The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes

Penguin

Zowie! A new Marian Keyes book!
In 66 Star Street - Keyes’ latest bestseller, I’ve no doubt - couples are coalescing and bursting apart like an experiment with mercury, and some strange beast is slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Is it life? Is it death? Wait and see.
Sounds less cuddly than usual
It’s edgy enough, but very funny - several loud guffaws every few pages. The characters are great -
Tell me more
Two fine Polish hunks, one holy and prayerful, one zippy and zingy with blazing blue eyes, both sharing their flat with vividly bad-tempered taxi driver Lydia. One psychic -
The real thing?
Jemima, an aged Protestant lady, and yes, genuine psychic, with a troubled grey dog called Grudge, works for a psychic hotline. Her gorgeous foster-son Fionn is about to be the star of a new TV gardening programme.
Gorgeous, you say?
Fionn is so lovely that even his photo throws a sparkly wink to anyone who looks at it. More of the tenants at No 66: Matt ’n’ Maeve are married, quiet, devoted, a decent-living couple with a calm routine.
How ideal
You may think so; I won’t contradict you. And glam-mam type Katie is 40 this hated birthday. She’s the beloved of unreliable workaholic Conall.
All about coupledom?
No indeed - one aged parent is dying, another is struck by illness but no one will listen to her frantic daughter; companies go bust and people are sacked. Most of the action takes place in a haze of alcohol and sex, often both at the same time.
So many stories?
And more, indeed, since all these lives and others weave in and out - including the dog’s. The stories don’t have the driving force of Keyes’s earlier work, but this is good fun, and you know that in the end the good will win out and the bad be punished with icy force.
A buy?
A cosy read to comfort you in this nasty rainy winter we’re facing.

Tenderwire by Claire Kilroy

Tenderwire
Claire Kilroy
Faber €??
Lucille Redmond

CRITICS, 'those insects who live for but one day', as Voltaire had it, have been less evanescent than usual about Claire Kilroy's second book, lavishing almost universal praise on the brilliant literary thriller.

Readers are equally enthusiastic, and the book is being whipped out from under the eager grabbing hands of would-be buyers in bookshops.

The story: a starry violinist - a bit out there; think Nige Kennedy in drag - collapses after her debut as soloist. On leaving hospital she goes on the batter, and in one of many dodgy pubs meets a dodgy guy - Chechen, Russian, something - who has a Strad for sale.

Yeah, right, she thinks, but then she hears it and thinks, Yeah.

Conscience isn't her strongest point in any case, so her subsequent adventures include a great deal of sidestepping of ethical dilemmas.

The writing is mouthwatering. The maybe-Chechen is huge and 'as blond as a child'; he's selling what he calls 'fairy special violence' that travel secretly around the world like mice. It's 'just another fiddle in a country full of fiddles'.

The fairy special violence and its provenance come quickly into question. Can it be a Nazi trophy, the moral property of a Jewish family? Or is that another scam?

Underlying this story is another: the businessman gone missing from a north Dublin headland, the subsequent torture of animals on that headland, in which the young violinist may have been involved…

Fairy special violence indeed, and a writer born to play it.