Best of
Ireland

2022

The Existential Worries of Mags Munroe


Jean Grainger - 2022
    My twelve-year-old daughter frequently moans that Ballycarrick is the most boring town in Ireland.Nothing ever happens here.She’s right.And as the local police sergeant, this is something I’m delighted about.I’ve enough to worry about - the polar ice-caps, the evil monster that’s shrinking my trousers, not to mention the hot flushes - without having to be like one of those gritty Netflix cops, chasing criminals down alleyways and busting drug deals.So, life is calm and fairly predictable.Until something unthinkable happens in our sleepy backwater.A crime, but not like anything I've ever seen before.It's a complete mystery.And it's up to me to solve it.

We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland


Fintan O'Toole - 2022
    O’Toole was born in the year the revolution began. It was 1958, and the Irish government—in despair, because all the young people were leaving—opened the country to foreign investment. So began a decades-long, ongoing experiment with Irish national identity.Weaving his own experiences into this account of Irish social, cultural, and economic change, O’Toole shows how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a Catholic “backwater” to an almost totally open society. A sympathetic-yet-exacting observer, O’Toole shrewdly weighs more than sixty years of globalization, delving into the violence of the Troubles and depicting, in biting detail, the astonishing collapse of the once-supreme Irish Catholic Church. The result is a stunning work of memoir and national history that reveals how the two modes are inextricable for all of us.

The Lady of Galway Manor


Jennifer Deibel - 2022
    Bored without all the trappings of the British Court, Annabeth convinces her father to arrange an apprenticeship for her with the Jennings family--descendants of the creator of the famed Claddagh Ring.Stephen Jennings longs to do anything other than run his family's jewelry shop. Having had his heart broken, he no longer believes in love and is weary of peddling the ÒliesÓ the Claddagh Ring promises.Meanwhile, as the war for Irish independence gains strength, many locals resent the De Lacys and decide to take things into their own hands to display their displeasure. As events take a dangerous turn for Annabeth and her family, she and Stephen begin to see that perhaps the "other side" isn't quite as barbaric and uncultured as they'd been led to believe--and that the bonds of friendship, love, and loyalty are only made stronger when put through the refiner's fire.Travel to the Emerald Isle for another poignant and romantic story from the enchanted pen of Jennifer Deibel.

The Colony


Audrey Magee - 2022
    Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place - one in his paintings, the other with his faithful rendition of its speech, the language he hopes to preserve.But the people who live here on this rock – three miles long and half-a-mile wide – have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken and what is given in return. Over the summer each of the women and men in the household this French and Englishman join is forced to question what they value and what they desire. At the end of the summer, as the visitors head home, there will be a reckoning.

The Letter Home


Rachael English - 2022
    When Jessie Daly loses her job, her flat and her relationship, she travels home to Ireland's west coast and helps an old friend researching what happened in the area during the 1840s Famine. They are drawn into the remarkable story of a brave young mother called Bridget Moloney, and Jessie becomes determined to find out what happened to Bridget and her daughter, Norah.On the other side of the Atlantic, Kaitlin Wilson is researching her family tree. She knows her ancestors left Ireland for Boston in the 19th century. Everything else is a mystery. Kaitlin unearths a fascinating story, but her research forces her to confront uncomfortable truths about herself and her family and also uncover a heartbreaking connection to a young woman in the west of Ireland...

On Bloody Sunday: A New History Of The Day And Its Aftermath – By The People Who Were There


Julieann Campbell - 2022
    Troops from Britain's 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on marchers, leaving 13 dead and 15 wounded. Seven of those killed were teenage boys. The day became known as 'Bloody Sunday'.The events occurred in broad daylight and in the full glare of the press. Within hours, the British military informed the world that they had won an 'IRA gun battle'. This became the official narrative for decades until a family-led campaign instigated one of the most complex inquiries in history. In 2010, the victims of Bloody Sunday were fully exonerated when Lord Saville found that the majority of the victims were either shot in the back as they ran away or were helping someone in need. The report made headlines all over the world. While many buried the trauma of that day, historian and campaigner Juliann Campbell - whose teenage uncle was the first to be killed that day - felt the need to keep recording these interviews, and collecting rare and unpublished accounts, aware of just how precious they were. Fifty years on, in this book, survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses and politicians, shine a light on the events of Bloody Sunday, together, for the first time.As they tell their stories, the tension, confusion and anger build with an awful power. ON BLOODY SUNDAY unfolds before us an extraordinary human drama, as we experience one of the darkest moments in modern history - and witness the true human cost of conflict.

