Beautiful things: Rowan's honey jar

Once upon a time, we made beautiful things in Ireland. Al O'Dea made lovely monastic chairs, stern and strict and stark. Waterford Glass's designers made beautifully clean and subtle designs in glass. Sybil Connolly made sexy, irresistible clothes - my mother had a dress I always wanted, silk, with an aquamarine bodice and skirt - but the skirt unlooped itself from the front and fastened on the back, revealing a reverse of deep sea-green. And that reversible skirt was in such light silk that the hem had to be weighted with lead shot, so that if you whirled around it flickered and spun around you with a faint, lovely whistling. Oh, there were lovely things, but my favourite was   very simple, the Rowan's honey jar. Rowan's were seedsmasters, with a gigantic shop in Westmoreland Street, at the centre of Dublin, where you could browse for your needs: calendula, whose peppery orange petals would give savour to your lamb stew; parsley, the secret ingredient that turns every dish to magic; sweet rocket, whose fragrance rises from the garden like an expensive French scent. But Rowan's also made honey - in those days before the horrifying neonicotinides the First World's pet owners put on their dogs' and cats' necks to keep away fleas, and gardeners put on their earth to kill vine weevils... in those days before the neonicotinoids were implicated in colony collapse disorder, which is killing all our beloved bees; in those days, Rowan's honey was everywhere, in every shop. And Rowan's honey was sold in these jars, the shape of a cell in a beehive, the shape of the joy of bees. The honey was delicious - not "a mixture of EC  and non-EC honeys", but pure Wexford and Clare and Galway and Dublin honey, won from the pollen of local plants, with the wherewithal to help your health and set your taste buds on fire with deliciousness and wonder. I still have one of these jars - somehow I managed to throw out the lid, so its lid doesn't close properly - and I decant the pretend-honeys won from acacia or  robinia or anything but native heathers and wildflowers and suburban flowers into its hexagonal glass, and try to pretend that this is the honey of my childhood, that honey I took so happily for granted, that honey that slipped onto my tongue. It's not hard to keep bees, if you're not allergic, and most people aren't; but beekeeping is not yet fashionable. It will be - in 10 years, it will become deeply trendy to have a hive on your back wall - but for now this is an unusual and slightly offside skill to have. (By the way, the Irish Beekeepers' Association runs courses, should you want to be an early adopter.) For now, all I can do is search out the beekeepers who hide in our midst, who keep their swarms in Rathmines and Greystones and Dalkey and Ranelagh, and edge up to their door to buy and take away a comb in secret. And as I take it out of its wooden structure, I'll drain it into the old Rowan's jar, and look at that lost love. 

Reaping the artists

I've come across several old friends in the last couple of weeks, all artists in various disciplines, and all people who supported a lifelong dedication to their craft with a couple of days' work. And all now unemployed.
The first was a brilliant man whose work is in every art-loving household in the country. I had always thought of him as someone who was on the staff of the college where he worked. But he looked up from where he was sitting and reading a manuscript with one hand and rocking his baby with the other, at a table in a cafe, and greeted me gladly, and then told me that no, he'd been a part-timer. "They were always on at me to go full-time, but I wanted to work at my own stuff." When the reaping time came, he was for the high jump. "It costs too much to get rid of someone who's on the staff, and the union will back them, and they'll be entitled to redundancy," he said.
Next was a star, a household name whose craft and technique must have been invaluable to his students in the 20 years he has taught them. One day a week, though. "It was the reaping," he said, and laughed. "They just scooped out all the part-timers and got rid of us all."
Another had a newspaper column; the editor rang up and said sorry, all the columns were going to be done in-house from now on.
Another provided regular witty, arty pieces to a magazine; de trop now that things are tight - syndicated material will fill in.
It's a crazy, crazy policy, leading to mediocrity. The best minds of our generation - of two or three generations, given that a generation is taken to be 15 years - can't work, while the play-it-safe people continue to trudge in and collect their wages.
The only near equivalent I can think of is the 1920s and 1930s, when the left-wingers were deliberately frozen out, and left the country in droves, leaving a tight-arse right-wing republic fawning on the bishops and doffing the cap to the gombeen men. And we all know what that led to. But maybe that's what the Irish people want.

