books (you won’t get far into the first one if you do, however). Here is a massive autobiographical ‘novel’ about a Norwegian author who has done little in his life, and the highlight of the first book is an extremely lengthy description of how he and his brother clean the absolutely filthy house their father lived in before his death.

Sold? Perhaps you will be, because these books are extremely - bewilderingly compelling.

Germany - memories of a nation by Neil McGregor (Allen Lane, 2014). Not yet in paperback but buy it in hardback in any case, since it is a really beautiful production by the publishers. This is based on McGregor’s excellent radio series (now available as free podcasts from the BBC), but has the bonus of presenting us with excellent illustrations as McGregor takes us fluently through key moments and objects in German history (Gutenberg, Bauhaus, Dresden, Valhalla and more).

9

Every Single Minute by Hugo Hamilton (Fourth Estate, 2015). This thinlydisguised and powerful memoir is an account of Hamilton’s time accompanying the author Nuala O’Faolain on her last foreign trip, shortly before she died, to Berlin. Listen online to her interview with her friend Marian Finucane for more background. *One Summer - America 1927 by Bill Bryson (Black Swan, 2014).

Appropriately, a recommendation for summer reading about a summer. Bill Bryson's book tells the story of a few months of scarcely credible drama, built mainly around the challenge of the Orteig Prize, given for flying non-stop across the Atlantic. Bryson tells the story of this summer with his characteristic brio. It's also interesting for readers of The Great Gatsby; although that masterpiece was about the summer of 1922, Bryson's popular history gives a very vivid sense of the same culture.

This Boy by Alan Johnson (Corgi, 2014). Often regarded as the best leader the British Labour Party did not have, and indeed the best Prime Minister that the country missed out on, Johnson is an unusual politican, and this memoir is a tremendous evocation of a working class background a million miles away from the typical upbringing of most (privileged) politicians of our time. It is also a tribute to the love of a mother and a sister.

Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain (Penguin, 2013). Cain, herself an introvert (watch her TED talk from 2012), defends the value of introversion in a world in which, she says, between a third and a half fit into this category. There is plenty to make you think here (one common misconception is that introversion equals shyness).

Sentenced to Life by Clive James (Picador, 2015). A lovely collection of poems by a writer whose poetry is only now getting the notice that his criticism and biographical writings did in the past. The best here are ones written with a strong sense of mortality (James has been seriously ill for some time), such as ‘Japanese Maple’ and Procedure for Disposal), which face the inevitable future (and accept the flawed past) with grace and elegance.

Lifesaving Poems edited by Anthony Wilson (Bloodaxe Books, 2015). A treat: Wilson selects poems which have meant a lot to him over the years, most of which are not anthology regulars, and writes a page or so on each in a very personal and engaged way. One or two of these each day in the holidays will be a tonic.

10

2013 FICTION Toby’s Room by Pat Barker (Penguin, 2013).

Pat Barker continues to mine the First World War period, in this gripping novel about a small group of friends in London in 1917. Her first visit to the fictional possibilities of this time was in the Regeneration trilogy (including the Booker Prize winning The Ghost Road). Here, she writes equally well, in a page-turning novel about love, art and injury.

HHhH by Laurent Binet (Vintage, 2012).

This is another real page-turner. In his first novel, Binet re-imagines one of the most dramatic episodes of the Second World War, Operation Anthropoid in 1942, in which two Czechoslovakian volunteers parachuted back into their home country to attempt to assassinate the chief of the Nazi secret services, architect of the Final Solution and boss of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. Binet writes with brilliant attention to detail as the crucial day looms nearer and nearer.

The Golden Egg by Donna Leon (Heinemann, 2013) Four appearances in a row for one of the most readable, subtle and enjoyable crime novelists writing today. This is the 22nd outing for Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti, and Leon’s writing seems to get stronger all the time. She has also recently started to explore darker sides of Italian society, as is evident here, in the absorbing story of the death of a ‘nobody’ (a deaf-mute who worked in a dry cleaner’s). The regular cast is as strongly drawn as ever, including Brunetti’s close-knit family and his other family - his work colleagues.

The Good Father by Noah Hawley (Hodder, 2013) The premise: Dr Paul Allen’s adult son has killed a possible future President of the United States. Now Allen tries to make sense of what has happened and has to question every part of his own character and everything that happened in his first marriage and early parenthood. There are echoes here of Lionel Shriver’s excellent (if very bleak) We Need to Talk About Kevin. It is also a strong book about America and its gun culture.

Two Pints, by Roddy Doyle (Jonathan Cape, 2012) This might not sound too promising: a series of very short dialogues between two fifty-something men sitting on bar stools over a series of months pontificating about the Queen’s visit to Ireland, Colonel Gadaffi’s downfall, Whitney Houston’s demise and many more personal matters. But it’s just very very funny. Roddy Doyle at his pitch-perfect best.

Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway (Granta, 2013) It’s possible you could hate this. It’s a ‘Marmite book’, dividing those who love it and those who can’t see what the fuss is about. The characters who 11

give the book its title are two policemen, but the book is no conventional crime story. It’s also no conventional novel, with a series of short sections which sometimes connect with others. Ridgway is one of Ireland’s neglected writers, and at his best his work is hauntingly brilliant.