Old Ireland in Colour 2


John Breslin - 2022
    In Old Ireland in Colour 2, the much-anticipated sequel to their beloved bestseller, John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley have dug even deeper into Ireland’s historical archives to uncover captivating photographic gems to bring to life using a unique blend of cutting-edge technology, historical research and expert colourisation.Old Ireland in Colour 2 celebrates more of the rich history of Ireland and the Irish from all walks of life and from all four provinces, as well as the Irish abroad, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.From the chaos of the Civil War to the simple beauty of the islands, from the iconic to the domestic, there is something new and inspiring to be gleaned from every single page.

The Slowworm's Song


Andrew Miller - 2022
    It is a summons to an inquiry in Belfast about an incident during the Troubles--one he has long walled off in his mind.An ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic, Stephen has just begun to form a fragile bond with his daughter, whose upbringing he missed. How can he agree to testify and risk losing her now?Instead, Stephen decides to write her an account of his life; a confession, a defence, a love letter. Also a means of buying time. But time is running out, and the day comes when he must face again what happened in that distant summer of 1982.Giving an insight into the Troubles from an uncommon perspective, this is a profound and tender tale of guilt, a search for atonement and the hard, uncertain work of loving.

Fierce Appetites: Loving, losing and living to excess in my present and in the writings of the past


Elizabeth Boyle - 2022
    Every day a lover departs. Every day a woman turns forty.All three happening together brings a moment of reckoning.Medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle made sense of these events the best way she knew how - by immersing herself in the literature that has been her first love and life's work for over two decades.Fierce Appetites is the exhilarating and deeply humane result. Not only does Elizabeth Boyle write dazzling accounts of ancient stories, familiar and obscure, from Ireland and further afield, but she uses her historical learning to grapple with the raw and urgent questions she faces, questions that have bedevilled people in every age. She writes on grief, addiction, family breakdown, the complexities of motherhood, love and sex, memory, class, education, travel (and staying put) with unflinching honesty, deep compassion and occasional dark humour. Fierce Appetites is captivating and original - as an insight into the mind and heart of a groundbreaking scholar, and as a wise and reassuring account of what it is to be human._____________________'I loved this luminous, radical book about bodies in time. It is a deeply personal history, that simultaneously brings medieval myth and poetry to breathing, bleeding life. An education for the mind and the heart' Clare Pollard'Highly original . . . engagingly candid [and] thought-proviking' Irish Independent 'An eloquent plea for the value of curiosity and the life of the mind, standing up the robustness of scholarship against the frailty of individuals, the resilience of myth against brittle daily preoccupations. It's an agile story, irreverent, capacious and constantly surprising: like nothing else you will read' Hilary Mantel'Bracingly honest, fiery, funny, scholarly, Fierce Appetites really is a wildly good book' Hilary Fannin'Extremely intriguing . . . I found myself completely absorbed' Ryan Tubridy'I absolutely loved this utterly original book. Immersing myself in Elizabeth Boyle's considerable brain was a true privilege, and the way she uses medieval narratives to unpick her own present was endlessly surprising and beautiful. I read it in two sittings, devouring her perspective on life, love, loss' Clover Stroud'Fiercely smart, strange, surprising, unsettling, unflinching' Jennifer O'Connell, Irish Times'An outstanding achievement. Fierce Appetites defies easy categorization, is brilliantly written and simply deserves to be read' Darach Ó Séaghdha'Everything is illuminated, magnified, revisioned: sexual desire, motherhood, family. Her writing is unorthodox, unnerving, and very exciting' Tanya Shadrick

Paddy Drinks: The World of Modern Irish Whiskey Cocktails


Jillian VoseJillian Vose - 2022
    To start, you need to understand the flavors of whiskey, which means going to the very beginning—at the distillery. With an illustrated guide of the stages of production and the differences between the various styles of whiskey, plus flavor wheels and tasting notes, you’ll be well equipped to create your own drinks utilizing various Irish whiskey brands and styles before getting into the Dead Rabbit’s ever-creative, innovative cocktail recipes. With a foreword by the authority on cocktails, David Wondrich, Paddy Drinks is as serious about its whiskey as it is a celebration.

Lenny


Laura McVeigh - 2022
    His mother, Mari-Rose, unable to cope and dreaming of a better life, has abandoned him. His father, Jim, has returned from war suffering from PTSD. Lenny is homeless, sleeping rough in the bayou swampland, and his only true friends in the world are young Lucy Albert, the lonely town librarian, and long-retired schoolteacher Miss Julie Betterdine Valéry – who is still waiting on the return of her husband, Stanley, sent to war in Korea in 1952. Travelling between two storylines – the first taking place in 2011 in the Ubari Sand Sea in Libya, the second along the banks of False River, Louisiana, when the ripple effects of the Great Recession, pollution, environmental destruction and the rapidly rising waters are causing whole towns to empty out all along the Bayou, LENNY is a story about how we treat our planet and each other. It examines the nature of time and reality, conflict, family and love, and explores how hope and imagination can save us.