John Banville\u2019s latest novel is Venetian Vespers<\/p>\n
Sebastian Barry![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/5XZCAZ6GZJFTXBVCRIZ25DZVR4.jpg\")
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I\u2019ve been working all year so I haven\u2019t been able to catch up with so many enticing new novels. But the one I did read because I am a constant fan of many years\u2019 standing was The Bureau by Eoin McNamee<\/a>. This is a well-nigh perfect book. McNamee\u2019s sentences have always been meticulous and miraculous, and this novel is the full flower of his genius. It is a story so bitter you had better have sweet tea to hand as you are going through. The courage required to write like this is Somme-like, and the ability to carry it off rarer than a flawless diamond.<\/p>\n Sebastian Barry is a former Laureate of Irish Fiction.<\/p>\n John Boyne The Season by Helen Garner<\/a> was a highlight of 2025. The great Australian writer attended her teenage grandson\u2019s every training session and football match across a year, writing about the experience with love, humour, and passion. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie\u2019s<\/a> Dream Count reminded me how novels can offer insights into worlds outside our own. This story of four women of Nigerian descent living in America resonated with me for its heartfelt depiction of friendship, loss and isolation. The most powerful Irish novel was Rois\u00edn O\u2019Donnell\u2019s Nesting<\/a>, a scorching indictment of both toxic masculinity and Ireland\u2019s housing crisis.<\/p>\n John Boyne\u2019s The Elements won both the Prix Femina \u00c9tranger and the Prix du Roman FNAC in France in 2025<\/p>\n Declan Burke Brian McGilloway\u2019s masterful The One You Least Suspect<\/a> centres on a woman blackmailed by the Special Branch into informing against ex-paramilitaries running Derry\u2019s illegal drug trade. Elizabeth Alker\u2019s Everything We Do Is Music<\/a> is a brilliantly detailed account of the origins of pop music in 20th century classical music. Lucy Lapinksa\u2019s novel Some Body Like Me addresses the AI hysteria from the perspective of a sentient machine. Theo Dorgan\u2019s novel Camarade<\/a> explores a life dedicated to \u201cpermanent resistance\u201d as an ageing Irishman writes his memoir while living in self-exile in Paris.<\/p>\n Declan Burke is an author and critic.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Northern thriller writer Brian McGilloway: \u2018People are having to take sides again. And that\u2019s never good here\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Lucy Caldwell I loved Wendy Erskine\u2019s The Benefactors<\/a> \u2013 brimming over with the glorious, complex humanity of its city. Liadan N\u00ed Chuinn\u2019s debut collection of stories Every One Still Here<\/a> has a raw power entirely its own. There\u2019s such interesting writing coming from China at the moment \u2013 I was struck by Shuang Xuetao\u2019s Hunter, translated by Jeremy Tiang. I hope it doesn\u2019t seem like cheating to mention Ann Morgan\u2019s Relearning to Read, as I wrote the foreword, but I did so only because it deserves a place on every reader\u2019s shelf. My overall book of the year? Helen Garner\u2019s collected diaries, How to End a Story<\/a>. I read them compulsively, cover to cover like a psychological thriller \u2013 this testament to what it means for a woman to write, to make art, not just amid but from the quotidian, the domestic, the most intimate chambers of experience. An extraordinary work.<\/p>\n Lucy Caldwell\u2019s new story collection, Devotions, is out next April<\/p>\n Fintan O\u2019Toole Two amazing windfalls of essays from two of our finest novelists. Anne Enright\u2019s collection Attention gathers some of the best of her nonfiction writings, which have the same sharp vision, wonderfully wry tone and controlled passion as her novels. Whether dealing with her own life, with the strange complexity of Alice Munro, or with public issues, Enright\u2019s beautifully-wrought prose fizzes with intelligence and insight. Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s Ship in Full Sail brings together his marvellous formal lectures as Laureate for Irish Fiction with the looser, delightfully discursive blogs he published as part of the same gig, mapping encounters with works of poetry, music and visual art and with places and people. And two Irish hauntings of Italian cities: John Banville\u2019s deliciously sinister Venetian Vespers and Joseph O\u2019Connor\u2019s tremendous and terrifying The Ghosts of Rome.<\/p>\n Fintan O\u2019Toole is an author, critic and Irish Times columnist<\/p>\n Jan Carson I absolutely adored Vincenzo Latronico\u2019s novel Perfection which casts an acidic and oftentimes hilarious eye over digital nomad culture in postmillennial Berlin. Read and squirm. Luke Kennard\u2019s The Book of Jonah was my standout poetry read of the year. A playful, absurd and frequently profound reimaging of the Old Testament story, this is the sort of collection where you discover a fresh bullet of truth with every reread. However, Death of an Ordinary Man<\/a>, Sarah Perry\u2019s account of caring for her father-in-law during his final days, is undoubtedly my book of 2025. Humane, holy and utterly life affirming. It deserves to be an instant classic. <\/p>\n Jan Carson\u2019s new novel Few and Far Between is out next April.<\/p>\n Brian Cliff A dark year\u2019s been a rich one for crime writing full of anger, grief, and \u2013 absent justice \u2013 vengeance. Keith Rosson\u2019s thrilling Coffin Moon puts vampires into a gritty 1970s revenge thriller. The Good Liar, Denise Mina\u2019s sly tale of power\u2019s inner circles, gleams with angry wit. Megan Abbott\u2019s El Dorado Drive<\/a> is intoxicating contemporary noir about suburban Detroit women in a pyramid scheme. John Connolly\u2019s latest Parker novel, The Children of Eve, has that remarkable series in peak form. Sara Gran\u2019s heartbreaking collection Little Mysteries \u2013 bold, profane, funny, clever \u2013 is unlike anything else this year.<\/p>\n Brian Cliff is a critic<\/p>\n Edel Coffey I loved Claire-Louise Bennett\u2019s Big Kiss, Bye-Bye and Elaine Feeney\u2019s Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way<\/a>, two incredibly moving novels about women. Andrea Mara\u2019s It Should Have Been You is a perfect puzzle of a page-turner. I only wish I hadn\u2019t already read it so I could enjoy it over Christmas. My favourite romance this year was Anna Carey\u2019s Dublin-based Our Song \u2013 warm and swoony, yet grounded in reality. And finally, Still, Julia Kelly\u2019s memoir about the death of her mother, was my favourite non-fiction book this year. <\/p>\n Edel Coffey\u2019s latest book is In Her Place<\/p>\n [\u00a0Julia Kelly: \u2018My mum died swimming in the Gal\u00e1pagos at 71. It was a strangely beautiful end for her\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Michael Cronin Eimear McBride\u2019s The City Changes Its Face<\/a> is a gripping account of a couple dealing with past traumas and present dilemmas told in McBride\u2019s arrestingly distinctive prose. David Park\u2019s Ghost Wedding<\/a> narrates the stories of two Ulster couples, a century apart, whose lives are linked to an artificial lake on the grounds of a Big House. A richly resonant and deeply humane novel that is memorable in every respect. Olga Tokarczuk\u2019s House of Day, House of Night, published in a new, complete translation by Antonia Lloyd, Jones is vintage Tokarczuk. A deft, poetic, moving description of the life of a woman living in the haunted, rural borderlands between Poland and the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n Michael Cronin is an academic and a critic<\/p>\n Helen Cullen Our island once again offered an embarrassment of literary riches this year \u2013 my choices for 2025 are born of Irish sea, soil and stone. Elaine Feeney\u2019s Let Me Go Mad in my Own Way is a true gift to Irish literature as her work has the power to articulate, with such great empathy, the truths of our country that were drowned in cultural silence. Hugo Hamilton\u2019s<\/a> Conversation with the Sea also has a powerful sensitivity that surfaces the depths of human consciousness with clear-eyed precision. <\/p>\n Helen Cullen\u2019s most recent novel is The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually<\/p>\n Naoise Dolan Heaven Looks Like Us, edited by George Abraham and Noor Hindi, is an anthology of Palestinian poems in English and translation. Jehan Bseiso\u2019s Prayer compels: \u201cWhen the boot is on the neck. Hold us.