It’s Irish Book Week this week and our little country is by no means short of some fantastic writers.
From contemporary fiction to erie true crime series we have come up with a list of our top must-read Irish books to celebrate the week that’s in it!
Here is what we came up with.
Frankie – Graham Norton
Synopsis
Always just on the periphery, looking on, Frankie is never quite sure enough of herself to take centre stage. But the outsider holds certain advantages, sees things others don’t, and can influence without drawing attention.
And when the map has been lost, it’s anyone’s guess where you may end up, the lives you may encounter and the accidental choices you find you have made.
Frankie discovers that life is not always the one we had hoped for, or the one others had expected of us.
Intermezzo – Sally Rooney
Synopsis
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
Reality Check – Vicki Notaro
Synopsis
Portia Daniels’ life is sorted. She has a perfect man (Jason, a hot TV producer from Ireland), a perfect apartment (in lower Manhattan), a perfect job (writing for TV). Best of all for her, unlike the rest of her family, she lives in perfect obscurity.
On the other hand, it’s all drama with her mother, Dessie, Kerry-born queen bee of hit reality show, Ladies of Los Angeles, and sisters, Vinnie, a supermodel-turned-Insta-guru and Ariel, a Tik-Tok teen sensation.
When Jason drops a bombshell that leaves her life in tatters, Portia flees to be with her family. Her timing could not be worse though as scandal engulfs Vinnie’s empire and Ariel’s bratty behaviour gets out of hand. As for Dessie, she is clearly hiding something. It seems like the glamour and gossip on which Dessie built her empire might just be its downfall.
The Outsider – Jane Casey
Synopsis
The country-house lifestyle of the Carter family may seem picture-perfect, but they aren’t what they appear to be. And undercover cop Rob Langton has one aim – to bring the family down.
But Rob soon realises the Carters aren’t just dangerous criminals. If he can’t stop them, the consequences will be explosive.”
Water – John Boyne
Synopsis
The first thing Vanessa Carvin does when she arrives on the island is change her name. To the locals, she is Willow Hale, a solitary outsider escaping Dublin to live a hermetic existence in a small cottage, not a notorious woman on the run from her past.
But scandals follow like hunting dogs. And she has some questions of her own to answer. If her ex-husband is really the monster everyone says he is, then how complicit was she in his crimes?
Escaping her old life might seem like a good idea but the choices she has made throughout her marriage have consequences. Here, on the island, Vanessa must reflect on what she did – and did not do. Only then can she discover whether she is worthy of finding peace at all.
Normal People – Sally Rooney
Synopsis
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner.
But when the two strike up a conversation – awkward but electrifying – something life-changing begins. Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love.
It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can’t.
Into The Storm – Cecilia Ahern
Synopsis
It is a wild night in the middle of December, and GP Enya is crouched over a teenage boy, performing CPR in the freezing rain. She found him on a mountain road near Dublin, the victim of a hit-and-run.
The boy survives, but Enya goes to pieces. She leaves her husband, her son, and everything she knows to start a new life in remote rural Ireland.
But even in the quiet of Abbeydooley, beneath the boughs of an ancient tree, Enya is still haunted by that night in the rain. Can the stories of strangers and a land steeped in legend lay the ghosts of her past to rest? Or will the storm she’s outrunning finally catch up with her?
Bodies – Christine Anna Foley
Synopsis
Johnny was my first. I was seventeen and I was only brave enough to talk to him after I’d had three vodkas. He was only brave enough to kiss me when no-one else was around.
Dave was different. We didn’t go out or see friends. We were each other’s world. Dave was all I needed. We were toxic before it became fashionable.
Kyle was my best friend. And that was the problem. Or at least that’s what he said was the problem. Because friends can hook up but they can’t date.
Adam was meant to be some harmless fun. I met him in a hotel and he was wearing an Adidas tracksuit. Casual but cute. He was anything but harmless.
And then I met You. And things went from bad to worse.
Kala – Colin Walsh
Synopsis
In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends are thrown together for group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.
Now it’s fifteen years later: Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father’s wedding; Joe is a world-famous musician, newly back in town; and Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café. But human remains have been discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. And as past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance, and to try to stop Kinlough’s violent patterns repeating themselves once again…
Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, in a story that builds from a smoulder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.
The Rachel Incident – Caroline O’Donoghue
Synopsis
Everyone in Cork remembers the Rachel Incident. But what really happened? It’s simple. It’s complicated. It’s about love, sex and friendship. It’s definitely about betrayal.
And, above all, it’s the story of Rachel and James, two twenty-somethings who met at a bookshop, became best friends, and spent one unforgettable year screwing up and growing up.
Words by Ava Grace