NON-FICTION *The Crocodile by the Door: the story of a house, a farm and a family by Selina Guinness Pride of place goes to one of our own. The author is an Old Columban, and lives close to the College. At the centre of The Crocodile by the Door: the story of a house, a farm and a family is the story of her uncle Charles, who worked here for many years as a French and German teacher, and is very fondly remembered.

When Selina Guinness came as a pupil to St Columba's, she lived just up the hill in Tibradden House (also the name of our junior boys' boarding house): "I felt as if I was being handed over as some kind of trophy to the victors of a battle I hadn't realised was being waged above my head. My mother had brought me to Tibradden at birth, and now I was being handed back to the house."

Many years later she returned to live in the house, this time with Colin (soon to be her husband), and would have to start waging her own battles - with the crumbling edifice, with a new farming life, with ravenous property developers, with the after-effects of her uncle's life.The Crocodile by the Door tells these stories, all skilfully interwoven in a clear and supple style. In particular, its narrative drive comes from three strands - Charles's declining health, the tragic Kirwan family who lived in the lodge, and attempts by the property developer Bernard McNamara to buy much of the land. The result is an immensely readable first book, and highly recommended.

Stop What you’re Doing and Read This! By Carmen Callil (Vintage, 2011) A terrific collection of essays about reading, and why you should do it, and how you might make time for it. There are stand-out articles by Jeanette Winterston, Blake Morrison and Jane Davis, and it begins with a brilliant piece of advocacy by Zadie Smith for libraries, and how public funding of them is culturally vital. Excellent perhaps as a first read this summer.

The Examined Life: how we lose and find ourselves by Stephen Grosz (Chatto & Windus, 2013).

Clearly already one of the publications of the year. Grosz has been a psychoanalyst for twenty-five years, and in his first book he has distilled this experience into a series of short stories. All human life and its crookedness is here, revealed by the author’s sympathetic and clear-sighted gaze. Grosz writes beautifully, with no technical or academic jargon. As he states, this is a book ‘about listening to each other – not just the words but the gaps in between ... it’s something that is a part of our everyday lives – we tap, we listen.’ Highly recommended.

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

by Sarah Churchwell (Virago, 2013).

If you’ve read The Great Gatsby (as all in our leaving VI form have, and it will be the main single text for next year’s V form), this is essential reading.

Gatsby is much in the news at the moment, thanks to Baz Luhrmann’s so-so cinema version, and Churchwell shows how much the news, the moment and 1920s society meant in its genesis. Careless People is full of fascinating detail.

12

The Passage of Power: the year of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro (Bodley Head, 2012) The fourth volume of the greatest political biography ever written and one of the truly great pieces of story-telling of the 20th and 21st centuries (it started life in the 1980s and is still not complete). This volume covers the best-known events of all, including JFK’s assassination and LBJ’s subsequent assumption of the Presidency. However, don’t start here if you haven’t read Caro yet (if you have, you’ll already have read this book, since his devotees snap up the latest instalment the moment it appears). Start instead with The Path to Power (1982), covering Johnson’s early years in Texas, and start experiencing the narcotic brilliance of the story-telling.

The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex by Mark Kermode (Arrow, 2012) A frequently hilarious commentary on what is wrong with modern movies.

Among Kermode's targets are the 3-D experience, the cinema snack industry and poorly-plotted blockbusters.

Walking Home by Simon Armitage (Faber & Faber, 2013) The poet's account of three weeks spent walking the Pennine Way, and living on the takings from poetry readings in venues ranging from a youth hostel to someone's sitting-room. This is a low-key travel journal and the genial Armitage is a sensitive and observant companion.

Quiet by Susan Cain (Penguin, 2013) The subtitle - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - says it all. Cain argues that quiet, sensitive people are not properly valued in a world that champions outgoing talkative types. A fascinating book that may be of particular interest to parents and teachers.

Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (Vintage, 2012) An addictive collection of essays that covers topics ranging from a Christian rock festival to his brother's electrocution experience. The highlights are grotesquely compelling pieces on Michael Jackson and Axl Rose. Sullivan's prose crackles with energy throughout.

From 2012, 2011 and 2010: FICTION *Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry (Jonathan Cape, 2012).

Barry’s second short story collection is outstanding. The variety of his subject matter is impressive, but even more so his style - sharp, supple and funny. ‘Wifey Redux’ is an hilarious tale of a Celtic Tiger marriage gone wrong. ‘Ernestine and Kit’ is a truly creepy story of what two ladies in their sixties get up in County Sligo. Best of all is ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’, winner of the Sunday Times short story award, a tender story of a beer club members’ trip from Liverpool to North Wales on a sweltering July day: superb.

13

Foster by Claire Keegan (Faber and Faber, 2010).

This short novella one of the choices for the 2013 and 2014 Leaving Certificate comparative module. It compellingly tells the tale of a girl who spends the summer with a childless couple in Co. Wexford. The characters and their surroundings are rendered with subtle power. The ending is quietly intriguing and can be viewed from a number of angles; it's difficult not to revisit the final lines a number of times.

Beastly Things by Donna Leon (Heinemann, 2012).

The latest in the Commissario Brunetti police series from Venice is very good. Brunetti is one of the most attractive detectives around, and the other great character is the beautiful city itself.

