Orna Mulcahy chooses seven books to read in the summer months …
Skippy Dies author Paul Murray is back with THE BEE STING (Hamish Hamilton, €15.99), a family saga set in a small town after the Celtic Tiger has been and gone. Dickie Barnes is letting his car sales business slide, his wife, the stunning Imelda, is selling everything she has to make ends meet, daughter Cass is being led astray as the Leaving Cert looms and his son PJ is trying to pay off a debt to a disgruntled client of his Dad’s garage. Meanwhile, the new mechanic in town, Ryszard, is a brooding presence that Dickie cannot ignore. Having failed to reconnect with his boyhood friend Willie, Ryszard is the consolation prize, only he likes to record things. That’s just one of a host of headaches for Dickie as the once-golden Barnes family slip ever downwards. Murray’s brilliantly wrought characters keep the narrative going but sadness seeps from every page.
BE MINE by Richard Ford (Bloomsbury, €23.75) is the latest novel in the chronicles of Frank Bascombe, the sports writer turned real estate agent whose life story has been laid out in previous novels and a collection of novellas over the past 37 years. Frank is now in his 70s, working part-time in real estate and caring for his 49-year-old son who is suffering with Lou Gehrig’s disease – a diagnosis he likens to “crashing your car into a wall day after day, with the outcome always the same”. Together they set out on a journey, first to the Mayo Clinic for trials and treatment and then on to Mount Rushmore, a substitute for Paul’s dreamed-of trip crossing America in search of the weirdest sounding towns. As Paul visibly declines, Frank muses on his life and loves with close-up observations on America now, a place where you can make it big or be shot in a shopping mall. As their journey draws to a close, Frank wonders what he will do next, though the ending suggests God may have been amused at his plans.
A mother who abandons her children, one severely disabled, must be a monster, right? Claire McGowan’s THIS COULD BE US (Corsair, €15.99) sets her central character Kate up for failure, giving her beauty, a budding career in television and a perfect home. But Kate is edgy and resentful at having to do it all, while husband Andrew is miserable in his job. When their second baby Kirsty is born profoundly disabled, life comes to a screeching halt. When a stranger offers her an out, Kate bolts, leaving her family in the capable hands of her friend Olivia. Years pass, and new Kate is rich and successful, married to Conor, who’s in the movie business. His next project? The story of an Englishman who has discovered how to communicate with his disabled daughter Kirsty. Horrified and terrified, Kate must finally confront her family and make amends. McGowen, an acclaimed writer of crime fiction and originally from Co Down, drew on her own family experience of caring for a disabled sibling to create a complex and ultimately forgiving story.
It’s been a long wait for a new Lorrie Moore novel – her last was the 2009 bestseller A Gate At The Stairs – but it’s coming at the end of June. I AM HOMELESS IF THIS IS NOT MY HOME (Faber & Faber, €15.95), is described as a ghost story set in the 19th and 21st centuries, and dwells variously on the living, the barely alive and the very much dead. From an ancient boarding house, wryly observant Elizabeth writes to her sister about the lodger who wishes to relieve her of her spinsterhood, while 21st-century Finn talks to his dying brother about his hopeless love for suicidal Lily. And even if it’s sometimes hard to distinguish who is actually alive in this dreamlike narrative, Moore’s superb writing and perfect dialogue, whatever the century, kept this reader glued to the page.
Daniela Krien’s THE FIRE (MacLehose Press, €19.50), translated by Jamie Bulloch, is a short, impactful novel focused on a tired marriage ready to implode from the disappointment of a cancelled holiday. Psychoanalyst Rahul and her academic husband Peter had booked an idyllic mountain cabin for the summer but just days from departure the owner calls to say it has burned down. Then comes a sudden request: Ruth, an elderly friend, needs them to look after her country house by a lake, while she takes her husband Victor to hospital after a stroke. At first resentful, Peter quickly adapts to the farmhouse chores, feeding a menagerie that includes an elderly horse and a stork. Rahul meanwhile finds refuge in Victor’s studio where she discovers drawings of herself as a child. Could Victor in fact be her father? There’s much to worry her as the summer days slip by – Peter’s growing distance since an unpleasant episode with a student, her longing for sex, and the fractious relationship she has with their daughter who descends with children and personal problems in tow. As the summer days glide by, it seems everyone is swimming in a different direction.
MY FRIEND ANNE FRANK (Rider Books, €28.50) is the heartfelt, crystal-clear memoir of the Holocaust survivor Hannah Pick-Gosler who died in late 2022 at the age of 93. A childhood friend of Frank’s, she and her family ended up in Bergen-Belsen, where she reunited with her friend through a fence in the concentration camp. It’s an extraordinary postscript to the history of Anne Frank whose story has been absorbed by generations. The immense cruelty of the regime is recounted in a spare, devastating style by Pick-Goslar who survived 14 months in the camp, eventually moving to Israel after the war.
Crackling with frenemy energy, YELLOWFACE by Rebecca F Kuang (Harper Collins, €13.99) pits resentful struggling writer June Hayward against her old college friend, Athena Liu, who is beautiful, talented and showered with book deals and rave reviews. They still hang out together, with June having to endure an evening in Athena’s elegant apartment where she spies a freshly typewritten (no copies!) manuscript, ready to be submitted. When Athena ends up dead that same night, the manuscript is reborn – as June’s own masterpiece. Meanwhile she’s adopted a new Asian-sounding name to resonate with the subject of the book but social media isn’t buying it. With online trolls questioning her authenticity, June knows the only way to fight back is with a new book but she’s fresh out of ideas, until she remembers Athena’s notebooks full of storylines. Sharp writing with dollops of schadenfreude. @OrnaMulcahy