'TIS in Kilkenny, it is reported, the marble hearts are as black as ink - in JJ Toner's noir thriller St Patrick's Day Special, the ancient city is where a gangster tout is being hidden away from his former friends.
At the beginning of this tense story, DI Ben Jordan of the Garda Síochána is on his way to take over babysitting the tout. But when he arrives, there's nothing left to babysit: the supergrass and Jordan's colleague have been wiped out, seemingly by a murderous pizza deliveryman.
Jordan, obsessed as he is by Ireland's most vicious gang leader, Lafferty, is determined that Lafferty will go down for this: it's obviously his handiwork.
Which leads us into an intricate story involving Jordan's troubled daughter and her beaux, his unhelpful bosses in the Gardaí, his own disintegrating personality, his dicey marriage and new life in a seafront mansion in Dublin 4, and myriad twists and turns.
In a dark vision of drug-ridden post-Celtic-Tiger Ireland, Toner's Ben Jordan makes the first appearance; we're going to see more of him.

Becoming Scarlett by Ciara Geraghty, Hachette Books

Scarleh?
Scarlett O’Hara, no less. Daughter of retired actor (resting, dahling) Declan O’Hara, heartthrob of ladies of a certain age. And now staring in horror at the blue stick of a pregnancy test.
She doesn’t want a baby?
She’s all on her owney-o, after her beloved - plain-speaking John Smith - left her, the rat. And as it rapidly transpires, she’s not absitively sure who’s the father-to-be of the sprog-to-be.
Ouch! How so?
She had a little pity party, during which she was comprehensively pitied by -
Don’t tell me: Rhett Butler?
Close. Daniel Butler, universally known as Red Butler for his flaming hair. And soon to meet Scarlett again under circs embarrassing enough to make both of them live up to their names.
Who wrote it, btw?
Dubliner Ciara Geraghty, rumoured to have a six-figure deal with Hachette for two books, Saving Grace (her first, about a girl who falls for the office geek) and Becoming Scarlett.
How does this Scarlett make the redsers?
A popular job in chicklit: she’s a wedding planner. Now working on the ‘Smithson-Carling wedding’. High-end. Martello towers. Glam. And she’s in line for promotion.
All going well, then?
Hmm, not quite. The boss’s lover is also in line for that promotion. And no partner to help Scarlett raise the sproglet. So organised organiser Scarlett, determined not to have her five-year plan thrown out of synch, heads for the abortion boat.
Not! In a chicky book?
When she faints at the airport, disaster strikes… but I won’t spoil it for you.
Worth it, then?
Quirky characters - love the chip-shop heiress who’s one of Scarlett’s clients - heartrending turnarounds, and an ending that’s far from traditional. The supporting actors - including dad Declan and mammy Maureen, his femme fatale muse - are charming.
Publisher's site

The O’Hara Affair

by Kate Thompson
Avon
Quiet village life?
Not! A glamorous film is being made in the village of Lissamore in ‘Coolnamara’, and the streets are full of sexy stars and slimy Tinseltown types. And hopeful actresses-to-be with stars in their eyes.
Magic!
Magic is right, and Fleur O’Farrell, née Saint-Eveurte and otherwise known as Flirty, proprieteuse of stylish designer shop Fleurissima, is preparing to tell fortunes.
Eh?
For charity. Fleur logs on to Facebook and discovers the secrets of villagers and visitors, and she’s able to magically manipulate lives like a kindly fairy godmother.
Whose lives?
Mainly mouselet Bethany, a bullied teenager who blossoms into a gorgeous creature under Fleur’s care. Meanwhile, Dervla Kinsella, heroine of Thompson’s The Kinsella Sisters, reappears - newly married, and struggling with minding her husband’s senile mother.
I sense a political tone
You do. I bet the next in the series will have Dervla - a go-getting former estate agent - in politics and fighting for the rights of the aged.
Gritty real life
Real and online - a chunk of the book is lived in the ghostly online world, where you can be who you want, and do what (or who) you want. Until the fairy godmother catches up with you.
And a bad guy?
Fleur’s tycoonish lover, Corban O’Hara, one of the film’s producers, is far more flirty than Flirty knows, and as she wanders the cybernetic corridors of Second Life, she discovers secrets she might not want to know.
Ooh, bad boy
And a bad girl - the star Anastasia Harris, commonly known as Nasty, though she’s out-nastied by Corban, a mind melder of the first order.
Scary guy?
The kind of manipulator who should have Garda crime-scene tapes around him at all times.
But a happy ending?
This is a cuddly, kindly book. Don’t worry, good will triumph and the bad will pay.