The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker (Harvill Secker, 2012) Two years ago we recommended Bakker’s outstanding début, *The Twin. His central character in this second novel is also Dutch, but this time is a woman who has fled her country, her past and her husband on the way to Ireland. She only gets as far as Wales, and this is the story of her ‘detour’, as she sets up home in a primitive rural cottage. All the virtues of The Twin are evident here too: the calm clarity of Bakker’s prose (again beautifully translated by David Colmer), the underlying sense of unease, the narrative grip of a story in which, on the surface, not much seems to happen. The end is very powerful. *Open City by Teju Cole (Faber and Faber, 2012).

A beautiful evocation of a city (New York), this apparently freewheeling series of vignettes and memories recalled by a Nigerian doctor is a top-class début. Open City has a broad canvas, despite its relatively modest length: ranging across New York, it also extends to Brussels and Nigeria, and - especially reaches down into histories of many kinds. Those histories may be cultural (the suppression of 9/11, the African Burial Ground near Wall Street, Ellis Island) or personal (Julius's forgotten childhood German, boarding school in Nigeria, the after-effects of a recently failed relationship). It is also terrific on the great city itself, evoking its neighbourhoods and changing atmospheres memorably. *Solace by Belinda McKeon (Picador, 2012) This first novel won the Best Newcomer of the Year title at the 2011 Irish Book Awards. Certainly it was deserved recognition: Solace combines many virtues, including a strong narrative drive, a vivid portrait of Ireland on the cusp of the Celtic Tiger's implosion, and an impressive exploration of the varieties of parentchild relationships. Best of all, however, is McKeon's style - clean, unfussy and tender when reaching below the skin of her characters. She certainly moves over some of the ground of the late great John McGahern, but unlike some other contemporary Irish writers who have been influenced by him, she still consistently strikes her own note.

The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (Vintage, 2012) Enright won the Booker Prize for The Gathering, a novel some readers found very downbeat. This is funnier, but also brilliantly written. At its core is a love affair between two married people, but what really matters is the superbly maintained tone 14

of the narrator, Gina, as well as the sharply-observed evocation of Ireland on the cusp of the Celtic Tiger meltdown. This is a tremendously readable novel.

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes (Myriad, 2011) Not to be read if you’re in the house alone … Catherine is recovering from an abusive relationship.

But she is still fragile, and her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder dominates her life. Sometimes paranoia is justified...

A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale (Fourth Estate, 2012) The latest novel from this consistently readable English novelist, and another story set in a vividly-evoked Cornwall. Barbaby is a parish priest; at the start of the novel he witnesses a terrible event at the home of one of his young parishioners. The rest of the novel moves skilfully back and forward in time until the full mosaic reveals the story behind that first scene. Gale’s story is rich, humane and always interesting.

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J.Watson (Black Swan, 2012) Like Haynes’s Into the Darkest Corner, this thriller is pure narrative adrenaline. Christine loses her memory every time she goes to sleep; every morning she starts life as a blank slate. Then she starts to write a diary to try to make sense of who she is, and when she reads each entry the next day a disturbing truth about her life starts to emerge.

Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift (Picador, 2012).

Swift’s style is clear and simple, but his thematic reach is considerable. The latest novel from one of England’s best writers examines the damages inflicted on his country through the lives of Jack Luxton, once a farmer in Devon, and his wife Ellie. Jack’s brother Tom was killed in Iraq. As he and Ellie try to cope with the aftermath, the novel hurtles to a dramatic and moving conclusion.

Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart (McClelland and Stewart, 2010) The narrator looks back to mysterious events that unfolded when she was a teenager on her family's now abandoned Canadian orchard. The novel looks at how stories, a family's, and the printed stories of others', weave themselves through people's lives. A novel for those who enjoy the poetic in prose.

Pure by Andrew Miller (Sceptre, 2011) The story is set in 1785 in Paris. A young engineer is charged by the King to demolish the city's oldest cemetery. The narrow Parisian streets and its inhabitants are evoked convincingly, and the proximity of mortality makes this a thought-provoking read.

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst (Picador, 2012) This novel's wide scope pivots on a moment that inspired a poem: a poem which would become a British favourite. A young man’s interest in the poem leads to two families - the Sawles and the Valances. Their compellingly different yet 15

interlinked stories are revealed by episodes that capture England as it changes through the twentieth century.

Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan (Faber and Faber, 2007) Julius Winsome leads a solitary life in the woods of New England. He asks only of life that he be left alone with his books and his terrier, Hobbes. Hobbes is wonderful: “he was a dog run through with happiness, for they lead short lives and have an extra sense for each passing moment.

They eat with all their hearts, they play with all their hearts, they sleep with all their hearts.”

One day Hobbes is shot, and when Winsome determines it was deliberate - there are undertones of a love affair, and territory and ownership and language - he wreaks his revenge.

“I didn’t have feeling where I should and too much where I shouldn’t. You keep away from men like me and you’ll be all right in life,” he means to tell his foe, “but it never came up.” A chilling dissertation on sniping in snowbound woods follows, but we never lose sight of Winsome in the midst of his tragedy.

