This is a debut novel that has made it onto the Booker 2026 long list. White is a young Irish writer of Algerian lineage. The book is set in Dublin’s crime gangs along with their own argot. It is a violent crime infested story with a romance at the centre of it. The action and language are brutal but creates an authenticity that is one of the novel’s strengths. But if you are not comfortable with very strong language then this book is not for you.
A gang member returns to Dublin but finds it hard to fit back in. He killed a rival years earlier and so fled to England but now finds that the victim has three brothers, all seeking revenge … maybe. More worrying for Tony Ward are the questions, whose side is he on, what does he have to do to fit back in, and who can he trust. Desire gets in the way of the answers.
Unfortunately, the gangland storyline is hazy, and at times confusing, and the romance is brief, the only sex scene is honest, not overtly described, as some reviewers assert, but the relationship feels underdone and so a little unlikely. Yes, the romance is at the centre of the story but not strong enough to be its heart.
Nevertheless it’s an impressive debut. The ending, although satisfying to a degree, is open-ended leading to an expectation of a sequel. Whatever Djamal White’s second novel will be, you can bet it will be highly anticipated.
I have been a fan of Anne Enright since she won the Booker Prize in 2007 with The Gathering. However, it was her 2015 novel, The Green Road that she described as “… very much more like a proper book …” that for me, is her best.
This collection of essays came out last year and it’s full of wide interest as its sub-title proclaims. There are essays on writers (Helen Garner, Angela Carter, Alice Munro, Toni Morrison), books, (The Pornogapher – 1979 by John McGahern, Ulysses – 1922 by James Joyce) and places (Canada, Dublin) but it is her essay On Consent that I found the most interesting and stimulating …
“The burden of ‘yes’ makes the woman responsible for what happens to her, and sex should involve a release from responsibility.“
This essay, On Consent, along with Time for Change: Ireland’s referendum on abortion reform, The Monsters of #Me Too and Unruly Bodies: Women and their doctors, are essential for thought provoking reading by readers from all angles of the debate about the agency of women.
Her style is conversational not academic, although her vocabulary is challenging: sacerdotal, aperçu, and climacteric – which if you apply the negative, non climacteric, I discovered can refer to pineapples … and also some men: they don’t get sweeter after you pick them. These are just a few of the words that sent me scurrying to a dictionary. Don’t skim over them; we should always look up new words until our dying day.
I’m such a fiction nerd, I don’t read non-fiction very often. But I’m very glad I read this one. And will dip into it again and again. Highly recommended.
Irish writer Colm Tóibín Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024
Colm Tóibín remains a favourite of mine. This, his latest short story collection, is characteristic of his writing: sparse simple sentences using plain unadorned English without sentiment or judgement. Yet it always astounds me that such writing can still stir the emotions.
I’ve come to believe that his work, and writing like it, leaves room for the reader to insert their own experiences and understandings of human behaviour into the narrative, forcing it to be relatable and therefore moving. This is what readers do.
These stories are of everyday people confronted with everyday dilemmas and how they deal with them. Dilemmas such as delivering bad news; facing your own bad decisions; restoring a damaged life; trying to get a good night’s sleep. I’m reminded of the other master of the short story, W Somerset Maugham, but not because they are similar. Maugham’s stories are neat: a beginning, a middle and an end. This is now a dated format, which some readers find disappointing. Tóibín’s stories, and those of some of his contemporaries, are not like that. They are anecdotes. They could be scenes from a novel, there isn’t necessarily a climax, an end. There are sometimes resolutions but sometimes just an acceptance of how things are. This does not make them less engaging, less true, or less affecting. It just makes them different.
This is the type of book that will sit on my bedside table with my phone, hearing aids and loose change. Just sitting there for me to delve into to remind me that the stuff of fiction is the stuff of life. A good resolution for a good night’s sleep.
Christopher Isherwood, British born American writer, (1904 – 1986)
If and when I’m asked about literary fiction, this is the book I will name to explain it. Don’t be put off by that, nor its first short sentence. Its meaning will be clear by the end of the first short paragraph. What an opening! It’s so apt … for every reader, for everybody … because we all know about it: getting up in the morning.
Christopher Isherwood is described as “a seminal 20th century Anglo-American writer, a chronicler of Weimar Germany, a pioneer of autofiction, and a monumental icon of the Gay Liberation movement” brought to prominence again by the fashion icon, Tom Ford, who produced, directed and cowrote the screenplay – along with David Scearce – of his 2009 feature film adaptation, and his debut, of this Isherwood classic.