Author's site

The Gates by John Connolly

Hodder & Stoughton

I forgot to buy the nephew a pressie!
Fear no more, my child, your fairy godmother is here, and the present you need (*pouff*) is The Gates, by John Connolly, a magical tale that will scare the hell out of the poor child.
Don’t want that, do I?
Ah, but it does it in a cosy, reassuring, Englishy kind of way, and on the road to redemption the little one will learn lots of physics.
Do tell
You know the way many boys and girls love abstruse facts? This is riddled with physics stuff, told in exactly the right confiding whisper.
And is there a story?
Indeed there is. The Large Hadron Collider and Satan have got together, in the unlikeliest pairing since 50 Cent said he wanted to take Susan Boyle clubbing.
Satan?
Or one of the Evil One’s other trade names. Unfortunately, as the residents of 666 Crowley Avenue dance in a pentacle at the same time as the Hadron Collider is doing its thing, there is a watcher.
Our dashing hero?
Exactly. Young Samuel Johnston and his trusty dachshund Boswell are peering through the window, having received a cold refusal while trick-or-treating.
How young?
Eleven; young enough to have a babysitter, the unspeakable Stephanie. Lots of evil in this story. Including the ex-residents of Number 666, who have been gobbled up and replaced by decaying versions of themselves.
Eee - don’t want to give the nephew nightmares
If he’s a delicate, nervy child, steer clear. If he’s the usual gruesome-loving little boy, go for it. Adult thriller author John Connolly struck the Dahl note in this kids’ book.
How does it end?
That would be telling. I can reveal that Johnson is a misunderstood hero in the tradition of Camus, and that a secondary demon, Nurd, is sulkily ready to thwart the plots of the Great Malevolence (alias Satan).
Worth buying?
I’d give you 666 to 66 that the nephew will love it.

Writer's site

Truth or Fiction by Jennifer Johnston

Headline Review

Not girly?
Jennifer Johnston writes tiny, perfect books, as delicate as wisps of silk chiffon booby-trapped with Semtex.
Ah so? Explosive secrets, then?
Book reviewer Caroline Wallace’s boss in the Telegraph sends her to Dublin (from her greyish life in London) to interview aged writer Desmond Fitzmaurice - everyone thinks he’s dead years ago, but he’s not.
Alive and kicking?
He promises her “lots of sex and some violence” in his diaries, which he holds under lock and key. Unlikely, she thinks, looking at the creaky old gent living in Sorrento Terrace over the strand at Dalkey.
And is there?
Oh, there is. There’s also lovely wry humour. When Caroline meets Desmond he strikes her as a bit of an egotist, waited on by wife, ex-wife, cleaning lady, sons and daughter. By the end of the book, she thinks he’s a monster.
Monstre sacré?
Less sacred, more selfish. He’s like the sun around whom a solar system of infuriated female planets whirls. All his relationships are biting, with a dash of spite, like a pink gin dripping with Angostura bitters.
Any of this autobiographical?
Scarcely! Though the details of Fitzmaurice’s life share a likeness with the author’s father, playwright Denis Johnston, who was, like our hero, a war corr in WWII, and did, like him, divorce a beloved actress wife to marry another. But I can’t see him murdering anyone.
It’s mainly about murder?
No, it’s mainly about the horrors of growing old, and very funny with it. Desmond F is so antique he’s practically auctionable, but he’s still determined to chip his way back into the world of fame and fortune. He’s a ruthless old beast.
A good buy?
Good buy to all that. The editing, unfortunately, is a little lax, with ‘their’ for ‘there’, ‘affect’ for ‘effect’, and the like. It spoils the, er, effect.
Article by the author's son about the book's background

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.