How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston (Penguin, 1974/1988) A book that is frequently studied as part of the Leaving Certificate English course. It is short and powerful: starting in 1914, it tells the story of Alec, only son of a landed Anglo-Irish couple in County Wicklow. In his childhood, he meets Jerry, a boy from a very different background, and their friendship develops. The second half of the book is set in the trenches in the War. Their relationship comes under tragic pressure. Johnston’s writing is taut; she is particularly good with dialogue.

What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn (Tindal Street Press, 2007) “Crime was out there. Undetected, unseen. She hoped she wouldn't be too late.” Our detective from Falcon Investigations is Kate, a 10 year-old heading for her daily holiday surveillance shift at the new local Green Oaks Shopping Centre. Together with her assistant Mickey the Monkey (who she made from a Charlie Chimp the Gangster craft kit), she keeps an eye on the centre's customers, staff, shops, banks ... What Was Lost is both very funny and very moving. Catherine O'Flynn captures perfectly the ferocious seriousness of childhood, and the heart-breaking emotional void below this child's detective role-playing.

*In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Atlantic, 2011) Shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize for fiction, this book is actually almost impossible to categorise. Three apparently autobiographical stories tell the stories of three real journeys in Africa, Europe and India made over the years by ‘Damon’, during each of which he becomes defined by his relationship with three very different characters. This is brilliant, subtle and suggestive story-telling by a fine South African writer.

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury, 2011) This is an exuberant book, as funny and original as its 11 year-old narrator, Harrison Opuku. He has recently arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, leaving his father and baby sister behind ‘to sell the shop.’ Harri quickly picks up the ‘language’ of the sink estate tower block he lives in, with all the verve and curiosity of the smart kid he is. He goes to school, makes friends with a pigeon, and, secure in the strength of his mother and sister, observes - and accepts - the dysfunctional world around him. But in that external world of juvenile gangs, drugs 16

and knife crime, his understanding of some important realities is imperfect. This is a super book for teenagers or adults - all the way to its moving ending.

Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor (Vintage, 2011) O’Connor skilfully imagines the life of Molly Allgood, former lover of the Irish playwright John Millington Synge, as she ends her days in poverty and loneliness in London in the 1950s. She thinks back to the transforming relationship of her life, and her times acting at the Abbey Theatre. O’Connor’s writing is supple, and he continues to experiment with different styles and themes in his fiction. Ghost Light was the One City, One Book choice for Dublin in 2011.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber and Faber, 2010) The Lacuna follows the life and times of Harrison Shepherd through some of the seminal events of mid-20th century America, north and south. For all that, it is a quiet, reflective book - Shepherd is an observer, a companion to stronger wills than his own. He works for Mexican artists Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and the exiled Leon Trotsky, witnessing his assassination, and later lives in post Second World War McCarthyite America where, now a writer, he comes under threat for his communist associations and unrevealed homosexuality. The women are the vibrant characters in this book - his husband-chasing Mexican mother, Frieda Kahlo herself, and his American amanuensis, Violet Brown.

Drawing Conclusions by Donna Leon (Random House, 2011) Another in the ever-pleasurable Inspector Brunetti series, all set in Venice and its hinterland. Perhaps the most unusual element of these detective stories is that the hero is not a troubled alcoholic middle-aged man with a catastrophic family life. He is indeed middle-aged, but is still deeply in love with his wife Paola (understandably, given what she cooks), and his vision of life is humane rather than cynical.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Sceptre 2010) Much of this novel's wide scope takes place on the tiny Dutch trading outpost of Nagasaki in the 1799 Edo era of Japan: a world then closed off to the west, and a world that is almost lost to us now. A patchwork of characters (including the protagonist Jacob, a flame-haired Dutch man), cultures and languages intricately weave to create what is a finely balanced triptych of a novel. There is much to stay abreast of when reading this novel - but to do so is ultimately rewarding. *Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Penguin, 2011) This big ambitious novel is, simply, very funny. Set in a South Dublin boarding school (no, not us, honestly), it tells the stories of a group of young boys in a bravura manner, through a series of brilliant set-pieces. It will sweep you along, and wash away any minor doubts (the adults are caricatured, the teachers absurd – they are, aren’t they?). A great holiday read. *Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin (Faber and Faber, 2011) 17

This is surely as good as contemporary fiction can get: the heartbreaking story of Charley Thompson, a 15 year-old boy who moves to Portland, Oregon with his father. Left alone to fend for himself, he becomes drawn to the Portland Meadows racetrack, a seedy venue for hopeless horses and even more hopeless jockeys and trainers. It certainly is not an uplifting read, but curiously not depressing either: the narrative voice is compelling, and Vlautin’s vision of humanity can be terribly tender. Just brilliant. *The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (Abacus, 2010) This is beautifully written with excellently drawn characters. It opens up a place and a perspective in World War 2 Europe that is an unusual one. Reading this is a strongly visual experience but all the other senses are also challenged to grasp the sense of space and light integral to this place. What is even more interesting is that is a building that exists as a national architectural treasure to this day on the edge of the city of Brno.

* The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (Flamingo, 2009).

