Book picks similar to
Marina by Aoibheann McCann
irish
favourite-books
female-author
ireland
Unfiltered
Sophie White - 2020
So when Amy Donoghue, social media manager extraordinaire steps in to rehabilitate her image, Ali realises she may have to wade once more into the grubby insta-hole. With her ex, Sam, still ignoring her and her mother Mini having a mild grief-induced psychotic break (her scheme for scattering Miles' ashes seems not only bonkers but borderline illegal), Ali's got little else to cling on to but #sponcon and #ootds. Meanwhile Shelly is trying to settle into her new life as a mum-of-two while being held hostage by her mysterious insta-stalker whose sole objective is to keep Shelly on Instagram. But with her fellow Mummy Influencer friends @HolisticHazel immersed in creating WYND festival (her answer to the Goop Summit) and @PollysFewBits being as non-descript as ever, Shelly must get to the bottom of it herself. When Ali starts attending Catfishers Anonymous as a part of Amy's plan for Image Rehab, she discovers some information that may just help Shelly ...
Tender
Belinda McKeon - 2015
She is a sheltered college student, he an adventurous, charismatic young artist. In a city brimming with possibilities, he spurs her to take life on with gusto. But as Catherine opens herself to new experiences, James's life becomes a prison; as changed as the new Ireland may be, it is still not a place in which he feels able to truly be himself. Catherine, grateful to James and worried for him, desperately wants to help -- but as time moves on, and as life begins to take the friends in different directions, she discovers that there is a perilously fine line between helping someone and hurting them further. When crisis hits, Catherine finds herself at the mercy of feelings she cannot control, leading her to jeopardize all she holds dear.By turns exhilarating and devastating, Tender is a dazzling exploration of human relationships, of the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we are taught to tell. It is the story of first love and lost innocence, of discovery and betrayal. A tense high-wire act with keen psychological insights, this daring novel confirms McKeon as a major voice in contemporary fiction, belonging alongside the masterful Edna O'Brien and Anne Enright.
Night in Tunisia
Neil Jordan - 1982
This book, which won raves at its first publication, shows all the hallmarks of the writer who became the award-winning film director so well known today.
Show Them a Good Time
Nicole Flattery - 2019
Show Them a Good Time tells the stories of women slotted away into restrictive roles: the celebrity's girlfriend, the widower's second wife, the lecherous professor's student, the corporate employee. And yet, the genius of Flattery's characters is to blithely demolish the boundaries of these limited and limiting social types with immense complexity and caustic intelligence. Nicole Flattery's women are too ferociously mordant, too painfully funny to remain in their places.In this fiercely original and blazingly brilliant debut, Flattery likewise deconstructs the conventions of genre to serve up strange realities: In Not the End Yet, Flattery probes the hilarious and wrenching ambivalence of Internet dating as the apocalypse nears; in Sweet Talk, the mysterious disappearance of a number of local women sets the scene for a young girl to confront the dangerous uncertainties of her own sexuality; in this collection's center piece, Abortion, A Love Story, two college students in a dystopian campus reconfigure the perilous stories of their bodies in a fraught academic culture to offer a subversive, alarming, and wickedly funny play that takes over their own offstage lives. And yet, however surreal or richly imagined the setting, Flattery always shows us these strange worlds from startlingly unexpected angles, through an unforgettable cast of brutally honest, darkly hilarious women and girls.Like the stories of Mary Gaitskill, Miranda July, Lorrie Moore, Joy Williams, and Ottessa Moshfegh, Show Them a Good Time is the work of a profoundly resonant and revelatory literary voice – at once spiky, humane, achingly hilarious-- that is sure to echo through the literary culture for decades to come.
The Rag Tree: A Novel of Ireland
D.P. Costello - 2009
Costello's spellbinding novel, The Rag Tree, breathes dark, vivid life into Ireland's passionate legends. Crisp and sharp-witted, Costello's tale probes a modern Ireland torn between letting go of time-honored dreams and embracing the promises of a prosperous New Ireland. Even as they struggle against one another, the Irish Special Branch, the British Army, Scotland Yard, and the I.R.A. find themselves forced to ally against a common foe: The Rag Man. Mattie Joe Treacy is the Rag Man. Engrossed in a desperate quest to find his missing father, Mattie Joe is cursed-by the playboy's life of drink and carousing, by his family's staunch adherence to Ireland's old folk ways, and by a family curse hurled at his clan generations ago. The Curse of the O'Neills, invoked by an angry cleric against Mattie Joe's great-grandfather, declares that, "the eldest son will not survive the father." No Treacy son has since outlived his father, and Mattie Joe is next in line to die. Or is he?
Fork in the Road
Denis Hamill - 2000
When Colin Coyne, a young American filmmaker seeking aesthetic inspiration in Ireland, catches a pickpocket red-handed in a hotel pub, all it takes is one look into her dazzling eyes for him to fall hard. Purely for the sake of research -- or so he tells himself -- he hurtles headlong into the bewitching world of Gina Furey, a stunningly beautiful, iron-willed denizen of Dublin's gypsy criminal underground. Before he knows what's happening, he finds himself a star player in a Pygmalion-like relationship rich with dramatic film possibilities: the earnest Yankee auteur woos and wins the dangerous gypsy thief. But the tenuous lines separating art and reality soon dissolve and the neatly linear screenplay unfolding inside Colin's head is eclipsed by the brutal chaos and unpredictability of true life. By turns devastating and hopeful, bittersweet and hilarious, Fork in The Road is both a tragic love story and the riveting drama of one man's heartbreaking journey from exhilaration to desolation.
True Believers
Joseph O'Connor - 1991
Here are sad-hearted priests, old friends, young lovers, rockers and rebels, husbands and runaway wives, punks and poets. They all are clinging desperately to some kind of faith in a mutable and dangerous world.
Every Inch of Her
Peter Sheridan - 2004
Philo announces herself at their door one Sunday evening with the words, "God pointed me here." A large presence, weighing 240 pounds and bearing tattoos on her arm, Philo smokes, swears, and loves to eat. She is also a mother of five and in flight from her abusive husband, Tommo. In no time at all, Philo has made herself indispensable. At the senior Daycare Center, she gets the old folks talking to one another, singing old favorites, and playing bingo again. And with all the love she's got to give, it's only natural that she helps Cap and Dina-two people at the Center long separated by a bitter feud-come together again. By turns comical and tender, Peter Sheridan's novel is a beautifully written portrait of an unforgettable woman who touches everyone she meets through the sheer force of being herself.