\/When the headlines forget. Find us.\u201d I also enjoyed Darach \u00d3 Scola\u00ed\u2019s B\u00f3dl\u00e9ar, a playful Irish-language novel about 19th-century Munster and the region\u2019s poets\u2019 affinity with France. And Sadhbh Devlin\u2019s An Fia sa Choill reimagines Fianna mythology; it\u2019s intended for children but of interest to anyone after its historical achievement of making an Irish Book Awards shortlist outside the Irish-language category.<\/p>\n Naoise Dolan is a novelist from Dublin<\/p>\n [\u00a0Naoise Dolan: Moving home to Ireland was an easy decision. Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learnedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Emma Donoghue The book that\u2019s lingering in my head, as this apocalyptic year winds down, is Ukrainian-Canadian Maria Reva\u2019s Endling<\/a>, which pulls off the trick of being a witty satire, a meta-fiction about how to write about your country and planet in crisis, and a deeply moving war story, all at the same time. On the other side of the Atlantic, Gethan Dick\u2019s Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night manages to tell a plausible story about how the world might end that is also a hilarious, engrossing adventure.<\/p>\n Emma Donoghue\u2019s latest book, a finalist for Canada\u2019s top fiction prize, the Giller, is The Paris Express<\/p>\n Ruby Eastwood To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong<\/a> follows a university student through the confusion, ecstasy and awkward comedy of first love. The writing is sharp and sensory, full of small, charged vignettes. Armstrong\u2019s voice is funny and totally charming, naive but never jejune; she catches emotion in its shifting forms. Better known for his visual art, Ed Atkins brings the same layered, unsettling sensibility to Flower. It\u2019s very stream of consciousness, and reads like a diary: self-excoriating, wickedly funny and sometimes searingly beautiful. Hugo Hamilton\u2019s Conversation with the Sea unfolds on the west coast of Ireland, where a man returns after a lifetime in Berlin to sift through his past. The prose is clear and atmospheric. Not much happens, but the psychological drama is totally engrossing. Hamilton writes with great restraint and trust in the reader\u2019s intelligence.<\/p>\n Ruby Eastwood is an arts journalist.<\/p>\n Wendy Erskine Emma Warren\u2019s Up the Youth Club: Illuminating a Hidden History is a meticulous and fascinating consideration of youth spaces in all their forms. In times of increasing atomisation, its celebration of connection and community felt important. Wolf Moon: A Woman\u2019s Journey Into the Night<\/a> is exactly as its title suggests, an exploration of the nocturnal, be it mysterious, quotidian or thrilling. Arifa Akbar writes with such elegance and poise. Another night book that I loved was Berghain Nights by Liam Cagney<\/a>. It\u2019s about all sorts of things: childhood in Donegal, the history of techno and Berlin clubs. I found it a really interesting book, an engaging trip with a companiable narrator.<\/p>\n Wendy Erskine\u2019s latest book is The Benefactors (Sceptre)<\/p>\n Diarmaid Ferriter David Szalay\u2019s Flesh<\/a> is oddly absorbing given that its central character, Istv\u00e1n, moving between Hungary and Britian, says very little and is not given to any kind of emotional soul searching. But his experiences and taciturnity are deployed to craft an alluring novel about masculinity, violence, sex, class, money, migration and power. Joseph O\u2019Connor\u2019s The Ghosts of Rome<\/a> brings us to the heart of Rome under Nazi control and graceful resistance; it is wonderfully atmospheric. Nature writer Robert Macfarlane\u2019s Is a River Alive? documents the desperate calamity that has afflicted rivers but also reminds us \u201cgiven a chance, they heal themselves with remarkable speed. Their life pours back.