“I’ve put father upstairs.” So starts an extraordinary and haunting book, set in contemporary Holland on a farm near Amsterdam. The narrator, Helmer von Wonderen, lives on a farm with his aged father. Years ago his twin brother Henk died in a car crash, and now his life starts to change after years of stagnancy, with the return of Henk’s girlfriend Riet, accompanied by her teenage son (also called Henk). The Twin is told in a very spare way.

Entirely gripping, you won’t be able to get it out of your thoughts. It rightly won the 2010 IMPAC Award.

A Question of Belief by Donna Leon (William Heinemann, 2010).

If you haven’t discovered the Inspector Brunetti series set in Venice, then a huge treat is ahead of you. Brunetti is not the hard-bitten, alcoholic loner detective of cliché: instead, he is a classics-reading, empathetic Venetian native who is happily married to a university professor (whose favourite author is Henry James). The other great character of these novels (this is 19th in the series) is Venice; the city is a palpable, vivid and memorable presence in each book. Leon seems to becoming better and better, and often tackles interesting contemporary issues. The first novel was Death at La Fenice, a good place to start for a summer of treats.

* The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer (Faber and Faber, 2009).

Set in 1953 in San Francisco, this shares some of the atmosphere of the great TV series Mad Men (which is set at the start of the 60s, when change is more obviously in the air in America). It's a short novel, but packs a lot into its 233 pages. Narrated by housewife (and mother of a polio-stricken son) Pearlie, it hits us with two revelations in the first section, one which comes as no great surprise, and a second which is a real shocker. The interplay of these two complications drives the story, which evokes 1950s San Francisco expertly. The novel opens ‘We think we know the ones we love’, a sentence repeated periodically through the novel, and the elegant twists and turns of the narrative constantly re-enact this idea.

18

* The Spare Room by Helen Garner (Penguin, 2009).

This is not an emotionally easy read. It is both spare and unsparing. It is a very short novel, but is all the more resonant and effective for its laser-like concentration on the seesawing emotions of the central character, a 60-ish Australian journalist called Helen. She volunteers to look after Nicola, an extrovert and eccentric friend who is desperately ill with cancer and has turned to a series of medical charlatans for a cure. Helen agrees to put her up for three weeks; it turns out to be much harder than she expects to put up with her. This novel is good about many things the dependencies of friendship and caring, the strengths and weaknesses of an older woman, the city of Melbourne, food and drink. It is full of both rawly intense moments and light funny ones. It is beautifully controlled, despite its grim subject-matter.

The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale (Fourth Estate, 2009).

This contemporary English novelist is always interesting, and has a solid record of very readable novels and short stories. His most recent novel tells the story of Laura and Ben, once lovers, who after many years apart meet again (in Winchester, which along with Cornwall is a regular background to Gale’s fiction). He skilfully constructs his story around the phases of a single day. Look also at his novels such as Rough Music, Pictures at an Exhibition and Friendly Fire (set in an English public school).

One Day by David Nicholls (Hodder, 2010).

You wonder why no-one thought of this simple idea before: the story of one day (July 15th) in the lives of two individuals (Emma and Dexter) from 1988 to 2007. They met on the night of their university graduation, and the novel tells the story of how their lives are intertwined for the next 20 years. It is consistently funny, before it moves to a darker and moving finale.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (Fourth Estate, 2009) Teacher Gu awakes on the morning of his daughter’s execution for being an ‘unrepentant counter-revolutionary’. It is late 1970s China in a provincial town. He is philosophical - he can only deal with this great disorder by becoming even more orderly. “Think of today as the day we pay everything off,” he says to his weeping wife. “The whole debt.”

“What debt? What do we owe?” his wife demands and he winces at the unfamiliar shrillness in her voice. The power in this book lies in its understated tone, its matter-of-factness. A range of characters coalesce around the fact of Gu Shan’s execution, her dislikeable life, the despoiling of her body before and after her death. Some protest against the execution, some exploit it, for some it is merely the backdrop to their continuing struggle. Conservatism and poverty vie with individual needs. Overall a blank uncaring dictatorship in the name of the people serves only itself, and makes vagrants of all its people through uncertainty. Yet the only truly humane characters in the book, Old Hua and Mrs Hua, are genuine vagrants.

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (Vintage, 2006) The story of the book itself is fascinating (it is told at the end of this edition): a highly successful French novelist (of Ukrainian birth) before the war, Némirovsky died in Auschwitz (she was Jewish). She left behind the manuscript of this book, which her daughter only opened 50 years later. Astonishingly, it was a masterpiece: an extraordinary evocation of French life in the War, mostly in two novellas, ‘Storm in June’ and ‘Sweet’.

19

The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland (Bloomsbury, 2008) A young Russian archivist, whose job it is to destroy, not conserve, works of literature, is handed the last writings of the great author Isaac Babel, who is a prisoner in Lubyanka prison. Pavel Dubrov, a disgraced teacher whose wife has been killed in a train accident, and whose mother is losing her mind, is concerned with memory and the importance of human testimony, of human relationships, in the face of an overwhelming state. This small book in a minor key details the perils of his adherence to the necessity of truth between individuals, of trust, as a totalitarian state with implacably mad logic simultaneously purges its own people and lurches towards war.