Jumping in Puddles by Claire Allan

Poolbeg

I need a box of chocs and a girly story
Look no further, my dear: a box of Lily O’Brien’s best and Jumping in Puddles, the story of a group of lone parents in a Donegal village putting their lives back together.
Village full of gossip?
You have no idea. Ciara is 17 and won’t tell anyone her baby’s father’s name - not even her mam, who’s helping her bring up the sprog. The poor kid has left school and gone to work in the village shop, run by the local dragon.
Worst thing I can imagine
Maybe, maybe not. Niamh (why do authors give characters lookalike names? Ciara… Niamh - confusing for readers!) is mourning her perfect husband. He’s left her rich and living in their dream home, but she’s shattered. And about to be more so.
And no one to talk to?
Until Niamh and Ciara - and Ruth and Liam - join Detta O’Neill’s support group for lone parents, to the fascinated delight of the village. Ruth and Liam’s spouses have run off with each other, by the way.
Yikes! Makes a bond, though
Liam is dead solid, an old-fashioned Irishman who likes his fried breakfast and his traditional values. Unfortunately, his mother loathes his ex. All he wants is Laura back and his life the way it used to be.
Know the feeling
Socially ambitious Laura and bossy bank official James, Ruth’s ex, seem perfectly suited. But as Ruth knows, there’s more to James than meets the eye. Ruth is a weepy, downtrodden type who’s bullied by her bold strap of a teenage daughter, and worried about her sons.
Kids? These poor souls have kids?
The kids are the centre of the story - the Loony Lone Parents (as they nickname themselves) grow into a strong group who help each other with their children and their rapidly changing lives.
Rattling good yarn?
If RTE have any sense, they’ll buy this and turn it into a fab series and sell it internationally.
Author's site

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Bloomsbury

About a fellow on a tightrope at the World Trade Center, I heard?
A bunch of connected stories riffing on that central image - Philippe Petit really did dance on the high wire between the recently-built towers for 45 minutes early in the morning of August 7, 1974, a quarter-mile above ground, watched by spellbound New Yorkers.
It’s not about him? Confused now
He appears in the linked stories, the first about a saint: Corrigan, an Irish worker monk living among the New York prostitutes who are his friends. Corrigan’s brother, who tells the story, becomes entranced by Tillie and her daughter Jazzlyn, two of the prostitutes.
Uh-oh. When men write about prostitutes, they die
The omens aren’t good, I’ll admit. Then there’s a story about a group of mothers of men who have died in the Vietnam War. Two of them, upper-class white lady Claire and dead-solid black lady Gloria, are moving towards a tentative friendship in this sometimes catty milieu.
Very 1970s
And an arty couple, travelling back from a failure to sell their paintings and smoking dope who tip a van, cause it to crash. The man immediately absolves himself from guilt; the woman goes to the funeral of the people killed in the crash.
Worth reading, you reckon?
Su Perb. Couldn’t put it down. McCann has a way of tenderly drawing you into a world where terrible things are happening to people you care desperately about.
Famous writer, I think, eh?
Multi-award-winning writer’s writer - Paris Review published extracts from Let the Great World Spin and it was longlisted for the Booker. But don’t let that put you off; it’s a beautiful book. I came across him first when he wrote a column for the Evening Press while cycling across America as a teenager - amazing stories about backwoods psychopaths and the like. Buy this. Read it.

Civil & Strange by Cláir Ní Aonghusa

Penguin Ireland

Civil and strange? What’s that mean?
It’s a Munster saying, meaning you should be civil with your neighbours, but keep a distance so the gossips don’t ate you alive.
What’s the story?
Kind of an Irish Aga Saga - Ellen escapes her unhappy marriage and manipulative mother by going back to the country town where she spent happy summers as a child.
Shudder - peeling wallpaper, dank rooms?
Until she gets the builders in, then it’s bright paint, conservatory, sexy cherrywood and granite kitchen, sexy kitchen installer.
Whoah, say again?
Yup, Eugene, gorgeous, flirty carpenter, has a fine pair of hands on him, and wants to get them on our Ellen. But he’s 12 years younger than her - shock horror - and she’s now a teacher in the local school.
She’ll bring disgrace on the family
Aha, your roots are showing. The nearest thing Ellen has to local family is her uncle Matt, whose wife, Julia, is icy and distant and wouldn’t have Ellen to stay when she was a kid.
And for why, like?
Matt married Julia at his mother’s instigation when the woman of his heart left him for someone else. Or so they say….
It’s good, so?
Brilliant. Not a pageturner, but told in a very appealing dialogue-heavy, slangy style. You like these characters and want to know what’s going to happen to them.
Gonna be a country girl again, eh?
Small-town, really. The local shopkeeper who’s avid for gossip. The way everyone knows everyone else’s business. The sly power plays by parents who bully the teachers.
Who’s this Cláir?
Poet, short story writer, novelist - this is her second novel; the first, Four Houses & A Marriage, was published by Poolbeg in 1997. Civil & Strange came out last year in the US, to critical acclaim, before arriving here.
It’s a buy, then?
A gently funny book that’ll make you nostalgic for your old home town.
US publisher's site

