Book picks similar to
The Doctor's Wife by Brian Moore
fiction
irish
booker-shortlist
literary-fiction
A Five Year Sentence
Bernice Rubens - 1978
It was two-thirty. If everything went according to schedule, she could safely reckon to be dead by six o'clock.'But by the day's end, events have taken a dramatic turn and Miss Hawkins is sentenced to live. Forcibly retired, she is presented by her colleagues with a five-year diary.Programmed since childhood to total obedience, Miss Hawkins slavishly follows her diary's commands until the impossible happens – she meets a man. As a last reprieve from the horrors of loneliness she embarks on a determined full-scale mission to taste life's secret pleasures – and pains– until the cup runs dry…
Our Fathers
Andrew O'Hagan - 1999
But times have changed. Now, as he lies dying in one of his own failed buildings, his grandson Jamie comes home to watch over him. The old man’s final months bring Jamie to see what is best and worst in the past that haunts them all, and he sees the fears of his own life unravel in the land that bred him.It is Jamie who tells the story of his family, of three generations of pride and delusion, of nationality and strong drink, of Catholic faith and the end of political idealism. It is a tale of dark hearts and modern houses, of three men in search of Utopia. A poignant and powerful reclamation of the past, Our Fathers is a deeply felt, beautifully crafted, utterly unforgettable novel.
The Industry of Souls
Martin Booth - 1998
Eventually freed from the gulag in the 1970's, he finds he has no reason to return to the West-he has become Russian in everything but birth. Now, on the day of his 80th birthday, Russia has changed. Communism has evaporated. In the aftermath, information has come to light that Alex is still alive. This moving story weaves together the events of Alex's life, exploring this momentous day, his harrowing past in the camp and his life in the village. And it ends with his having to make a personal choice, perhaps for the first time in his life, and the climax is shattering.
Reading Turgenev
William Trevor - 1991
A hasty marriage leads to despair and desolation.
Shadows on our Skin
Jennifer Johnston - 1977
Central to the story is the friendship that tentatively grows up between Joe and Kathleen, a young school-teacher who brings a fresh perspective to his familiar world.
The Deposition of Father McGreevy
Brian O'Doherty - 1999
Maginn returns to Kerry and uncovers an astonishing tale: both the account of the destruction of a place and a way of life which once preserved Ireland's ancient traditions, and the tragedy of an increasingly isolated village where the women mysteriously die-leaving the priest, Father McGreevy, to cope with insoluble problems. Looking back in time, the book traces how, as World War II rages through Europe, McGreevy struggles to preserve what remains of his parish, and struggles against the rough mountain elements, the grief and superstitions of his people, and the growing distrust in the town below. The Deposition of Father McGreevy is a remarkable story, and a gripping exploration of both the locus of misfortune and the nature of evil. Rich in the details of Irish lore and life, its narrative evokes both a time and a place with the accuracy of a keen, unsentimental eye, and renders its characters with heartfelt depth.
The Gate of Angels
Penelope Fitzgerald - 1990
So begins a series of complications - not only of the heart but also of the head - as Fred and Daisy take up each other's education and turn each other's philosophies upside down.
The Road to Lichfield
Penelope Lively - 1977
With this new knowledge, Linton must now examine the realities of her own life - of her childhood, her husband - and ask, What do they really know of her? Deeply felt, beautifully controlled, The Road to Lichfield is a subtle exploration of memory and identity, of chance and consequence, of the intricate weave of generations across a past never fully known, a future never fully anticipated.
The Orchard on Fire
Shena Mackay - 1995
She is befriended by the wonderfully dangerous Ruby, whose red hair and brutal home life emphasise her love of fire, and by the immaculately dressed Mr Greenridge who likes to follow her around the village. Mingling the innocent with the sinister and laced with the tragic and the bizarre, this is a rare evocation of a 1950s childhood.
The Dressmaker
Beryl Bainbridge - 1973
So when a GI came to call, she was sure that love and escape would follow. But Nellie knew different - the boy would have to go.
Europa
Tim Parks - 1997
Even his teaching job is in peril. And what lies around the next bend? There are times when the most appalling premonitions seem all too plausible, yet the pull of hope cannot be resisted. Fueled by Marlow's scalpel-sharp commentary, Europa bristles with ferocious wordplay and a vision of the sexes as honest as it is incorrect.
Goshawk Squadron
Derek Robinson - 1971
But for Stanley Woolley, commanding officer of Goshawk Squadron, the romance of chivalry in the clouds is just a myth. There are two types of men up there: victims and murderers, and the code he drums into his men bans any notion of sport or fair play. This produces better killers but, even so, Wolley believes the whole squadron will be dead within three months. Derek Robinson quietly builds the day-to-day details of these mens lives and deaths into a powerful indictment of war. But this classic of war literature is also very funny, often painfully so; Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this is Derek Robinson's masterly novel of the war in the air over the Western Front in 1918.
The Book and the Brotherhood
Iris Murdoch - 1987
Time passes and opinions change. “Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?” Rose Curtland asks. “The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history,” Jenkin Riderhood suggests. The theft of a wife further embroils the situation. Moral indignation must be separated from political disagreement. Tamar Hernshaw has a different trouble and a terrible secret. Can one die of shame? In another quarter a suicide pact seems the solution. Duncan Cambus thinks that since it is a tragedy, someone must die. Someone dies. Rose, who has gone on loving without hope, at least deserves a reward.
Impossible Object
Nicholas Mosley - 1968
A mirror is held to the back of the head and one's hand has to move the opposite way from what was intended."In these closing lines from Impossible Object, one has embodied both Nicholas Mosley's subject of love and imagination, as well as his unmatched lyric style. In eight carefully connected stories that are joined by introspective interludes on related subjects, the author pursues the notion, through the lives of a couple seen by different narrators, that "those who like unhappy ends can have them, and those who don't will have to look for them."The impossible object of the title, "the triangle that can exist in two dimensions but not in three," is a controlling symbol for the impossibility of realizing the good life unless one recognizes the impossibility of attaining it: only then can it be possible to realize it, through a kind of renunciation, especially in "a sophisticated, corrupt, chaotic world." Such a provocative theme, comic or tragic by turns, was met by critics in 1968 as brilliant, insightful, intense, and moving, but especially original.
Oxygen
Andrew Miller - 2001
It is the latest novel from the winner of the James Tait Black Memorial, International Impac and Grinzane Cavour Prizes and one of the most celebrated debutants of the '90s, Andrew Miller.