Dirt Music by Tim Winton (Picador, 2008) We like Tim Winton. The blog has reviewed and recommended his work in the past (see reviews online on *Breath and his outstanding short story collection *The Turning) but here's a gentle push towards his novel Dirt Music. As ever the scorched landscape of Western Australia and the vast Indian Ocean are more than just a backdrop to the lives of his characters. The search for companionship and love by some fairly damaged individuals is beautifully achieved.

* Love and Summer by William Trevor (Penguin, 2009) Love and Summer is the another novel from the best-known Old Columban writer. Only 212 pages long, it shows Trevor at his most poignant. Another vivid exploration of time and place, in its emotional wisdom, narrative drive, structural elegance and beautiful prose it outstrips most modern fiction.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (Penguin, 2002) Our second Trevor recommendation. The story is beautifully told in an elegant arc. It is about a life that moves from childhood tragedy to adult reconciliation. If you can predict what will happen to Lucy Gault over the decades that Trevor covers, you’re more perceptive than the English Department. It’s difficult to count how many moving moments there are in this novel.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan, 2005).

An extraordinary re-flowering and re-development of a novelist’s career. Some years ago Atkinson started a series featuring Jackson Brodie, a vividly-drawn private eye. The novels are not predictable classic detective fiction: instead, they weave comedy and darker qualities with terrific skill in plots that will often make you laugh out loud. Each book has a large cast of memorable characters. Ideally, read the series in order: the second and third novels are One Good Turn: a jolly murder mystery (2006) and When Will There be Good News? (2009), andStarted Early, Took My Dog (see below).

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan, 2011) The latest in the hugely entertaining Jackson Brodie ‘mystery’ series (also televised by the BBC), following Case Histories, One Good Turn and When Will There be Good News? Again it’s a mixture of detection, coincidences, and multiple plot-lines. The Brodie series is one of the most enjoyable ones in contemporary popular fiction.

20

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo (Vintage, 2010) A literally chilling whodunnit from the first page, and a harrowing end that gets the heart thumping. Unfairly bracketed with the stodgy and often silly Stieg Larsson, Nesbo’s Harry Hole books are the real thing as thrillers. One for that long plane-journey: then get on to the beach and unfreeze yourself.

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe (Penguin Classics, 2011) For fans of Mad Men, the peerless TV series set on Madison Avenue ... This reprint of a novel originally published in 1958 follows the book’s appearance in the series (Don Draper admired it) and tells the stories of young women in a New York publishing house in the 1950s. The Observer calls it ‘the perfect summer read’.

NON-FICTION Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (Vintage, 2012).

The true story behind Winterson’s autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Her upbringing in working class Accrington was emotionally painful, primarily due to her relationship with her adoptive mother. But this book isn’t painful: it looks at that life, and indeed at her mother, with clarity and wise understanding. It is often as funny as it is horrifying. It is also a passionate defence of the power of literature, which in the end rescued Winterson. *A Guest at the Feast by Colm Toibin (Penguin specials: e-book only) This short memoir shows Tóibín ranging over his childhood in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, with great skill and affection. There are fine passages on his mother and her hunger for literature, on the memorable arrival of the Fleadh Cheoil to Enniscorthy in 1967 (the night before the author's father was hit by a fatal stroke), on discovering Dublin as a university student, on the last sad days of the composer Frederick May, and on Tóibín's peripheral brush with the child abuse scandals of the Roman Catholic Church. About all these he writes with delicacy and sympathy.

My Father’s Fortune by Michael Frayn (Faber, 2011).

Frayn is one of the most versatile writers working in English today, and one of the wittiest. This memoir about his father is certainly funny, but is also very moving and even painful at times. Along with the great farce Noises Off, the film Clockwise and the novel Headlong, this is one of Frayn’s very best works in a distinguished writing career.

21

*The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt (Vintage, 2011) The historian Tony Judt died in 2010 of motor neurone disorder, aged 62. Author of the great history of post-1945 Europe, Postwar, the last years of his life saw a dramatic flowering of his writing for the general public, including this very personal collection of beautifully written autobiographical essays. They give us rare access to a mind working under the terrible conditions of his devastating and terminal disease. Don’t be put off: this is a sharp-sighted but not at all depressing book. His writing about travel (into the mind, into memories, to other countries) is particularly fine, at a time when he could hardly move, let alone travel. Consistently thought-provoking.

When the Lights Went Out by Andy Beckett (Faber, 2010) For readers of a certain vintage, this is a particularly evocative read: a galloping narrative through Britain in the 1970s - Scargill, Heath, the Winter of Discontent and of course the Iron Lady. Now it seems another world entirely, and Beckett’s immaculately-researched work is a hugely enjoyable revisiting of Planet 70s.

Ship of Fools and Enough is Enough by Fintan O’Toole (Faber and Faber, both 2010) These two books form a pair, the first documenting the unravelling of Ireland’s economy and how our political class and regulatory provisions failed us utterly. The second attempts to suggest ways that Ireland might re-invent itself as a ‘true’ republic and so salvage something positive from our recent economic demise. Few will agree with all O’Toole’s points but now more than ever it seems vital to engage with the issues he raises.