\u201d<\/p>\n Diarmaid Ferriter\u2019s The Revelation of Ireland 1995-2020 is out now in paperback<\/p>\n [\u00a0Joseph O\u2019Connor: \u2018I don\u2019t know what modern Ireland is yet. I\u2019m suspicious about the new sacred cows\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Daniel Geary<\/p>\n Quinn Slobodian\u2019s<\/a> Hayek\u2019s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right offers a riveting account of the trajectory of key neoliberal intellectuals who, after the Cold War, came to believe in fixed biological hierarchies of gender and race. This history helps explain the seemingly contradictory fusion of libertarianism and ethnonationalism in the contemporary right. Evan Osnos\u2019s wonderfully titled The Have and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultra-Rich examines the extreme concentration of wealth that marks the contemporary US. An entertaining writer with an eye for the ridiculous detail, Osnos illuminates the current misrule of American oligarchs.<\/p>\n Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott Professor in US History at Trinity College Dublin<\/p>\n Kevin Gildea The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies is a brilliant examination of the world through systems and cybernetics. Capitlalism and its Critics by John Cassidy is an epic overview of capitalism, from the East India Company to now. Through economists and thinkers it explores and exposes the neoliberalism that rules today. Compelling ideas enlivened with colourful biography. Everything Will Swallow You<\/a> by Tom Cox is a richly textured, magical book about time, love and the relationships that warm us in this flicker in eternity we call life. Warm, funny, inventive.<\/p>\n Kevin Gildea is a comedian and a writer.<\/p>\n Sarah Gilmartin Flesh by David Szalay was a great choice for this year\u2019s Booker Prize: tense, spare and wonderfully unsettling. I also loved Good and Evil, six new stories from the Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin. In a very strong year for Irish debuts, Gr\u00e1inne O\u2019Hare\u2019s Thirst Trap<\/a>, Liadan N\u00ed Chuinn\u2019s Every One Still Here and Aisling Rawle\u2019s The Compound<\/a> were standouts; from our established authors, The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O\u2019Connor and Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way by Elaine Feeney were both deeply immersive reads. Finally, for an absolute banker of a gift for book lovers this Christmas, Attention<\/a>, a collection of Anne Enright\u2019s non-fiction, is predictably brilliant. <\/p>\n Sarah Gilmartin\u2019s new novel Little Vanities will be published next May<\/p>\n Sin\u00e9ad Gleeson I read a lot of excellent essays and non-fiction: this year: Pathemata, Maggie Nelson\u2019s exploration of a mysterious facial pain, Yiyun Li\u2019s devastating Things In Nature Merely Grow about grief and writing after the suicide of her two sons; Leanne Shapton\u2019s Swimming Studies<\/a> (swimming, art and competitiveness) and Ed Atkin\u2019s wonderful off-kilter ruminations in Flower. In fiction, Wendy Erskine\u2019s polyphonic The Benefactors, Elaine Feeney\u2019s Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way and David Park\u2019s Ghost Wedding all left a mark. I\u2019m a judge for the Nero Book Awards and the shortlist is well worth your time: Seascraper by Ben Woods, Oyinkan Braithwaite\u2019s Cursed Sisters, The Two Roberts<\/a> by Damian Barr and Ian McEwan\u2019s What We Can Know.<\/p>\n Sin\u00e9ad Gleeson\u2019s latest book is Hagstone.<\/p>\n Claire Hennessy Some YA standouts from Irish writers this year: Skipshock, Caroline O\u2019Donoghue<\/a>\u2019s smart, romantic adventure through time zones; Gr\u00e1inne O\u2019Brien\u2019s Solo, a verse novel account of finding your way back to music after heartbreak; and Songs for Ghosts, Clara Kumagai\u2019s thoughtful retelling of Madama Butterfly. From further afield, the dystopian settings of Neal Shusterman\u2019s All Better Now (positing a new kind of pandemic) and Suzanne Collins\u2019s Sunrise on the Reaping (depicting Haymitch Abernathy\u2019s time in the Hunger Games) invite reflection on our own world, without sacrificing a gripping story, while Nathanael Lessore\u2019s What Happens Online<\/a> tackles contemporary concerns with pleasing humour.