RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)Hewitt’s book is excellent ... Hewitt’s prose illustrates his grounding in poetry. There is such a casual beauty to his images and metaphors that this reads less like words on a page and closer to torrents of water washing over you. This is not the spare, sparse prose of Hewitt’s novelist contemporaries, but is a robust and mellifluous text that feels joyous to read ... These days seemingly everyone has a memoir of some description — tweeters, former Love Islanders, fictional characters — so I’ve found it can be productive to ask two questions of each new offering: why does this exist, and why should I care? Hewitt convincingly answers both questions, as his book is an important addition to the heartbreak genre that offers a modern perspective now surprisingly rarely seen — that of a man. It is refreshing to be presented with a book that explores heartbreak and meditates on the meaning of relationships with such emotional openness and vulnerability from a male perspective ... In Tongues of Fire Hewitt proved himself to be one of Ireland’s foremost poets. In All Down Darkness Wide he shows himself to be one of our foremost memoirists too. A stunning meditation on love and heartbreak, this feels like an essential work of the new Irish queer canon. Let us hope it is but a first volume, the beginning of a vast work.
Fernanda Melchor, trans. by Sophie Hughes
PositiveIrish Times (IRE)Paradais is a slimmer work than Hurricane Season, but Melchor hasn’t let up on the oppressive darkness and violence that pervades her work. She covers many of the same themes across both books, with the toxic effects of masculinity again being the prism through which our main character’s world views refract ... The novel sometimes fall foul to plodding attempts at social commentary ... Still, Paradais is concise and streamlined enough for its few faults to be pardoned ... Excellent ... As grotesque and provocative as she is, there is something oddly soothing about finding yourself in Melchor’s sick little world.
Grace Lavery
RaveIrish Times (IRE)Please Miss...happily sits within the current wave while simultaneously standing entirely on its own ... Not many books can so freely traverse between a sincere account of the author’s burgeoning descent into alcoholism and a genuine examination of how the musical Little Shop of Horrors is actually a trans narrative ... The most overarching presence in the book is Lavery’s humour ... Her worldview is as unique as it is deranged and you often feel as if you’re in the presence of that one friend who you know will guarantee you a wild and storied night out ... Lavery manages to find meaning and profundity in the most oblique of places ... Although the book’s structural messiness and lack of a narrative flow may be off-putting for some readers, I found such an approach to be pretty reflective of the journey that many trans people make. The story Lavery tells is messy, and thus the book should be regaled accordingly. Please Miss is a weird and wonderful work.
Séamas O'Reilly
RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)While this book is often very funny, there are parts where O’Reilly’s humour can come across as a crutch ... Despite it demonstrably being about O’Reilly and his family, the true star of the work is his father ... it is immensely refreshing to read a spot-on analysis of the Irish father. There are several revelatory moments of Irish dad-ism, a favourite being not knowing anything about current trends or society but having a strangely in-depth knowledge of Z-list culture due to a robust diet of rubbish morning television. It is as an ode to Irish fatherhood that the memoir works best, and an area where O’Reilly’s talent truly soars ... Much like O’Reilly himself, the book had to find a way to stand out in a crowded space. It does so through highly comic prose, its touching tributes to O’Reilly’s father, and with memorable tales about being raised in a family of 11. All of it comes together as if to prove a singular point—that O’Reilly is truly one of the country’s finest comic writers.
Sean Thor Conroe
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)The novel is written entirely in FuccboiSpeak, a kind of fusion of street slang and Twitter cant ... Hand-drawn maps of \'Philly in the Time of the Fuccboi\' bookend the novel and impart a sense of the epic to Conroe’s book, turning the lonely fuccboi into a sort of Greek hero roaming the streets on his own odyssey ... What Conroe does so excellently is enrapture us within the psyche of this unpleasant figure, entangle us with Sean’s brain worms and force us, reluctantly, to look again ... Dare I be so despotic as to proclaim Fuccboi a necessary novel? You bet I do ... How brilliant to finally have a novel that examines contemporary masculinity with such candour, with such humour and style as to immediately read like a modern classic. Sean Thor Conroe is a real one.
