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Review: Dangerous Space
With the awesome news that the wonderful Kelley Eskridge (author of the novel Solitaire) has a novella nominated for the Nebula Award, I dug through the hard drive to find a short review I wrote about...
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“She would never have an ordinary day again”
Colm Tóibín‘s new novel, Brooklyn, is a deceptively simple story of one young woman packed off to Brooklyn in the 1950s. Eilis Lacey is a younger daughter with no firm prospects for either work or...
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Review: Lalia Lalami’s Secret Son
I loved Lalia Lalami’s first book, Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits. It’s either a novel or a collection of linked short stories — I’ve seen it called both — about four young Moroccans’ individual...
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My Year of Armchair Travel
[Note, this article originally appeared in the spring issue of the Malaprop's bookstore quarterly newsletter. It is being posted here because that publication is not online.] Like many booksellers, I...
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Why I Love the Booker Prize
The Booker Prize is my favorite literary award. My annual goal is always to read the whole of the Booker longlist before the winner is announced. I never achieve that goal, but then the purpose of...
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Amit Chaudhuri Has a New Novel!
I had a double dose of geeky literary excitement yesterday. Not only did I find out that one of my favorite Indian novelists, Amit Chaudhuri, has a new novel, The Immortals, coming out any moment (in...
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If Everything Seems Lost… Trust the Heart.
Sarah Hall’s Booker-nominee How to Paint a Dead Man is brilliant, there’s really no other word for it. It’s also idiosyncratic like only great art can be, and is likely to be something of a love it or...
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PEN World Voices Festival
The PEN World Voices Festival is one of those New York literary events that look so enticing to those of us who live in places that don’t see many A-list authors come through town. Every year I check...
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Review: Notes from a Coma
Notes from a Coma by Mike McCormack (US cover: Soho Press, 2013) Notes from a Coma by Mike McCormack is a fantastic and unusual novel that strives to break many of the ‘rules’ of novel writing and gets...
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Annotations: Writers Comment on Their Work
The guardian have a great collection of authors’ annotations on hard copies of some of their books, revealing roads not taken, regrets, and the motivations behind some creative choices. Here are the...
View ArticleBook Review: TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
I savored every word of Colum McCann’s elegant new novel, TransAtlantic. McCann has always been a writer who aims for a perfect image or a poetic turn of phrase, TransAtlantic is told in a gentle,...
View ArticleThe Pleasures of Translation: Dinnseanchas
I’ve been attempting some translation from Irish to English and vice-versa over the past year. The main reason is when writing a novel that takes place partly within a community of native Irish...
View ArticleBook Review: City of Bohane by Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is the must-read Irish writer of the moment, and for good reason: his short stories feature the mad, the bad, and the dangerous to know, and his language is deliciously quotable and...
View ArticleBook Review: The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
Donal Ryan’s debut novel, The Spinning Heart, is a triumph, capturing a snapshot of a contemporary Ireland reeling from the economic downturn in a kaleidoscope of different voices. Set in a small...
View ArticleBook Review: You by Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Editorial note: I take forever to get around to writing book reviews. This is because of many factors: I like to let a book sit and marinate (metaphorically) for a while; I have paid work to be getting...
View ArticleBook Review: The China Factory by Mary Costello
Mary Costello’s debut book of short stories, The China Factory, is a contemplative collection of inward-looking characters that seem almost too sensitive for this world. When the stories work (which is...
View ArticleBook Review: Solace by Belinda McKeon
Belinda McKeon’s debut novel Solace won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was the Irish Book of the Year for 2011. I first read it in Ireland during a visit home — where it was displayed...
View ArticleBook Review: The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
The Testament of Mary promises much, but delivers less than hoped. While this revisionist portrayal of Mary as an angry, grieving mother, full of believable despair and rage at the cruel fate of her...
View ArticleBook Review: Of Dublin and Other Fictions by Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Nuala Ní Chonchúir excels at the difficult form of short fiction known as flash fiction. Her new book is a collection of these ultra-short pieces, Of Dublin and Other Fictions. Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s new...
View ArticleBook Review: The Gamal by Ciarán Collins
Ciarán Collins’ debut novel, The Gamal, won the 2013 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. It’s one of the most-impressive debut novels in years. The Gamal is narrated by a young man, Charlie, who tells...
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