<\/p>\n Claire Hennessy\u2019s latest book is In The Movie Of Her Life <\/p>\n R\u00f3n\u00e1n Hession My book of the year is the superb Old Kiln by Jia Pingwa (translators James Trapp, Olivia Milburn, Christopher Payne) about the disastrous Chinese Cultural Revolution. I loved the first three volumes of the time-loop septology On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle (translators Barbara Haveland, Sophie Hersi Smith, Jennifer Russell). In Farthest Seas by Lalla Romano (translator Brian Robert Moore) lingered long in my mind. My poetry choice is Your Glass Head Against The Brick Parade of Now Whats by Sam Pink. My favourite Irish novel was The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth<\/a> by Adrian Duncan.<\/p>\n R\u00f3n\u00e1n Hession\u2019s latest novel is Ghost Mountain<\/p>\n Sara Keating Laureate na n\u00d3g Patricia Forde, collaborating with illustrator Sarah Warburton, provided a picture-book highlight for 2025 with Letters to a Monster (3+) in which a young girl wields her pen as a sword against the terrifying beast living under her bed. Forde also shared her storytelling secrets in Making It Up As You Go Along (8+), a primer full of prompts, with doodles and textual design from Mary Murphy suggesting all sorts of tricks for experimenting with form. Murphy\u2019s Let\u2019s Be Earthlings<\/a> (2+), meanwhile, illustrated a master at work, while Wildful by Kengo Kurimoto (6+), an almost wordless novel about nature, embodied storytelling in its simplest iteration.<\/p>\n Sara Keating is an arts journalist. <\/p>\n Mia Levitin On the heels of her Baillie Gifford Prize-winning diaries, How to End a Story, Helen Garner\u2019s The Mushroom Tapes, co-written with Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, is a riveting true-crime conversation about the trial of Erin Patterson, convicted of murdering her in-laws with death caps baked into a beef Wellington. Continuing in the vein of The Examined Life, psyhchoanalyst Stephen Grosz\u2019s Love\u2019s Labour uses case studies from his practice to consider themes around relationships. Barabara Demick\u2019s Daughters of the Bamboo Grove, about twins separated by China\u2019s one-child policy and the rise in international adoption, is a sobering reminder of what can happen when governments meddle in reproductive rights.<\/p>\n Mia Levitin is a book critic.<\/p>\n Andrew Lynch Oscar Wilde once declared that he had worked on a poem all morning and removed a comma, then laboured throughout the afternoon and put it back again. Merlin Holland must have taken the same care over After Oscar, a panoramic study of his grandfather\u2019s posthumous rehabilitation that he began 25 years ago. It\u2019s an exceptionally rich, moving and melancholy tribute. For some lighter reading at Christmas, Bookish by the proudly introverted Guardian journalist Lucy Mangan is a warm, witty memoir that aims to prove an old Morrissey lyric: \u201cThere\u2019s more to life than books, you know \u2013 but not much more.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrew Lynch is a critic, subeditor and proofreader<\/p>\n Elizabeth Mannion Additions to Jane Casey\u2019s Maeve Kerrigan series and Val McDermid\u2019s Karen Pirie series were highlights of 2025. Casey\u2019s The Secret Room<\/a> and McDermid\u2019s Silent Bones are tightly plotted procedurals, showcasing two authors at the top of their game. Rachel Donohue\u2019s The Glass House and Graeme Macrae Burnet\u2019s Benbecula continue to linger with me for their quiet, elegant writing. The humour and poignancy with which the women in Laura Lippman\u2019s Murder Takes a Vacation and Samantha Downing\u2019s Too Old for This take advantage of the invisibility that comes with being a certain age lingers too: these are wonderfully murderous reads.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Mannion is a book critic<\/p>\n [\u00a0Author Rachel Donohue: \u2018I needed to write to tell my children something about what I thought of the world\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Sarah Moss It seems to have been a good year for memoir. I bought Helen Garner\u2019s journals, How to End a Story, thinking I\u2019d dip in and then found myself reading compulsively for three days and wanting everyone else to read them so we could talk. I always love Yiyun Li\u2019s writing but I was a little scared to read Things in Nature Merely Grow, her memoir of losing both sons to suicide. The fear was misplaced; she writes with a steady gaze and a flame-forged commitment to art. Continuing the seasonal sober theme, Miriam Toews\u2019s A Truce that is not Peace<\/a> is a beautiful, funny and sad book about maturity and grief and writing.