Claire Keegan
RaveThe Times (UK)Some may be disappointed to discover that Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan’s first novel in more than a decade, is a mere 114 pages long. However, Keegan has never been a writer to waste a word ... An evocative tale of Ireland ... Keegan is clever to funnel the novel’s perspective through Furlong ... The novel isn’t just an eloquent attack on these laundries, however. It is also a touching Christmas tale, genuinely reminiscent of the festive stories of O Henry and Charles Dickens; a novel that has been seeped in sherry and served by the fireside ... As soon as you pick the novel up, it’s all over. The monumental power of Claire Keegan is that she can create these cuckoo-clock narratives where every single word seems to be a necessary contribution to the overall mechanism of the novel. She is all killer, no filler ... Small Things Like These is another minor miracle from Keegan, a book that is nostalgic, touching, brutal and angry. All of which is to say, it is utterly unmissable.
Anthony Doerr
PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)While I will admit it seems somewhat misjudged and perhaps intensely problematic to cast a neurodivergent child as a school shooter, the Zeno and Seymour sections contain the book’s strongest plotting and best writing. This becomes even more obvious whenever the book switches to the Constantinople sections which, frankly, have the same effect on the flow of the novel as a stick flung into the spokes of a bicycle ... Given the breadth and scope of Cloud Cuckoo Land, I cannot recommend it to puritans – you have to be a little bit of a masochist to derive enjoyment from such a convoluted work. Doerr’s decision to keep all of his chapters short and sweet (rarely does any chapter last longer than a couple of pages) can become somewhat exhausting as, in one run of perhaps 30 pages, you switch between so many characters and plots and genres that it can feel like the literary equivalent of late-night channel hopping ... Despite its physical density, the novel itself is rarely dense. Doerr writes with utter clarity and, though there is a whole lot of it, the plot is, technically, masterfully done. It’s surprising how much the novel just chugs along. Despite the vast disparity between each of the sections, you are never on a weaker section for long until one of the stronger sections swoops in and takes you away again ... you definitely won’t read another contemporary/historical/science-fiction/war novel like it.
Joshua Ferris
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)... intriguing and intelligent ... This final section is pure unabashed Vonnegutian whimsy, and Ferris quite clearly revels in just how far he can take his conceit ... There is a feeling while reading A Calling for Charlie Barnes that Joshua Ferris has finally stepped up to the plate. Ferris’s name has rarely been said in the same breath as contemporaries such as Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer and, of course, Joshua Cohen, despite the fact his work has frequently been acclaimed by both the public and prize juries ... A Calling for Charlie Barnes may just be the work that finally wins Ferris his place on the podium. The humour throughout is exquisitely judged, with some passages genuinely eliciting belly laughs. The narrative of poor Charlie Barnes, while reminiscent of a whole host of other novels, does feel fresh and justifiable. And the descent into metafiction, the novel’s true crowingly glory, is extremely well done without ever feeling hammy or clunky, as it often does in less experienced hands ... Ferris can now truly sit back and enjoy the ride. He’s finally done it.
Amor Towles
PanThe Irish Times (IRE)As the reader will quickly realise, The Lincoln Highway is not the novel that it purports to be. The highway itself acts as nothing more than a MacGuffin, or a device that motivates the plot but ends up being entirely irrelevant to the work. Those hoping for the classic road trip novel that the book’s blurb, endpapers, and cover promise it to be will be disappointed as Towles instead decides to ditch the intended plot for a lengthy and laborious cat-and-mouse storyline that takes up the entire novel ... the result, simply, is not cute ... if Towles’ intention for his novel was to actually reflect a journey along the Lincoln Highway, a trip that is surely lengthy, monotonous and exhausting, then he has succeeded with style.
Dolly Alderton
PanThe Irish Times (IRE)Oh it is a lonely life in the literary trenches, a life surely to become even lonelier as I must report that Dolly Alderton’s debut novel brought me nothing but pain and disappointment ... Alderton’s humorous skewering of dating apps surely makes Ghosts the most culturally relevant novel of 2014, a finger-on-the-pulse account of modern dating from someone who just discovered the \'I’m in my mum’s car\' vine. I must give her some credit, however. The novel’s barbs and biting observations are as succinct as the tweets they were all recycled from ... Alas, a part of me wishes that Alderton didn’t read into her position as the \'Nora Ephron of the millennial generation\' quite so literally as to essentially present a rehashed version of You’ve Got Mail with all the same ideas and foibles but without any of the charm, wit or timelessness ... Her fictional prose is dense, thick like mayonnaise, and often forms itself into Pynchonian blocks of solid text. Injections of humour also tend to fall flat ... I know how ridiculous this sounds, but there are just so many words in this novel. During a time where spare, concise and unadorned prose seems to rule the roost, Alderton must be hailed as a brash iconoclast ... I truly wish I could be kinder to Ghosts, but the whole reading experience made me quite depressed.
