Top summer reads! Choice Irish books from our Editors

The Ireland of the Welcomes Editor has been hard at work and has chosen some of the top summer reads on offer. These are just some of the wonderful newly released Irish books this summer.

* This article was published in the July / August 2022 issue of Ireland of the Welcomes. Subscribe to our bi-monthly magazine here.

"Idol"

Louise O’Neill 

Ireland’s most exciting voice is back with Idol, examining the price of fame. For Samantha Miller's young fans - her 'girls' - she's everything they want to be. She's an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honor their 'truth'.

And her career is booming: she's just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she's appearing at sell-out events.

Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she's written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She's never told a soul but now she's telling the world. The essay goes viral.

But then - years since they last spoke - Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn't remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It's Sam's word against Lisa's - so who gets to tell the story? Whose 'truth' is really a lie?

"Unspoken"

Tom McGrath

Telling the incredible story of Tom McGrath, as uncovered many years later by his son Tom. Tom was conscripted into the British Army resulting in capture and internment in a Prisoner of War camp in Poland. After two years of unspeakable hardship, Tom escapes, first taking refuge in the attic of an old man’s cabin in the woods, then moving house to house thanks to various members of the Resistance and then on to Berlin and Paris and over the Pyrenees into Spain.

Sixty-five years later, Tom’s son and grandson retrace his footsteps on this arduous journey, ultimately unearthing more secrets upon their return to Ireland. This incredible family history presents a moving, unforgettable story of resilience.

"I Am Someone"

Aisling Creegan

Aisling Creegan's childhood was dominated by an abusive, alcoholic mother, who tortured her at every turn. From insults to beatings and being threatened with a butcher's knife, Aisling endured unthinkable suffering at the hands of the woman who should have loved her unconditionally. Yet in the midst of this trauma, Aisling was able to rely on the one person she knew she could trust - herself. Possessed of incredible imagination and remarkable resilience, Aisling found escape in the little things in life. But the scars of the past take time to heal, and when Aisling suffered a breakdown it took her on a surprising path to freedom - and forgiveness. I Am Someone is an extraordinary memoir about female cruelty, and ultimately female strength and endurance.

"Cathal Brugha ‘An Indomitable Spirit’"

Daithí Ó Corráin & Gerard Hanley

Based on exhaustive research, this book challenges the often simplistic and reductive depiction of Brugha by providing a nuanced and multi-layered reappraisal of him. It chronicles his public and private life and the influences that shaped him; assesses his multifaceted involvement in the Irish Revolution and his uncompromising commitment to an Irish republic; contextualizes his relationships with contemporaries such as Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera and Richard Mulcahy; explores how his premature death at the age of forty-seven affected his young family and how his wife, Caitlín, upheld his political principles by standing as a Sinn Féin TD; and reflects on how Brugha’s indomitable patriotism was propagandized after his death. The result is a fascinating portrait of a complex, tenacious, and often misunderstood figure.

* This article was published in the July / August 2022 issue of Ireland of the Welcomes. Subscribe to our bi-monthly magazine here.

"Danny Dowdells, Angel Jo, and the Brackish People"

Cresson McIver

A wonderful hilarious book, with many insights into the way Ulster people, Protestant and Catholic, think about each other. The fictional townland of Ballybracken, somewhere in mid-Ulster, is peopled by a gaggle of unforgettable countryfolk. Characters like the philandering Robbie, social-climbing Rosie, the hapless Jim McKnight and his mother, with her subtle but toxic use of ‘petticoat power’, the wealthy grand dame, Mrs. McKendry’s and so many more that will live long in the reader’s imagination.

Follow the antics of Danny himself, so likeable, clever and wily, his useless self-admiring guardian angel Jo, Danny’s striving mother, Rosie, and her partner, Robbie, their hand-to-mouth existence intertwined and contrasted so skilfully in the story with that of the immensely wealthy McKendry and the noble Roxborough families. A great true-to-life story told with much laugh-out-loud humour.

"Living With My Century"

Eda Sagarra

Professor Eda Sagarra, born in 1933, has been a significant and influential figure in Irish and European academic policy-making, contributing to the early development of the Erasmus scheme. Now, aged nearly 88, this memoir gives striking evidence of her self discipline and formidable energy. For contemporary critics reconstructing the history of gender equality in Ireland and for readers of feminist history, this makes for essential reading. 

"Yell, Sam, If You Still Can"

Clíona Ní Ríordáin & Maylis Besserie

"Yell, Sam, If You Still Can" by Maylis Besserie, the first of her Irish trilogy, shows us Samuel Beckett at the end of his life in 1989, living in Le Tiers-Temps retirement home. It is as if Beckett has come to live in one of his own stage productions, peopled with strange, unhinged individuals, waiting for the end of days.

This novel is filled with voices. From diary notes to clinical reports to daily menus, cool medical voices provide a counterpoint to Beckett himself, who reflects on his increasingly fragile existence. 

"Yell, Sam, If You Still Can" won the “Goncourt du premier roman”, the prestigious French literary prize for first-time novelists, just before the country went into lockdown. 

"Edith"

Martina Devlin

Martina Devlin, an award-winning columnist for the Irish Independent and podcaster for Dublin City of Literature #CityofBooks, has delivered a new novel based on the life of Edith Somerville of ‘Somerville and Ross’ fame – authors of The Irish R.M.

In this work, set during the turbulent period of Irish Independence 1921–22, Somerville finds herself at a crossroads. Her position as a member of the Ascendancy is perilous as she struggles to keep her family home, Drishane House in West Cork, while others are burned out. After years in a successful writing partnership with Violet Martin, Edith continues to write after her partner’s death, comforted in the belief they continue to connect through automatic writing and séances.

Against a backdrop of Civil War politics and lawlessness erupting across the country via IRA flying columns, people across Ireland are forced to consider where their loyalties lie.

* This article was published in the July / August 2022 issue of Ireland of the Welcomes. Subscribe to our bi-monthly magazine here.