<\/p>\n Sarah Moss\u2019s latest novel is Ripeness.<\/p>\n \u00c9il\u00eds N\u00ed Dhuibhne Gr\u00e1inne Hurley<\/a>\u2019s Gratefully and Affectionately: Mary Lavin and The New Yorker is a captivating account of Mary Lavin\u2019s relationship with the famous magazine. I loved Ian McEwan\u2019s latest, What We Can Know, which tackles the danger of climate change in an original way. Many other superb books came my way this year, such as Celia De Fr\u00e9ine\u2019s Even Still, the first collection of short stories in English from this prolific bilingual writer, and \u00c1ine N\u00ed Ghlinn\u2019s D\u00e1nta Idir Shean agus Nua: New and Selected Poems, with wonderful English translations by Theo Dorgan.<\/p>\n \u00c9il\u00eds Ni Dhuibhne is the current Laureate of Irish Fiction<\/p>\n Liz Nugent The Death of Us by Abigail Dean explores the aftermath of trauma for a couple when one is subjected to the worst kind of violence. But it beautifully demonstrates how they navigate their way back to each other when the perpetrator is still out there. Nesting by Roisin O\u2019Donnell is a fictional account of living in emergency accommodation with two children when you are fleeing an abusive husband who is relentless in pursuit. The writing is sublime. The Secret Room by Jane Casey gave Maeve Kerrigan fans everything we wanted. This locked-room mystery is one of the best I have encountered.<\/p>\n Liz Nugent is the author of Strange Sally Diamond<\/p>\n Joseph O\u2019Connor The book that\u2019s given me most pleasure this year is Scanty Plot of Ground, the wonderful anthology of sonnets compiled by Paul Muldoon<\/a>. Like the blues and reggae, the sonnet has rules, but this marvellous collection shows the dexterity, grace and ingenuity with which sonneteers have often stretched them. In a strong year for debut novels, I loved The Kings Head by Kelly Frost. With brilliant essays on subjects from Bob Dylan to Eileen Gray, Irish censuses and Wexford light, Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s<\/a> Ship in Full Sail is endlessly fascinating and enjoyable. Patti Smith\u2019s Bread of Angels is a triumph.<\/p>\n Joseph O\u2019Connor\u2019s novel The Ghosts of Rome has won the Irish Book Awards Last Word Listeners\u2019 Choice Award 2025<\/p>\n Declan O\u2019Driscoll Paul Larkin\u2019s newly published translation of A Fortunate Man by Henrik Pontoppidan was my reading highlight of the year. Centring on a visionary engineer whose calculations provide the only certainty in a life of deep self-questioning, the novel anticipated both the promise and alienation of 20th-century capitalism. A more recently written novel, Every Time We Say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko<\/a>, superbly translated by Mima Simi\u0107, explores how violence is perpetuated through both a family and society. The effectiveness of the novel is enhanced through extended sentences that expire like the exhaled breath of the almost defeated.<\/p>\n Declan O\u2019Driscoll reviews translated fiction for The Irish Times<\/p>\n Kevin Power A very good year for Irish debuts. Fun and Games<\/a> by John Patrick McHugh (Fourth Estate) makes rich, funny sentences out of the triumphs and agonies of John Masterson as he negotiates adolescence on an island off the coast of Mayo. Thirst Trap by Grainne O\u2019Hare (Picador) does the very same thing for a group of young women turning 30 in contemporary Belfast. But the book of the year is Liadan Ni Chuinn\u2019s Every One Still Here (Stinging Fly Press): short stories of uncanny depth and astonishing richness about the Troubles, their aftermath, love, death, the ordinariness of days \u2013 everything.