Broken Harbor by Tana French

June 7, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Penguin Books, 2013. Originally published 2012. 450 pgs. Purchased. First introduced in Faithful Place, Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy returns as the main detective in the fourth novel in French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. Known for his high closure rate, Scorcher is his supervisor’s go-to guy for training new murder detectives and for cases that are sure to attract attention from the news media. Hence why Scorcher ends up serving as the primary investigator into the death of Patrick Spain […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Tana French

Normal People by Sally Rooney

April 19, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Hogarth, 2019. Originally published 2018. 273 pgs. Purchased. In addition to winning the 2018 Costa Book Award for Novel, Rooney’s novel was also longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize and for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Needless to say, I was thrilled to see it offered as one of the options for April from Book of the Month, a monthly book subscription service that I’ve been part of for the last six months. So thrilled, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, Ireland, Women's Prize • Tags: Sally Rooney

Faithful Place by Tana French

April 12, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Viking, 2010. 400 pgs. Purchased.  In 1985, Frank Mackey stood on around the corner of the Faithful Place flats in Dublin waiting for his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, to appear. For weeks, he and Rosie had cobbled together a plan to run away to London together where they planned to marry against the wishes of Rosie’s parents and, hopefully, break the cycle of poverty and alcoholism that marked their – read Frank’s – lives in Ireland. Yet Rosie […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Tana French

In the Woods by Tana French

December 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – audiobook. Read by Steven Crossley. Penguin Audio, 2007. 20 hours, 24 minutes. Purchased. In 1984, twelve-year-old Adam Ryan is found clutching a tree in the woods of Knocknaree, a suburb of Dublin. This discovery would be unremarkable if Adam and his two friends hadn’t been missing for days and if one of Adam’s shoe wasn’t filled with blood. Adam is unable to remember how he ended up in the woods, and his two friends – a girl named […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Audiobook, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Steven Crossley, Tana French

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

March 15, 2017 by Christina

Fiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2016. 291 pgs. Library copy. Seven years after the Irish potato famine of 1845 and 1852, a Nightingale-trained English nurse by the name of Lib Wright is employed by an Irish town council to investigate the claim that an eleven-year-old resident by the name Anna O’Donnell has existed some four months without consuming any food. As deeply pious Catholics, Anna, her parents, and her cousin-turned-maid believe the young girl’s faith in God is sustaining her life, and the […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Book Club, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize, Ireland, Religion • Tags: Emma Donoghue

Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín

March 15, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Scribner, 2015. 400 pgs. Purchased. Set in Ireland’s County Wexford in 1969, Tóibín’s novel is focused on the efforts of the title character to reconstruct her life after the death of her husband, Maurice, from an unexplained illness. Life without savings and a smaller-than-expected pension, Nora must return to work as a typist after many years away in order to support herself, her two daughters away at school, and her two young boys still living at Much of […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Colm Tóibín

Time Out Shortlist: Dublin

March 8, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Time Out Guides, 2009. 160 pgs. Gift. I supplemented the information in this book quite heavily with other guidebooks because I started planning for my trip to Ireland before I received this book for Christmas. I also wanted to travel outside of Dublin in order to see more of Ireland, which the book is obviously not suited for. But I’m always looking for a small guidebook with good maps that I can slip into my purse and […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Ireland, Nonfiction, Travel

The Likeness by Tana French

February 25, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Penguin, 2009. Originally published 2008. 466 pgs. Purchased. Alexandra Madison’s death pulls Detective Cassie Maddox out of domestic violence and back into Dublin’s murder squad. The young women seemingly has no connection to Cassie other than the fact that she could pass as Cassie’s double and carries ID identifying herself with an alias Cassie once used on an undercover job. Determined to catch whoever killed Alexandra, known as Lexie to her friends, Cassie assumes an identity she […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Tana French

Room by Emma Donoghue

June 15, 2011 by Christina

Fiction — print. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. 320 pgs. Library. Five-year-old Jack lives in an eleven-by-eleven square room with his twenty-seven-year-old mother. The two are locked into the Room, as Jack calls it, by his mother’s kidnapper whom Jack calls Old Nick. Ma hides him in the wardrobe when Old Nick visits; she doesn’t want her their attacker looking at him. Having never ventured outside the four walls, Jack is convinced that the only things real are him, Ma, […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Emma Donoghue

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

March 25, 2011 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Simon & Schuster, 1999. Originally published 1996. 364 pgs. Purchased. Last Thursday when my classmates were decked out in green and I was sick, I felt the sudden urge to read a book about Ireland or written by an Irish author. The only book by an author of Irish decent I had with me was Frank McCourt’s memoir about his childhood in Ireland. Born in the United States but raised in Ireland, McCourt grew up in abysmal […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Ireland, Nonfiction • Tags: Frank McCourt

Forever by Pete Hamill

January 29, 2009 by Christina

Forever is a historical novel that traces the life of the narrator, Cormac O’Connor, from the 1700s outside of Belfast, Ireland to the fall of the Twin Towers in New York City. It’s beautifully written – descriptive and vivid in a way that you can feel, see, smell, touch, and taste New York City. And Hamill weaves history and fiction in such a wonderful way that I immediately devoured the first 400 pages of this 600+ plus novel. But then […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Ireland, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Pete Hamill

PS, I Love You by Cecelia Ahern

July 26, 2008 by Christina

Fiction — print. Hyperion, 2004. Originally published 2003. 470 pgs. Library copy. Holley Kennedy is keeping to herself a few months after the death of her husband Gerry Clarke. Holly and Gerry have been together since high school and Holly’s world revolved around Gerry since then. Gerry was diagnosed with a brain tumor and rounds of medical procedures have not stopped him from succumbing to the death that it brought with it. Holly closed off to everybody, wallowing in the […]

Categories: 2008 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Ireland • Tags: Cecelia Ahern