A little piece of trivia: Isherwood’s partner, the portraitist, Don Bachardy is still alive (aged 92) and worked as creative consultant on the film and has a tiny cameo non-speaking role in it. He lives and works in the same Santa Monica home he shared with Isherwood for decades.
It’s 60’s beachside California when the word ‘old’ is a new dirty word, but the word ‘queer’ has been around, but whispered, for years. George, late fifties, with a kind face, is suddenly alone. His much younger partner, Jim, is gone. He is a single man again. Two men living together in a romantic relationship is rare, but made to look otherwise: for the sake of the well-meaning neighbours and the cashier at the supermarket. They know of course but it’s all hidden behind propriety and the wish for no unpleasantness.
The action takes place over a day and well into the evening. George tries to make this day as normal as possible, appearing remorseful for refusing a last minute dinner invitation from a neighbour who, pointedly, refuses his suggestion that they dine together the following evening; teaching his students the finer points of the work of Aldous Huxley, emphasising societal norms and how they affect the outsider; refusing to give into the sexual tension between himself and his favourite student Kenny; keeping at bay the amorous advances of his best friend, Charlotte. She seems more insistent now that he is single again.
Published in 1964, A Single Man is often considered Isherwood’s masterpiece and groundbreaking for painting a queer life as authentic, normal and representative of something simple, and as difficult as being human.
It’s a small book but with a big heart, and for those interested in writing as a craft, a must read.
I haven’t read Hemingway since I was a boy. Note his simple language, short sentences:
No one was up before noon. We ate at tables set out under the arcade. The town was full of people. We had to wait for a table. After lunch we went over to the Iruña. It had filled up, and as the time for the bull-fight came it got fuller, and the tables were crowded closer.
Hemingway’s stark prose style is often referenced in writing guides and prose guru’s online posts. Despite The Sun Also Rises (1926) having a first person narrator, Jake Barnes, an American expat, journalist and WWI injured veteran, his recording of a trip to the running of the bulls of Pamplona with his Yankee mates and an English Lady, is starkly objective. His particular war-injury is significant to the theme – no spoilers here. This group, often likened to the ‘lost generation’, seem to be searching for meaning in the bars and the bottles of southern France and northern Spain where they observe the locals getting on with their ‘ordinary’ lives but seem blind to the meaning staring them in the face. The bull fighting festival is the climax of the piece and described in blistering but, of course, in his stark prose. If squeamish about such ‘sport’ you could skip it. These lost souls either with money or without who have ignored the ‘roaring twenties’ milieu of the cities, seem helpless to know where to turn or what to do. Hemingway’s theme: the damage of war. Although it received mixed reviews at its first publication it has become known in some circles as his greatest work. There aren’t too many contemporary novelists who write like this any more as this style requires the reader to supply a lot of detail, but it is nonetheless surprisingly effective. (Come to think of it, it is similar to that of David Szalay and his Booker Prize winning novel Flesh – 2025). And all the more effective by describing a time and place that would be unknown to most readers. Fiction can do that: take you to the unknown. If you haven’t read Hemingway, do; there’s a lot of his work to enjoy including a lengthy list of short story collections.
This novel, The Wonder (2016) is set in rural Ireland in the 1850s. There is no descriptions of daffodils under the trees, clouds in the sky or ravens in the belfry to begin this story. Donoghue jumps right in. The plot begins in the first sentence. Nurse Lib Wright is on a train to a new and very unusual job to the town of Athlone slap bang in the centre of Ireland, something the locals are very proud of.
I was not aware of the nature of the job when I started reading. Therefore, I’m not going to tell you, so you too will discover the strange job it is just like I and Nurse Lib did. I will say though that there is a lot of waiting and looking.
Mrs Lib Wright, a widow, is a very proud nurse since she was chosen and trained by the then and now iconic carer, Florence Nightingale. The parents, the maid, the doctor, the priest, a nun and a reporter complete the list of characters who all, as far as Nurse Lib is concerned, get in her way. The parents and maid because of their ignorance; the doctor and priest because they are not telling Nurse Lib everything she needs to know and Lib Wright needs to know a lot; the nun because she hardly says anything at all and the reporter because he can sniff a story. A story that Nurse Lib cannot tell.
Emma Donoghue, an Irish-Canadian writer, has written sixteen novels, the most famous of them is Room (2010) which was subsequently and successfully filmed in 2015. Donoghue received many awards for writing the screenplay and was nominated for an Oscar.