Living with Murder by Yvonne Kinsella

Gill & Macmillan

You’d be afraid to leave the house
You would that - all those druggies shooting each other, it’s like the Wild West.
But at least it’s only each other
Poor souls. But it’s often civilians too. Donna Cleary was “a gorgeous little thing, very chubby and looked like her dad”. Tough guys tried to muscle in on her friend’s 40th party. When they were politely refused they heaved the flowerpots through the window. Donna went out to clear up, and they drove up and shot her.
Was anyone charged for it?
Her suspected killer was a coke-stoked heroin fiend, a violent bank robber, according to Living with Murder. He died of a methadone overdose in a garda station.
And wasn’t there that plumber?
Anthony Campbell’s mam staggered into a friend’s house, white with shock, and said: “I’m after getting a call saying my son’s after being shot.” Anthony had tried out newspapers and stockbroking on work experience, but he plumped for plumbing, loved it. He was in a house fixing radiators, criminal Marlo Hyland sleeping upstairs without Anthony knowing. Hyland’s murders killed Anthony too.
Bloody drugs
Some people aren’t safe in their own home, either. Like the blind man in Monageer who smothered his two daughters, who had the same eye disease as himself, and hanged himself and his wife.
It leaves so many questions...
His mother swears he didn’t do it. He was in debt, terrified of moneylenders. But she’ll never know.
All so sad
A prison officer who sounds like a decent sort, Brian Stack, was executed with a shot to the head that left him quadriplegic and totally dependent for the 18 months he lived. He’d told his wife he was having hassle at work.
Not a happy read, then?
It’s a sad, sad book, especially when you look at the snapshots of people in happy times. But reading it gives you an insight into the stories in the papers.
Publisher's site

Flagging the Therapy by Dr Harry Barry

Liberties

I am not mentally ill!
Just a little, maybe? Think about it - maybe a downer is the mental equivalent of a nasty head cold? Maybe we’re all mentally ill sometimes, the same as we’re all physically ill sometimes.
And you have a solution?
Harry Barry’s Flagging the Therapy - he’s a Louth doctor, a director of Aware, the anti-depression charity. He has a bunch of stuff you can do to fight it.
Ack, it’s a huge book
Not so huge. But annoyingly, there’s no index. Luckily, I’ve read it for you, and can tell you to cut to the chase and turn immediately to page 216, where the good doctor outlines his master plan.
Which is?
I’m getting to it… Exercise, take Omega 3 oils, lay off the sauce if you’re depressed -
What? But drink is the only thing that keeps me sane
Apparently not when you’re depressed. He warns against drink, dope, cocaine - Irish women especially are using wine to deal with stress, it seems.
Life would be a dark, empty room
He says you should share your distress with someone you know and trust - ideally a professional in the area. And so on. Actually he has good guides to the various types of depression we may suffer from - bipolar or unipolar, anxiety, etc - and what approach helps them.
I’ve tried everything already
Oh yeah, and he warns that some therapies have a shallow foundation. But if we can learn to accept and love ourselves…
You’re joking, surely?
And you should organise a proper healthy diet - eating fish and eggs and greens and grains and good things keeps you on a steady keel. I don’t want to sound like Miss Thistlebottom, but a hearty meal -
Bleagh
Give the guy a break, he’s trying to help you. And he’s right - when you’re huddled in a cold black fog and you can’t get up or wash the dishes, it really helps to go out and go for a good fast walk. But you really should read the whole thing.
Maybe I will
Attagirl.
Publisher's site

