Book Review: Threshold – Rob Doyle
The protagonist-narrator of Rob Doyle’s Threshold is an altogether recognisable recusant – at least to anybody who has spent time in Trinity College Dublin’s Arts block.
Book Review: A Quiet Tide – Marianne Lee
Though A Quiet Tide depicts an antiquated epoch now largely alien to us, Lee’s deft portrayal of the human struggle at its centre lends it an uncanny relevance.
Book Review: Modern Times – Cathy Sweeney
"Direct, unashamed, and visceral, this debut collection of short stories by Dublin author Cathy Sweeney is at once a celebration and a critique of the way we live, relate, love…
Book Review: Strange Hotel – Eimear McBride
While the narrator remains anonymous in the traditional sense, she leaves a mark on the reader that will last for a long time after they close the book.
Book Review: Big Girl, Small Town – Michelle Gallen
Big Girl, Small Town is yet another debut by an Irish female novelist with the following distinction: its fearlessness.
Book Review: Actress – Anne Enright
“Enright has written a deeply compelling story of a mother-daughter relationship, the malign effects of stardom, and how the life of a towering figure can come to a small, miserable…
Book Review: Old Food – Ed Atkins
Old Food is offal, the verbose spawn of artist Ed Atkin’s exhibition of the same name, ‘written in blurts throughout’.
Book Review: An Apartment on Uranus – Paul B. Preciado
"Reading the pieces cover-to-cover means seeing the past few years of the world skip past at an unnerving pace.... My copy is full of exclamation marks in the margins." -…
Book Review: No Authority: Writings from the Laureateship – Anne Enright
The collection, a mixture of illuminating and often deeply personal lectures-cum-essays and short stories, probes the theme of silence in Irish women’s lives.
Book Review: Serious Noticing -James Wood
The reviews in Serious Noticing are unfailingly measured and eminently fair.
Book Review: Anseo – Úna-Minh Kavanagh
Úna-Minh Kavanagh is best known for both promoting diversity and her enthusiasm for the Irish language. Her debut book tells her story.
Book Review: Pet – Akwaeke Emezi
Pet, ‘wings loud with righteousness’, is a striking creation, but it is Emezi’s depiction of love which will stay with you.
Book Review: Me – Elton John
“The account of a young, often self-deprecating young man who went from playing rough pubs and clubs in Middlesex to rubbing shoulders with the biggest stars of the last 40…
Book Review: The Topeka School – Ben Lerner
The Topeka School is very much a Zeitgeist novel: it’s trying to tell us something about the contemporary world.
Book Review: Tim Robinson – Experiments on Reality
For the most part the chapters are short, some only two or three pages long, and they recount episodes of Robinson’s life in his inimitable style, which is at once…
Book Review: Flèche – Mary Jean Chan
A question opens Mary Jean Chan’s debut poetry collection, Flèche. ‘Who will read this slim volume of mine, and with what preconceptions?’
Book Review: Still Worlds Turning – Edited by Emma Warnock
"The stories in Still Worlds Turning are fundamentally about inaction, about a reluctance to listen or to address conflict."
Book Review: Attention Seeking – Adam Phillips
In Seeking Attention, his most recent essay collection, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips challenges the assumption that what we are attracted to, and thus what we pay attention to, in some respects…