The most remarkable aspect of Donoghue’s writing here is that although, as I have said, the story revolves around a lot of waiting and looking, it’s a very engaging read. The theme is belief, whether you have it or not and Nurse Lib, although baptised as a protestant, has a very flimsy belief in Christianity. The various levels of belief of the other characters go quite a long way to supplying the story with tension and propulsion.
In 2022 The Wonder was filmed starring Florence Pugh and directed by Sebastián Lelio. Emma Donoghue contributed to the screenplay along with the director and Alice Birch. You can find it on Netflix.
One of the great attributes of fiction is that it can take you to worlds and people you would never meet in a million years. And they can be with you in your reading chair. I hope you will love this story-rich book as I did.
If you are looking for a definition of literary fiction, this 2005 Booker Prize winning novel is it. I know that may put some people off; it seemed to have put John Banville off too; from 2006 Banville began writing crime novels, featuring the pathologist Quirke (no first name ever mentiuoned), under the name of Benjamin Black right up until 2021 when the Quirke novel, April in Spain, was released under his own name. Since then his Quirke novels, beginning with Christine Falls (2006) have been released under his name as well.
An elderly man, Max Morden, returns to a seaside house where his family used to holiday when Max was a child. We meet the Grace family, parents and the children Myles and Chloe, from that time and the inhabitants of the same place, now a rundown boarding house, all those years later. These two time frames, and the people in them, are woven tapestry-like to create a picture of Max’s current demeanour.
This is a slow burn of a book. It creeps up on you, but you need to stay with it. I got to a stage where I could not pinpoint what was wrong but I knew that there was something definitely not right, either about what happened in the past or what was going to happen in the present. It’s about capricious memory and self-awareness and, more importantly, about that slippery slope between behaviour and intention.
Someone once wrote, memory is like an oven. You put something in, close the door, wait a while, open it, and there it is, something different.
I’m now searching for the Quirke novels. When a writer of this skill-set takes on the ubiquitous crime genre there has got to be reading richness to discover.
“From the reeds a second rain dripped harder than the first and the brim of the doctor’s hat released it as a third.” So, the poor doctor had three curtains of rain to deal with: from the skies, from the roof and from his hat before he made it to the back door. This descriptive layered richness of detail is the William’s trademark and peppers a simple scene with verbal interest and understanding of place and character. This latest novel Time of the Child (2024) from the Irish writer is again set in his mythical town of Faha on the western edge of Ireland making the third in what has become known as the Faha Trilogy. The first two being The History of Rain (2014) and This is Happiness (2019). The most notable feature of Faha is rain. Even when it stops, rarely, it is still on everyone’s mind; it will surely start again any minute.
There is not a lot of dialogue in William’s novels. The characters don’t talk much, hence many plot points rely on misunderstandings both comical and tragic. People understand each other by the nod, the look, the shrug, but ironically despite the lack of talking gossip spreads like a virus.
It’s coming up to Christmas 1962 and doctor Jack Troy and his eldest and unmarried daughter Ronnie are presented with a child, a foundling. Ronnie immediately loves it and names her Noelle. Keeping the child cannot happen without a man, husband and father to go with it and keeping it is exactly what Ronnie is determined to do. Jack Troy knows of a possible contender for the role of husband/father but he is in America, but conscious of his own failings and mis-steps as a father hatches a plan to bring happiness to his daughter.
It is not necessary to have read the first two to enjoy the third. Each novel is self-contained. The characters and culture of Faha are in themselves a story and you are presented with a rich tapestry of both before the child is found in a graveyard. The enjoyment of reading Williams is not just because of the plot – his focus he admits – it’s his writing style and his uplifting of daily detail to importance in the local’s lives but in rich and lyrical language. I loved this book. Highly recommended.
A Straits Chinese retired judge, Yun Ling Teoh, returns to spend her last days in a house in the Cameron Highlands in Central Malaya during the Communist guerrilla war with the British in the early 1950s. It was here, as a young woman, she was apprenticed to Aritomo, a famous Japanese gardener, who once was the gardener of the Emperor of Japan. This back story, their working and emotional relationship with the backdrop of WWII and the Malaya Communists against the Japanese, is THE story.