The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan

Simon & Schuster

My niece’s 16th birthday and what can I get her?
Teen demon fiction by young Irish writer Sarah Rees Brennan. Demons, magicians and a sexy, surly hero.
Sexy?
Nick Ryves has a Heathcliffy kind of dark passion about him. He’s gloomy and misunderstood, and cares only about oiling and exercising his sword, and escaping his demons.
A teenager, in other words
Ah, far, far more, m’dear. For Nick has a dark secret. He and his brother Alan and their crazy mother are on the run. The magicians are out to get them.
Mostly I thought it was teachers
There’s something strange, and strangely attractive, about young Nick, but it’s Alan who cares about people. And all the girls who care for Nick.
Tis well I remember it
Enter Mae, cute as a witty kitten (when a boy admires her breasts she says “Thank you - I grew them myself”) with her claws out to defend her own brother, the witless Jamie, who’s in trouble deep.
Lots of magical action?
Oh yes, plenty of flights and fights and fun as the boys dance for demons in the Goblin Market, and seek out the magicians well known to haunt the snugs of London pubs.
And hot sex?
Please. This is a teen novel. Though there’s a fair amount of heavy breathing between Mae and Nick.
First novel?
Surely. Though the young author (pictured on the press release charmingly pouting as she poses against a gravestone) has a blog with 4,000 followers, and has written ‘fanfic’ - stories about other authors’ characters, very popular online - for years. She really has a way with a plot - some of the turns and twists make you go “woof”.
Sounds just the dart for the niece
And - v important for teens - it's a guaranteed source of street cred to carry this around. It has the feel of an underground hit.
Author's site
Author's blog

Last Train from Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey

Atlantic

So you’re raving about it?
…writing as deep and warm and soft as a kiss, a story as stark as a knife, you have to read it, it’s going to be 2009’s big Irish novel. Buy three copies at least, because this is the kind of book you press on your friends, and you’ll want to keep one for yourself.
Gripping from the start?
Actually, no. It starts with a depressing scene from the 1920s when a drunk wakes up having apparently murdered his sister, and goes on the run.
Charming
At first you’ll keep reading because of the beauty of the writing, which has the kind of immediacy where you actually think you’re the characters. Which is amazing, because they’re very different from each other - reserved, wise Bella in the 1930s, her messed-up granddaughter Anna in the 1990s, whose one-night stand is one of the funniest scenes I’ve read.
So what’s the story, morning glory?
Bella goes to work as a private tutor to Alec, the son of a beautiful German Jewish woman and a dying Italian aristocrat. ‘Edward King’ - the putative murderer of the first scene - is his music teacher. Over the years they become loving surrogate parents to Alec, whose mother remarries and basically forgets him. Then the anti-Jewish laws come into effect in Italy, and they have to try to smuggle him out before the Nazis get him.
I don’t really like those Holocaust novels
Me neither - there’s often a kind of lip-licking excitement about them. But this is different - you get to love Alec, and the reserved Bella and secretive Edward, and the odd lives they live.
I didn’t know Italy deported Jews?
Me neither, either. But they did - and Alec’s stepfather pays lots of money to priests and nuns to get him out, using his teachers to smuggle him and his baby half-sister, in a terrifying flight. I promise you, this is the best book of the year. It’s extraordinary.
Publisher's site

