“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” – Fernando Pessoa
…and right now is the perfect time to lose yourself in a great book. Here, we’ve asked the team to select their favourite of all the Irish tomes (and there are lots to choose from!)
Blackcock's Feather
Ireland Chauffeur Travel Transport Manager and Driver Guide Paul Feehan recommends ‘Blackcock’s Feather’ by Maurice Walsh as “a great fictional/historical read”, which was written in 1934.
Maurice Walsh was an Irish novelist best known for the short story ‘The Quiet Man’ which was later made into an Oscar-winning movie directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara – anyone who has traveled with us to Ashford Castle will know the story well.
Walsh was born in 1879 in Ballydonoghue near Listowel, Co. Kerry. He was one of Ireland’s best-selling authors in the 1930s.
Star of the Sea
Ireland Chauffeur Travel Driver Guide, history buff and office-poet Dermot recommends Joe O’Connor’s ‘Star of the Sea’.
The novel is set in 1847 against the backdrop of the Great Famine. The narrative follows multiple interwoven threads from diaries, letter conversations and interviews with some of the principal characters or their relatives. The New York Times describes it as a “Ripping Yarn”.
Novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster, Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels including ‘Star of the Sea’, ‘Ghost Light’ (Dublin One City One Book novel 2011) and ‘Shadowplay’ (June 2019). Among his awards are the Prix Zepter for European Novel of the Year, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature.
Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001
In ‘Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001’, poet Seamus Heaney’s precise, engaging prose reveals as much about the man as the poet. These essays and lectures circle the central preoccupying questions: How should a poet properly live and write? What is his relationship to be to his own voice, his own place, his literary heritage, and the contemporary world?
Seamus Heaney is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney was raised in Co Derry and later lived in Dublin.
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”. Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994). He died in 2013.
The Sea
‘The Sea’ by John Banville is so beautifully written that it almost reads like poetry. In this luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife.
It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel – among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.
Conversations with Friends
‘Conversations with Friends’ by Sally Rooney is set in Dublin and is an introspective glance into the lives of two couples of different ages whose lives intertwine after a poetry slam event.
Frances is 21-years-old, cool-headed and darkly observant. A college student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, she works at a literary agency by day. At night, she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend. When they are profiled by Melissa, a well-known journalist, they enter an exotic orbit of beautiful houses, raucous dinner parties and holidays in Provence.
Initially unimpressed, Frances finds herself embroiled in a risky ménage a quatre when she begins an affair with Nick, Melissa’s actor husband.
Room
‘Room’ is a 2010 novel by Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue. The story is told from the perspective of 5-year-old Jack who is being held captive in a small room along with his mother.
Donoghue conceived the story after hearing about five-year-old Felix in the Fritzl case, and a 2008 court case in which a Pennsylvania woman held her children captive for eight years in a small room similar to the one in the novel.
The novel was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and Governor General’s Awards.
The film adaptation, also titled ‘Room’, was released in October 2015, starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. It received four nominations at the 88th Academy Awards.
Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling
‘Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling’ by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen started life as a Facebook group between friends to honour an imaginary small-town girl.
Aisling is 28, and she’s a complete Aisling. Living ‘Down Home’ with Mammy and Daddy, she commutes to her good pensionable job in Dublin and stays two nights a week with her boyfriend of seven years, John.
But Aisling wants more. She wants the ring on her finger. She wants the grand big house with the utility room of her dreams. When a week in Tenerife doesn’t result in a proposal, Aisling decides she’s had enough. It’s time for a change.
A new start, a love triangle (well, more of a square) and some home truths force Aisling out of her comfort zone and into a life she never imagined.