George Saunders
PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)... the book very much feels like a class ... There’s no skipping the readings or checking Wikipedia here; Saunders is a strict disciplinarian ... However, there is the question of who exactly this book is for? To describe it as a niche publication is something of an understatement. Even as a Saunders fan, I often found the book to be quite an arduous undertaking. But I suppose that is mostly my fault for approaching it as a critic and not as a student ... I doubt A Swim in a Pond in the Rain will lead to a great swell of writers suddenly turning their lectures into books. And judging from what I’ve heard from writer friends who’ve experienced great authors giving these lectures, few would be able to fill 400 pages quite so easily as Saunders). But when you judge it for exactly what it is – a master of the short story taking you through his process, using the great Russians as sandboxes – then A Swim in a Pond is truly worth its weight in gold.
Ali Smith
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)There are so many links between the novels that someone has actually made a Seasonal Quartet bingo card, where players tick off squares such as \'Eloquent non-native English speaker” and “Bureaucracy\' ... Summer delivers these tropes with aplomb and serves as a skeleton key to the series. Whilst the three other novels can be read and appreciated independently, Summer, much like the season itself, shines brighter through the memories of Autumn, Winter and Spring. ... However, as everything is slowly revealed to be linked and the true breadth of Smith’s project is realised, one begins to realise that the Seasonal Quartet has been a lie. These have never actually been four independent novels, but rather four sections of a single, massive work, with Summer serving as the showstopping finale ... And what a finale. Summer is simply astonishing. Most of us had little doubt that Smith would deliver (because, realistically, has she ever produced a sub-par book?) but Summer somehow exceeded every one of my expectations. It is fitting, in my mind anyway, to think of the Seasonal Quartet as a symphony. Summer is the final movement, all joy and celebration, a climax that has been building for some time. Themes and motifs from earlier movements appear once again, in rondo form, as the orchestra plays all at once. Then bang, whimper, it all ends. There is deathly silence followed by a manic crash of applause.
Emma Donoghue
PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)At first distrustful of her \'unqualified\' and \'uneducated\' new helper, Nurse Power and Bridie quickly get along like cogs, forming a symbiotic relationship that is a pleasure to read ... I am somewhat weary of Donoghue’s version of Dr Lynn in the novel. One of the most discussed aspects of her life was her decades-long lesbian relationship with Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, both of whom went on to found St Ultan’s Children’s Hospital in Dublin the year after the novel’s events. While the novel does progress into queerness, none of it is displayed by Dr Lynn, nor is her queerness ever really hinted at ... However, I must admit that Donoghue does deliver with The Pull of the Stars. While the final part is abrupt and clumsily plotted (I question the fast-tracked editing process the novel must have undergone in order to accommodate its early release), Donoghue’s narrative of a nurse in the midst of a pandemic is enticingly written with the not-a-minute-to-waste pace of Dr Lynn.
Frances Cha
MixedThe Irish Times (IRE)When you begin reading If I Had Your Face it isn’t difficult to see why it comes garlanded with praise on high from the literati ... Depending on how you read this novel it could either be a horrifying insight into contemporary Korean society or, and this was how I read it, a gloriously camp celebration of the excesses of a deranged society – Jackie Collins meets Margaret Atwood ... Kyuri is captivating and ludicrous, much like the novel itself ... one of the most \'current\' characters that I’ve come across in fiction this year ... However, all the novel seems to have is its characters. It would take a critic far more skilled than myself to glean something resembling a plot from If I Had Your Face. Instead, Cha decides to interweave her four narratives somewhat haphazardly into something that only resembles a plot. It is incredibly difficult to lattice narratives like this, and Cha must be commended for taking on such a meticulous form of storytelling, even though the final narrative resembles less the egg-washed top of a cherry pie than the tangled mass of tails that forms a rat king ... It is difficult to judge the tone of Cha’s novel. Is it a critique or a celebration of these women?...The novel’s unwillingness to pick a side greatly affects its overall intensions. It is a truly ambivalent work, a sort of literary version of the baby inside Brecht’s chalk circle being tugged and pulled by two opposing forces ... Yet it is impossible to deny that If I Had Your Face is immense fun. It presents a world so heightened and over the top that you can’t help but marvel at it. Cha’s prose style is also very breezy and light, which aids in the novel’s easy digestibility. And digestibility is key here: the book has been designed within an inch of its life to be a bestselling, finger on the pulse, incredibly 2020, conversation-starting, bookstagram-ready, novel of the moment. And good for it ... hyperreal kitsch. An enjoyably soapy glimpse into a world where \'beauty is only skin deep\' is an aspirational mantra rather than a disparaging read. And in tribute to the novel’s ambivalent message, I shall finalise my thoughts in a line that entirely depends on the reader’s tastes: it’s Valley of the Dolls for the K-pop generation.