Human Chain by Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber, 2011) And on a less depressing note, the Nobel Laureate’s latest book of poems: a beautiful series of meditations on the past, on childhood, on friends and family. It is coloured with Heaney’s own brush with mortality after his (minor) stroke: read the marvellous ‘Miracle’. Accessible, moving and richly-rewarding, this is one of the poet’s best collections.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: a Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal (Vintage, 2011) De Waal is a distinguished ceramic artist. He inherited a large collection of netsuke (tiny sculptures used by Japanese men to fasten pouches or containers hanging off their robes), and embarked on a journey to investigate the history of this inheritance. This book is the result: the story of the Ephrussi family, from Odessa to Paris to Vienna to modern-day Japan. It has been a surprise but deserved bestseller, combining fascinating historical detail with the dramatic story of a family caught up by historical forces. The scenes set in Vienna under the Nazis are particularly moving. *Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (Penguin, 2011) It is 2005. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a hard-working decent family man who runs a house-painting business in New Orleans. Zeitoun came from Syria after ten years as a merchant seaman, and worked ferociously hard to build up his business 22

with his wife Kathy. He is a living embodiment of American values. And then Hurricane Katrina strikes. He stays behind in the city as his wife and children escape for their own safety, initially to look after his business interests, but then increasingly as a knight in shining armour (or, rather, in a canoe) helping people in his flooded neighbourhood. Then something truly dreadful happens. Zeitoun is a model piece of story-telling, being restrained, empathetic and un-showy. It is studded with extraordinary scenes.

The Big Short: inside the doomsday machine by Michael Lewis (Penguin, 2011) Michael Lewis’s book covers the US subprime mortgage collapse that provoked the Wall Street meltdown of 2008. In it he explains how not very clever people make, and lose, billions of dollars, and get paid an awful lot either way. Wall Street profits totalled $27.6 billion in 2010, second only to the all time record of $61.4 billion in 2009 when the industry benefited from federal bailouts and low interest rates. Cash bonuses fell to $20.8 billion, ‘reflecting the new environment’. Lewis makes the complicated business as accessible as a thriller, and, as in a thriller, you don’t necessarily need to follow every twist and turn - sheer bewilderment will get you through. Here, for example, is my understanding of “shorting”: you ‘borrow’ shares you think are going to fall in value from an institution. You sell them (even though you don’t own them) to another institution. When they drop in value, you buy the same number of shares you ‘borrowed’, now at the lower rate, and hand them back to the original owner, pocketing the profit.

Neat trick, huh?

Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo by Michael McCarthy (John Murray, 2010) This is a beautifully written tribute to the ‘spring-bringers’, those birds that herald the coming summer with their arrival from Africa. From warblers, swallows and swifts to the cuckoo of the title McCarthy’s sense of awe is palpable. His warning for the future if current declines persist needs a wider airing.

Passage to Juneau: a sea and its meaning by Jonathan Raban (Picador, 1999) Another west coast, this time from Washington state to Canada and on to Alaska. When the author undertook this northerly coast-hugging voyage alone he could never have realised just how much his life would change by its end. Part travel book, part history of the pioneering sailors who explored Canada’s west coast, this is an elegantly written meditation on the sea and on the journeys we take that affect our lives. *Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill (Profile, 2010) This is sub-titled 'A Year of Reading from Home'. Prompted by realising that she wanted to 'repossess' her books, both read and unread, Hill has written a memoir of a year's reading. With formidable discipline for a writer and reader she restrained herself from buying new books for twelve whole months, and concentrated on discovering or re-discovering the books in her rural English home. This is also also the story of that house and indeed her past. It's a great summer read, and you're certain to find at least one or two books you will want to discover for yourself. The tone is personal, passionate, rather rambling, 23

occasionally entertainingly cantakerous. Among her strongest enthusiasms are Frances Kilvert, W.G. Sebald and Penelope Fitzgerald. On the other hand, she's not exactly keen on Jane Austen.

Land’s Edge - A Coastal Memoir by Tim Winton (Picador, 2012) This lovely small book has all the hallmarks of Winton’s fiction, but this time he is the central character. His love of and need to be near the sea (especially the Indian Ocean off Western Australia) is the theme.

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth (Icon Books 2011).

As long a title as a recommendation: based on his writings on ‘The Inky Fool’ blog, Forsyth’s love affair with words and their origins and links to each other is infectious.

Shakespeare: the world as a stage by Bill Bryson (Harper Perennial, 2008).

There is nothing original in this brief biography, but if you want to know more about the life of the man whose works your children all study at St Columba’s, then it is a very accessible way to start. It is also a good survey of the – mostly loopy – theories about Shakespeare’s life. He writes: ‘it cannot be emphasized too strenuously that there is nothing – not a scrap, not a mote – that gives any certain insight into Shakespeare’s feelings or beliefs as a private person.’ As you would expect from Bryson, this is a most engaging read.

Memoir by John McGahern (Faber, 2006).

A truly great autobiography by McGahern, who died in 2006. Written with his characteristic grace, this is a book about an Ireland long gone. He writes with joy about both Leitrim (read the first two pages about the fields and the lanes of that county) and his beloved mother. The pages about his father are very different. Andrew Motion wrote rightly that ‘In a tremendously distinguished career, he has never written more movingly, or with a sharper eye.’

Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill (Granta, 2009) This is a rare sound indeed in a memoir: the voice of a 91-year old woman, entirely lucid, strong-minded and wise. Athill used to work in publishing, and has found a late blossoming as an author, with writings such as Stet, Instead of a Letter, and After a Funeral. In this book, a series of short chapters meditates on the nature of old age, love, friendship, religion and lots more. The Spectator magazine had it right: ‘Her eye is unflinching, her prose as clear and graceful as ever; her honesty is inspiring.’

&

F I N A L L Y ,

S O M E

C L A S S I C S

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen On the Leaving Certificate course for next year’s V and VI formers. If you don’t know this most readable of love stories, then it’s time. If you’ve already read it, then it’s time to revisit. Elizabeth Bennet lives with her four sisters, her sarcastic father and a 24

mother desperate to see her daughters married off. When she first meets the wealthy but snooty Fitzwilliam Darcy, it’s dislike at first sight...

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James James’s novella is one of literature’s great ghost stories, and has inspired many films and other books. A young governess is hired by their uncle to look after two young children, Miles and Flora, at a country house in rural Essex, with the housekeeper Mrs Grose for adult company. Then she starts to see the figures of a man and a woman in the grounds. The story of the events which follow will haunt you.

The Good Soldier: a tale of passion by Ford Madox Ford A short novel which opens with one of the great opening sentences of fiction: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard”. Written just before the First World War, it tells the story of two couples and their distintegrating lives and relationships.

Perfectly narrated, it is one of the great uses of the unreliable narrator.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Penguin Classics, 2000) Parents of pupils in next year’s V and IV forms will be aware that their children are studying this great short novel for the Leaving Certificate. Beautifully written, it tells the story of Nick Carraway’s months in New York in the summer of 1922, and his entanglement with his wealthy neighbour, Jay Gatsby, whose mansion on ‘West Egg’ looks across the water towards the house of the love of his life, the now-married Daisy Buchanan.

The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth (Granta Books, 2003, translator Michael Hofmann) Certainly the best novel about the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and it contains a lot of rich descriptive passages. It is one of those books in which the hero shambles his way through life while momentous events in the world at large whirl about him.

The Lost Estate / Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain Fournier (Penguin Classics, 2007, translator Robin Buss).

First published in 1912, this short novel is one of the great evocative novels about being a teenager. 15 year-old François Seurel tells the story of Augustin Meaulnes, his odd disappearance, and his account of a mysterious ‘lost estate’ where he falls unbearably in love. There are echoes of The Great Gatsby, written 10 years later in a very different society.

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada (Penguin, 1947; new translation 2009).

This English edition, with a new translation by Michael Hofmann, has been an enormous and surprising publishing success (the German title translates as Every Man Dies Alone). It tells the story of lower-class resistance to Hitler’s regime, and is based on the true story of a couple who protested against their government by dropping inflammatory postcards around the city for two years. It offers an extremely vivid portrait of Berlin during the War. Written in a frenetic 24 days, it is not a perfect novel, but it is full of powerful scenes, and builds to a powerful climax. In the Penguin edition there is an 25

interesting appendix about Fallada’s extraordinary life (his real name was Rudolph Ditzen, and he died shortly after finishing Alone in Berlin, in 1947).

Naples ’44 by Norman Lewis (Eland, 1978/2002) Subtitled An intelligence officer in the Italian labyrinth, this is probably the best book by an underrated author. Lewis led a long and fascinating life (if you are interested in more, there is an excellent biography called Semi-Invisible Man by Julian Evans, 2008). In 1944 Lewis, having been part of the Allied invasion of Italy, found himself in one of the world’s great cities at one of its lowest moments. The result was this memoir, a brilliantly-written and often very funny evocation of ‘the most wretched city in wartorn Europe.’ As Martha Gellhorn wrote, this is ‘the real thing, pure gold’. * Troubles by J.G.Farrell (Phoenix, 1970/1993).

The Man Booker Prize ran a ‘Lost Booker’ award for the year 1970 (when the competition was not run), and this outstanding novel was the deservedly clear winner. It is set in the appalling and ironically-named ‘Majestic’ hotel in County Wexford during the War of Independence. The central character, an English ex-soldier called Major Brendan Archer, cannot help but get drawn into the bizarre life of the hopelessly run, dilapidated and catinfested institution. Extremely funny, it is also a fascinating portrait of Ireland at a crucial moment in its history.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (several publishers & translators, 1880) It has been described as ‘a passionate philosophical novel that explores deep into the ethical debates of God, free will and morality’. But don't let that put you off: The Brothers Karamazov is, first and foremost, a brilliant murder mystery story full of twisted and cantankerous characters: lecherous Fyodor, dissolute Dmitri, spiky Ivan and the utterly bonkers Grushenka. One read of this book will reassure you that you are quite normal and well-adjusted.

The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James (several publishers, 1881).

James’s style isn’t to everyone’s taste, but try out the first (beautiful, lush, languorous) pages of this truly great novel, and if you like them you’re in for a massive summer treat. It tells the story of young fresh American Isabel Archer, and the turns her life takes as she visits Europe late in the nineteenth century. It opens in England, and then moves to a superbly evoked Florence, but the deepest parts of the book are in Isabel’s mind.

You can also listen to the former and present Heads of our Department discussing the novel on a podcast on www.sccenglish.ie on June 18th 2009.

26