The Kinsella Sisters by Kate Thompson

Avon
Funny, you say?
Snort-tea-through-your-nose funny. And upbeat and life-affirming, and a great story.
Saor is Gaelach?
Set in Lissamore, a trendy Connemara village full of creative locals and high-priced visitors. Two households both alike in dignity, in fair Lissamore…
Oh, get to the hot stuff
Bohemian Rio and her high-flying sister Dervla communicate only through notes about the care of their ageing Da. When Daddy dies, Rio finds a letter with riveting news.
And the other family?
Millionaire developer Adair Bolger and his petit bourgeois princess daughter Izzy (the comic relief - she thinks it’s classy to call your dessert ‘pudding’, and has some unfortunate luck with hair extensions) have a massive second home, built on the site of a cottage to the rage of locals.
Poor little rich girl Izzy falls like a ton of awfully elegant bricks for Rio’s son Finn.
Sounds wholesomely local
Norratall, my dear. Finn and Izzy are both keen divers, and a chunk of the action takes place in the seas off Thailand. And Finn’s actor father, sultry welfare-bum Shane Byrne, is about to hit the big time.
Cut to the chase: who gets of with who?
Ah, that would be telling. Rio is under siege by Shane, but too busy laughing at his fans’ internet fantasies, and Adair has the hots for her - but will he get anywhere? Will he?
Hey, don’t tell me the whole story!
There’s plenty more, don’t worry. After all, this is set in the first drastic days of the recession, and estate agent Dervla is trying to sell houses as everyone in Ireland tries to shed the second home and its mortgage.
What’s the best thing?
Lots of overhearing and picking things up wrong and subsequent tangles. And the descriptions of luxury and bohemian life and sun-drenched Thai holidays make you feel totally pampered.
I’m going to rush out and buy it
Good move.
Author's site

The Cut of Love by Helena Close

Hachette Books Ireland

No way!
Way. I thought the same before I started reading: “Eww, misery lit about a girl who self-harms” - and I was wrong. This is superb.
But I thought -
Yeah, I was going to tell you about Lee Child’s new Jack Reacher book, Gone Tomorrow. It’s great, full of blood and guts, especially guts. And Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes is delicate and gloomy and brilliant. And Claire Kilroy’s All Names Have Been Changed is darkly hilarious -
All right, I get the idea
I didn’t want to read this, but I got a tipoff, tried a couple of pages, and couldn’t stop reading.
Well, go on?
Two families in Limerick -
Eeek!
Stoppit. Twelve-year-old Leah’s brother is dead, and the family is coming to pieces in grief. And her best friend Jane’s separated parents are fighting all the time, and Jane is secretly cutting her arms.
Sounds cheery
Sounds dreadful. But you really like these people as you get to know them. And the tension has the torque of - whatever has a lot of torque. Alison, Leah’s mother, secretly watches her dead son’s Bebo page. And she’s going out and following two people.
These people are cracked
Cracking up, anyway. But it’s kind of funny and awful too. Jane’s father - too handsome to live - joins the kids’ karate class, to Jane’s mortification. He’s flirting with Leah’s mother, while giving Jane’s mother dog’s abuse. Every page you turn has something new to pull you in.
It sounds… real
It’s one of those books where you’re sorry it ends because you want to keep knowing the people in it.
Happy ending, then?
Oh, the ending is devastating. But you have to read it. This is powerful stuff - I’m just going to look out everything else Helena Close has written.
Which is?
This is her sixth book - four co-written with her best friend, using the pen name Sarah O’Brien. But she’s really hit the spot with this one. Buy it. Now.
Author's agent's website

The Fidelity Project by Susan Conley

Little Black Dress
Fidelity back in fashion in the recession?
Oh aye. Max and Jax, ace ad copywriters, are standing shivering on the chill cliff of recession, looking at the gulf of redundancy looming beneath them -
Enough of the metaphors, already
The agency’s downsizing. The ‘creatives’ are about to be out of a job.
Bummer. Dole time?
Entrepreneur time for feisty ladies. New Yorker Maxine and Dub Jacinta say “Hey, we know how to film ads - we could film our own TV programme!” The idea is to take a bunch of couples and talk to them - reality TV style - about their relationship, while secretly filming.
What are they like!
Indeed. Jax is engaged to gorgeous but wooden Fergal Delaney, who’s far away in Dubai. Max has her own secrets… And when Jax’s actressy mammy says she hopes they have a starring part for her - without realising just what they’re filming - well, little does she know.
I love go-get-em-girls books
This is full of happy success. The girls roller-coaster over every obstacle and you just know they’re going to succeed - when you can stop laughing. And they film some truly horrendous couples, who unwittingly reveal all.
Written by?
Susan Conley, who works with us here in the Herald.
A colleague? Biased much?
Hey! This is hilarious! Family-centred! Heartwarming! With enough hot sex to warm up a caravan on a rainy Mayo beach, if you can’t afford Lanzarote.
Hot sex? Now I’m interested
They need tech support - so they turn to trusty brown-eyed John Paul. His Holiness is well smitten - but I won’t spoil it for you.
And there has to be a villain?
Nasty Niamh, forever on the snoop around their workplace, puts her oar in and throws a spanner in the works -
What did I tell you about metaphors?
Sorry. Very funny, anyway, and all about Dublin - except when the mysterious Mr La Motta appears from Max’s past. Mm hmm.
Publisher's site