Ottessa Moshfegh
PanThe Irish Times (IRE)It is Moshfegh’s gift that she is able to summon up these memorable protagonists and portray the world through their often disorientating minds ... Vesta’s narration is ghostly and liminal, as if she exists on the threshold between this world and another. So it seems utterly unfair that she is stuck in this faux murder-mystery novel, especially since we are never actually sure if there was a murder in the first place ... Whether this is Moshfegh’s way of slyly winking to the camera or not, having the main character of your not-so-great murder mystery novel literally consult a guide for writing murder mystery novels reads as myopic at best. At worst it suggests laziness on behalf of the author, a sort of laziness that smothers this whole novel like sulphur. Coincidences are regular and convenient, the purposeful haziness of the narrative just leads to confusion rather than ambience, and the minimal plot and characters makes the prose feel bulky, as if this were a short story that got out of hand ... Perhaps my reaction to Death in Her Hands would not be as strong if I didn’t view it as such a personal disaster. Moshfegh is one of those rare things: a great American writer. To read My Year of Rest and Relaxation for the first time is to burn all your possessions, shave your head, and pledge your soul to the divine Miss M – the Barefoot Ottessa. Therefore, it comes as no easy task to discuss Death in Her Hands. Let me assure you, I am in agony. Every disparaging word is like an arrow through my flesh. St Sebastian, c’est moi ... Strangely, woven through the messy plot are some frayed threads of an apparent religious theme ... In her attempt to subvert the murder mystery genre, Ottessa Moshfegh has produced a pretty limp work. Uncharacteristically bland and with a paltry plot that leads nowhere, the novel has to be one of the most bitterly disappointing releases of the year ... Tragically, I must report that the greatest mystery that Moshfegh has produced is the novel itself.
Brandon Taylor
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)... unquestionably the queer novel of the year ... By exploiting the set-pieces of the genre, Taylor exposes a side of the university complex that many pretend not to see, that despite often being portrayed as a great bacchanal of free politics and expression, university campuses can be incredibly oppressive environments for anybody who doesn’t fit within the specific template of white, male and cis ... Real Life also stands out in the pantheon of recent queer fiction ... Taylor proves himself to be an effortless documenter of the domestic. It is a delight to read Taylor in full flow – his characters ricocheting off each other at a dinner party or simply when he is describing someone cooking fish in the middle of the night. Through Wallace, he has created a great tragic protagonist, a character sure to resonate with many as he makes his way through a world that was never made for him. All of this makes Real Life an essential novel from a truly exciting new writer.
André Aciman
PositiveThe Irish Times (UK)... completely won me over. But it is a novel that is almost guaranteed to divide readers. Those picking up Find Me expecting to revisit the bucolic romance of Elio and Oliver among the peach trees and the flirtatious renditions of Bach’s Capriccio in B flat major will be surely devastated, for Aciman has produced a work that is almost brazenly the antithesis of fan service ... There’s no denying that this episode is meandering and bloated. Taking up nearly half the novel’s length, fans of CMBYN will be wondering why the hell they’re reading this seemingly extraneous novella about someone whose name is neither Elio nor Oliver. And sadly this isn’t the only misstep Aciman takes with this episode...The overt heterosexuality presented throughout is tiring and, at times, leering. Mr Perlman’s fawning over the woman, who we are regularly reminded is half his age, evokes the filmography of Woody Allen, which is to say that witnessing it makes the reader feel like they’re complicit in something ... The remaining three episodes, which make up the novel’s second half, are thankfully from the perspectives of Elio and Oliver and display Aciman in familiar top form ... I finished Find Me with a new-found respect for André Aciman. He simply could have just listened to the fans and rehashed his first novel and cashed in on that. Instead, Aciman has, rather boldly, decided to just write an Aciman novel ... those of us able to recognise that this isn’t Call Me By Your Name will be impressed by Aciman’s delicate and audacious novel. To call it a sequel would be dishonest, and I feel many people will be let down by expecting a sequel. So, to borrow from the language of music as Aciman so frequently does, think of Find Me as CMBYN’s coda, the final flourish that ends a great work.
