In this uniquely Irish combination of satire and morality tale, author Claire Kilroy introduces the young, alcoholic thirteenth Earl of Howth, who is testifying in a 2016 legal case about the “Celtic Tiger” and the Irish real estate “bubble” from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, a case in which he was an active, but naïve, participant. Summoned to court years later, Tristram St. Lawrence gives evidence for ten days between March 10, 2016, and March 24, 2016, his whereabouts a mystery from the time of the real estate crash to the much later trial. Though he was personally involved in several enormous real estate schemes during the height of the action, he was, from the outset, a front man – a figurehead whom M. Deauville, a mysterious foreign investor, chose for his noble background and the presumed legitimacy his title would bestow on the projects being undertaken by Castle Holdings, domiciled in the thousand-year-old castle in Howth owned by Tristram’s father. Author Claire Kilroy presents Tristram’s story as part satire and part morality tale, a style which makes it possible for the reader to recognize how vulnerable, and almost cartoon-like, Tristram is. Though no reader will take Tristram seriously, most readers will be empathetic as they recognize how he is manipulated on his step-by-step journey to disaster. Entertaining and enlightening.
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Twenty-five years ago Jimmy Rabbitte and his mates in the working class Barrytown section of Dublin, decided that the best way to change their economic situation for the better was to form a rock band. In the first novel of the Barrytown Trilogy (1988), named The Commitments for the rock group they formed, Jimmy and his hopeful friends tried for big-time success, and in the trilogy’s subsequent novels (The Snapper and The Van), they continued their earnest and energetic, though unsophisticated, plans to improve their lives. Now, after twenty-five years and four children, Jimmy has achieved modest success in the music business, though not as a performer, and in his new novel, The Guts, he revisits many aspects of his life, his family, and his friendships as he evaluates where he is in the Grand Scheme of his own grand schemes over the years. The Guts is hilariously funny and filled with humor that ranges from the dark to the most boisterous and profane, but it also shows an older, more thoughtful Jimmy whose life has taken a sudden turn in a new direction: Jimmy has just learned that he has cancer. Despite the fact that the subject of cancer dominates the novel, Doyle keeps the action flying, and at no time does the mood ever flag or descend to the maudlin.
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In his fourth dark crime novel to be published by Europa Editions, Irish author Gene Kerrigan continues his string of successful mysteries depicting the hopelessness among those in contemporary Dublin whose chances to escape their dreary lives vanished when the Irish economic “bubble” burst. Now, as Kerrigan depicts it, a successful life for those living on the fringes consists of making compromises with crooks of all types – developers, real estate moguls, extortionists, drug dealers, hired thugs, organized crime, and even the police. Life is uncertain, the ability of good people to avoid being swept up in crime, through economic and social pressure, is limited, and their goals in life are mainly to survive from day to day. Danny Callahan is having a particularly hard time. Convicted ten years ago of killing mob leader Big Brendan Tucker in a premeditated murder (later reduced to manslaughter as the jury’s way of saying the victim “was a scumbag anyway”), Danny has been out of prison for only seven months, staying clean and working as a driver for his friend Novak, who runs a pub, a transport firm, and a specialty bread store. Divorced by the love of his life while he was in prison, Danny is alone, making do until he can figure out a future direction for his life. Then his life changes.
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Halloween and spooky novels in general come roaring to life in this Dickensian melodrama, set outside of Norfolk, England, in 1867. Eliza Caine, who has suffered a series of personal disasters which have left her an orphan, has made a sudden decision to leave the family “home” in London, in which she has spent her life, to accept the position of governess for a family she does not know in a city she has never seen. She is anxious for change, however. Just one week past, her father had ignored her pleas that he remain at home to nurse his cold and had, instead, attended a reading by Charles Dickens on a miserable, rainy night. He succumbed to fever shortly afterward. Almost immediately after her father’s death, Eliza is informed that the family home is not, in fact, owned by the family, and that she will have to vacate the house. Seeing an advertisement in the newspaper for a governess, signed by “H. Bennet,” she has chosen to leave her current teaching job at a girls’ school and move elsewhere. From the beginning of the novel, Irish author John Boyne draws parallels between Dickens’ work and his own, with some direct references to characters from Dickens’s novels. All the clichés of Victorian plot appear here, and the dramatic and inexplicable actions by ghosts create an atmosphere of doom which will keep a smile on the face of readers familiar with the novels of the period.
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IMPAC Dublin Award winner Kevin Barry shows his complete mastery of the short story form here, presenting startling, eye-opening stories of love and loss, hope and despair, and acceptance and resistance. Many of the characters reflect an almost religious belief that misery, for whatever reason, need be only temporary if one has the strength and will to search within. As they confront their challenges, Barry draws in the reader, inspiring hope that these individuals will prevail, either alone or with the help of friends. The characters spring from the page, face a demon or two, and then retire to small lives lived between the cracks of a larger society which does not notice them. The “unremarkable” people whose stories are told here often overcome challenges of universal significance, giving a resonance and a sense of thematic unity which is often lacking in other collections. This is not to say that these are “easy” or “comfortable” stories for the reader. Most of the characters are at least a little bit “off-kilter,” their problems at least a little bit beyond those of most readers, and their lives at least a little bit more bizarre than most of us who are reading about them. Unfortunately, some of these characters are too weak to see hope; some do not have the energy or desire to change; and some are so dependent on others for their emotional stability that they are not equipped to face the present, much less the future. Barry shows them all as they face turning points in their lives, for better or worse.
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