The Insider by Ava McCarthy

Harper

A tense, riveting thriller?
Shh, I’m reading. Yeah, finished in a minute. G’way. I can’t put down The Insider, Ava McCarthy’s cracking first thriller.
With a lovely love story?
Far from. A story where you clutch the book, eyes bulging, tongue sticking out of the corner of your mouth, not realising you’re holding your breath until you gasp with horror.
Plot twists? Thrills?
More twists and turns than a property developer’s back pocket. More thrills than a day in Limerick. Geeky grrrl Harry Martinez is pursued by a maniac who signs threatening anonymised emails ‘The Prophet’, and kills her friends.
Can’t she, er, hack The Prophet back?
You’d think so - but the emailer knows all about the €12 million her father and his rogue trader pals stashed away in a numbered account.
Of course, €12 million goes nowhere nowadays
Oh yes it does - it appears in Harry’s own bank account, then, just as she’s arranged to pay it back to the bad guy, *pouf*, it disappears again.
Trouble coming every day. But a tough babe has her ways?
Oh yes. Harry would mind mice at crossroads - and hack into their user accounts while she did it. She follows the money all the way to the Caribbean - but I won’t spoil it.
Wait - what about the da? Wouldn’t he know who’s after the €12m?
He’s the last thing Harry wants to see - a gambler who lost the house when she was a kid, and now a thief. Also he’s due for release from Arbour Hill, and she doesn’t want to queer his pitch.
Blood will tell?
You might say. Harry has inherited his creative way with a problem, and he taught her to be a poker ace when she was in nappies.
The writer knows her stuff?
Yup; an analyst programmer for the London Stock Exchange’s trading division; she got a first in physics and a masters in nuclear medicine - and she can write.
Is it a buy?
Mos’ def. Right to the end - where there’s a fabulous final twist - she keeps you hanging on.

A Bit of a Scandal by Mary Rose Callaghan

Brandon €22.94

Holy God, she didn’t get off with a priest?
Fraid so - baby journalist and part-time waitress Louise in Mary Rose Callaghan’s hot novel A Bit of a Scandal slides into love with Father Peter.
The bold strap! Based on a mediaeval love story?
Supposedly. Abelard and Heloise.
She a pale rose, he a gallant knight?
Not quite - he a trendy philosopher, she a scholarly young wan; due to a tragic misunderstanding, her family castrated him.
Ouch. Well, families are like that.
Maybe your family.
And this happened in Dublin?
No, no, you’re not listening. Abs and Helly were back in 11th-century France. The pair in the darkly funny Bit of a Scandal are modern - well, fairly. They fell for each other in the mildewy Dublin of the 1970s - he a Canadian monk, she a freelance for a Catholic paper.
So she got off with him? Scarlet woman.
Ah now. There was a pair of them in it.
True love?
Sorta kinda. He’s wedded to the Church, but there are three of them in this marriage.
Sounds like a tormented thing - Brief Encounter for the 1970s?
Callaghan puts a funny spin on it. Fr Peter’s constantly trying to convert her. On a bus, he veers from “Oh, God, you’re sick? You’re pregnant!” to “You have to invite Jesus into your heart - if you did it’d blow your mind!”
Lovely.
On a visit to a German family, he follows her up the stairs, goatily touching her behind, then they go back to sing Grace to the tune of Eidelweiss.
Been there.
He patronises her - “Your degree? You never get beyond the empirical” - tells everyone else that she’s a recovering addict or alcoholic.
Oh. Haven’t been there.
This guy is some tulip. At one party, he pushes past her into the loo - “Oh my God, you’re wearing stockings!” and as they make out, he shouts hoarsely to the person pounding on the door: “I’m counselling Miss O’Neill, I’ll be down in 15 minutes.”
Saucy! So it’s a buy?
If you like it funny, it’s a definite buy.
Publisher's site