City of Books

The Raptures is Jan Carson’s most autobiographical novel, dealing with a child raised in an evangelical Christian community in 1990s Northern Ireland – which mirrors her own background.

In her book, a class of children from the same village fall prey to a mysterious and deadly epidemic. Only one pupil seems to be avoiding the effects of the disease: Hannah, a girl from a born-again Christian background.

“There is a lot of me in this book and for that reason it was both very easy to write because I know this world very well, there wasn’t a lot of research to do, but quite difficult to write – to go to the hard places,” Jan tells podcast host Martina Devlin.

“It’s very easy to pastiche this world. It’s much more difficult to have a nuanced look at it.” She was sheltered from the Troubles, but in hindsight wishes she'd known more about what was happening around her.

In her books, Jan gives readers a strong sense of the Ulster Protestant experience, especially for those from the ‘born again’ community.

“I grew up absolutely immersed in the King James Bible,” she says. “That is not a bad literary document to be immersed in as a writer. It’s got everything from poetry and prophecy to magical realism and beautiful, beautiful language. I’m very glad for those things.”

More here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/437833/the-raptures-by-carson-jan/9780857525758

“I really don't like the fact that sometimes I'm referred to as kind of a controversial novelist because I don't feel that I am,” says John Boyne, whose novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold 11 million copies and mounting, and has been reimagined as a film, play, ballet and opera.

The sequel – All The Broken Places – imagines life after the Holocaust for some of the characters in the 2006 novel, which saw life in a concentration camp through the eyes of two small boys. 

“I'm not controversial as a person,” he says. “I'm not a provocateur at all as a person. And I certainly don't mean to come across that way either in the books that I write or in my interviews.

“I'm not immune to the fact people have criticised The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in more recent years – not for the first 14 or so years of its publication. And I'm not immune to the fact that there's a vocal amount of people who feel I should never be writing a book like All The Broken Places. But I also feel what can we do as writers but write the book that feels right to us at the time?"

He says The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has become “almost a touchstone” for people who feel negativity towards him. But with any writing project, he feels the fear and does it anyway.

All The Broken Places is published by Penguin Random House. More here https://johnboyne.com/book/all-the-broken-places/

Andrew Meehan is nailing his colours to the mast. He writes love stories, he says – although it took him until his third and most recent novel to recognise it.

It was only as he was working on his latest novel, Instant Fires, that realisation dawned.

“Halfway through I discovered, ‘Andrew, you write love stories. OK, it took you a while to cop on to the fact it’s what you do’.” Looking back, he understands that all three of his novels are love stories.

“You write what you want to read,” concludes Andrew. “We all get put in boxes and some of us invite ourselves into certain boxes and I’m now embracing the fact that I’m a writer of love stories.“

The novel is about two strangers who meet over the course of a week in Heidelberg, Germany, and feel an instant attraction – despite the woman, Ute, being convinced love is not for her. Their courtship is  “diffident, gentle, awkward” and is characterised as a prelude to love by Andrew’s publisher.

 Instant Fires by Andrew Meehan is published by New Island. More here:  https://www.newisland.ie/fiction/instant-fires

One of history’s most famous royal love affairs is threaded through Emily Hourican’s latest novel.

The backdrop to The Other Guinness Girl is the 1936 abdication crisis, when the newly-crowned King Edward VIII surrendered this throne to marry his twice-divorced American lover, Wallis Simpson.

“What was it about her that so compelled the Prince of Wales? Why was he determined to give up everything for her?” asks Emily.

The Other Guinness Girl: A Question of Honour by Emily Hourican is published by Hachette Books Irelandhttps://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/emily-hourican/the-other-guinness-girl-a-question-of-honor/9781399708012/

Happily ever afters don’t have to involve a fairy tale wedding followed by staying together for the sake of the children, come what may, says début author Cristín Leach.

The art critic speaks candidly about her marriage breakdown in her memoir, Negative Space. A text message pinging onto her phone marked the beginning of the end for her relationship.

Cristin also reflects on life and her relarionship to art and writing, and says: “I don’t feel that there’s any one reading for a work of art. Everyone who encounters music, poetry, books, paintings, films brings themselves to it. There’s something shared when we all encounter it.”

Negative Space by Cristín Leach is published by Merrion Press. More here: https://irishacademicpress.ie/product/negative-space/

“Fiction sometimes unearths truths – and truths we’re not even aware of knowing,” says novelist Catherine Dunne.

She’s talking about her novel, A Name For Himself, and Lia Mills’s novel Another Alice, reissued in new editions as part of the Arlen House Classic Literature.

Both were published originally in the 1990s, but their themes of coercive control and an abused childhood remain relevant today.

More info: http://arlenhouse.ie

As Somerville and Ross they were a dynamic literary partnership. When Ross died, Edith Somerville convinced herself they could continue to collaborate on books - by communicating beyond the grave through spiritualism.

Martina Devlin talks about her novel Edith, set in 1921-22 against a backdrop of civil unrest leading to Irish independence. It follows Edith’s attempts to save both home – Drishane House – and literary career. She is interviewed by fellow novelist Nuala O'Connor.

Edith: A Novel by Martina Devlin is published by The Lilliput Press.

More here: https://www.lilliputpress.ie/product/edith-by-martina-devlin

Sara Baume is unafraid to use her own life in her writing, while insisting on its status as fiction.

She does it again in her new book Seven Steeples, a gentle and thought-provoking novel spanning seven years. It’s about a couple and their two rescue dogs who drop off the radar and live a quiet life doing as little harm to the planet as possible.

“Everything I write is always an extremity of my actual existence. It’s sort of like a smudged out version of us, I suppose,” says Sara, who moved to the countryside 11 years ago and currently lives with her partner in West Cork.

She also works as a visual artist and describes the deep sense of satisfaction she gains from working with her hands, whether on patchwork flags or wooden birds or tiny ships.

Seven Steeples by Sara Baume is published by Tramp Press https://tramppress.com/product/seven-steeples/

If you think you’re obsessed with being online, you should meet the characters in début author Catherine Prasifka’s novel None of This Is Serious.

Her book deals with the preoccupations of Gen Z, coming of age right now. Despite their shiny new lives, they fear a lifetime of being locked out of home ownership, and worry about whether the planet can survive. Above all, they think long periods interacting with social media platforms is time well-spent.

“We’ve only had the internet for thirty years and we’ve only had the social internet for half of that time," says Catherine. "And we’re not good at using it, and we don’t know how it works, and there’s no possible way to predict how it’s affecting people who’ve grown up with it – this idea that you can be contactable at any time, and you can get insights into your friends’ lives that they’re not directly telling you.”

None of This Is Serious by Catherine Prasifka is published by Canongate

For more on the novel: https://canongate.co.uk/books/3939-none-of-this-is-serious/

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” said William Faulkner – and the past is ever-present, but with a twist, in Rosemary Jenkinson’s short story collection Marching Season. The Belfast playwright and short story writer tackles rioting, bonfires to mark the Twelfth of July, TED talks, and one-night-stands and threesomes in her no-holds-barred stories. Here, Rosemary also reflects on the numbing effect of cancel culture and discusses her own experience. Marching Season is published by Arlen House