This is the second novel by Tan Twan Eng after his successful debut, The Gift of Rain (2008) which was long-listed for the Booker. His third novel, The House of Doors (2023), was also long-listed for the Booker. This one suffers from the cliched ‘second novel syndrome’. In this case, not as original and complex as the first, and not as imaginative and assured as the third. This is a personal opinion despite it being short-listed for the Booker. I enjoyed reading it but without that thrill of attachment. Like all three Tan novels, they transport you to a time, place, threats, joys and sensibilities that are completely alien, but therefore fascinating, to a contemporary reader. Of course, the raw human emotions we all know about. This one also has that Eastern flavour of wisdom and sage-like belief in elements of the world that we can’t quite grasp but which may guide or steer us in directions we haven’t planned.
Her sister, enamoured by Japanese gardens, disappeared during the war and Yun Ling wants to built a Japanese garden in her honour. Aritomo refuses to design one but offers to teach her how to design it herself. Yun Ling’s internment by the Japanese, her apprenticeship to Aritomo and her relationship with him form the spine of the narrative. The events, conversations and relationships appear ‘soft’ and incidental. I knew this work had been made into a movie in 2017 and although my interest wavered I reasoned that if there was cinematic interest in this work there must be a pay off. I continued reading and I am so glad I did. This is a ‘slow burn’ of a book … war, imprisonment, romance, intrigue, a tattoo! – there is so much I haven’t mentioned – but all will be revealed in a very satisfying climax. Highly recommended. I wait patiently for book number 4.
Here is a short video of Tan Twan Eng talking about this book.
Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Humanities, Harvard University
It has been suggested, more than once, that the greatest thought that mankind has ever made is that matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is just rearranged … endlessly. In other words, there is a finite number of atoms but an infinite number of their combinations. One of those combinations is you. This is one of the ideas of the Greek philosopher, Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE) and he got the idea from someone a little bit older, his teacher, Democritus (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE). It’s been around a very long time.
I’m a fiction nerd, but every now and again a non-fiction work, catches my eye. The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (2012) is the story of Poggio Bracciolini (POH joh BRA cho LEE nee), a papal secretary, scribe and book-hunter, who in 1417 discovered a manuscript called De Rerum Natura (Of the Nature of Things) written by Lucretius around 55 BCE. It had been lost for over 1500 years. It was, is, an elegant and beautifully written poem describing the natural world in strong Epicurean ideas.
The Universe has no creator or designer; everything comes into being as a result of a swerve, which is also the source of our free will
Nature ceaselessly experiments ( this is the idea at the heart of Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection)
Humans are not unique
The soul dies and there is no afterlife; death is the cessation of all feelings, including fear
All organised religions are superstitious delusions, which are invariably cruel
The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain and the greatest obstacle to pleasure is delusion
Everything is made of minute, invisible and eternal particles, atoms, floating in a void (scientifically proved by Jean Perrin, via John Dalton, Robert Brown and Albert Einstein, in 1909)
Like any passionate book-hunter, Poggio was ecstatic. He had it copied – he is also credited with designing the font we know now as Roman – and circulated. Of course, only to people who could read sophisticated Latin and that meant highly educated people who invariably were clergymen. In a world where all aspects of life: commerce, travel, governance, art, architecture, music and science were dominated by the Catholic Church, the discovery of this poem was like a bomb going off … slowly.
It influenced writers and thinkers for centuries: Leonardo di Vinci, Thomas More, Shakespeare, Milton, Spencer, Montaigne, Voltaire, Isaac Newton, Ben Johnson, Copernicus, Galileo, Thomas Jefferson, (he owned 5 Latin editions of the poem) to name a few. But the incredible impact of Lucretius’s poem is not only measured by the influence it had on writers and thinkers but, more importantly, by the multiple efforts the Catholic Church created to oppose it.
Greenblatt has used novelistic techniques to tell the story not only of Poggio and his discovery but also of the characters he interacted with and the times in which he lived and worked. This is not a dry academic tome. It is a lively account of how one lived and worked in the early years of the Renaissance. For example the Council of Constance was arranged to end the Western Schism (1378 – 1417): three men had claimed simultaneously to be Pope. It is estimated that over 100,000 people descended on the small German town, Dukes, royalty, administrators, ambassadors, cardinals, archbishops each with his own retinue of servants, cooks, maids, scribes as well as opportunists, singers, actors, barbers, acrobats and over 700 whores. It is an engaging and wondrous read. Lucretius wrote that atoms did not move in a straight line but they randomly changed course. He called it a swerve. According to Greenblatt that is exactly what Lucretius’s text did: its trajectory was a straight line to oblivion, but it swerved and was found. Thousands of fragments and editions exist today all over the world.
Michael K Freundt 