<\/p>\n Kevin Power is an author, academic and critic<\/p>\n John Self Michael Amherst\u2019s The Boyhood of Cain is a debut but has more confidence and poise than many experienced authors. Its story of a boy navigating life as a headmaster\u2019s son is funny, rigorous and very touching. Helen Garner\u2019s diaries How to End a Story rightly won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction. They show you all the different things writing can do, often on the same page. And Brian Friel\u2019s Stories of Ireland reminded us that before he was a great playwright, he was a great short story writer. Fans of Frank O\u2019Connor should look no further.<\/p>\n John Self is a book critic<\/p>\n [\u00a0Tracing the real people in Brian Friel\u2019s \u2018first great Irish play\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Catherine Taylor The Chinese-American author Yiyun Li has transformed the grief of losing both of her sons to suicide into a radical memoir. Things in Nature Merely Grow is both a tribute to and an acceptance of the choices her sons Vincent and James made: unsentimental and radiant. Colwill Brown\u2019s narrated-in-dialect novel We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is set in her native south Yorkshire at the end of the millennium, following a trio of profane and spirited young women as they navigate misogyny, class and deprivation. An astonishing polyphonic debut. I\u2019m hooked on Solvej Balle\u2019s time-loop series On the Calculation of Volume<\/a>, translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, in which a woman is condemned to lived the same day \u2013 November 18th \u2013 over and over. Time, mortality, what it means to be human \u2013 a masterpiece.<\/p>\n Catherine Taylor is an author and a book critic<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/DDH4CBW6RRENLHB6H4U2CRA3TA.jpg\")
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Anne Enright\u2019s Attention and Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn\u2019s Ship in Full Sail <\/p>\n![\"Vincenzo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/JZWOMTPKZBFCTHIBKFCBU2ABNI.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/R2YDURVLDZHZXNL3CTY33G3PF4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Claire-Louise](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WCCTFSDK4JCILACBWKX54D755E.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Eimear](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/YEB5HEHD2NDVZBQG7B33H5HJ4Q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Elaine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/P3OIHBV7PRFAXOS6ECHMJ2BDWA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Heaven](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/HXXA7P63QRAR3FAIGHYNVKBZ3Q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Maria](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/7LE3HTATWFC5DLPRROODVACPG4.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"Aisling](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/QYPIASOQWBH4JNV2CWJC3FEUMU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Pathemata](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WEZZCIGL5JHLHPTY6CNXYG5JGA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Skipshock](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/VQQWDWHGYVB47FOH3PFZBIRCFA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Old](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/MCZW7TDKFVGIPM2I63GFK672ZI.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Patricia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/VGPBWYRAARABBJSUSSJRGDSW7Q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Helen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AUW57APOJRE3TNCLN473YSA5EY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"After](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WSPV2WZ4LVH3BK4TI2XHF5MTDA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Jane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CT5PBI56EZCTVI6W6CBAECQSJQ.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Things](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/H3ATQLUH6ZEDVPHJUYV55MMWTE.jpg\")
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li and Miriam Toews\u2019s A Truce that is not Peace <\/p>\n![\"Gráinne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/DNGFKHY4NRERJKLTYN6Q4U324Q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Nesting](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GD2TZLSJUZAUHOZRNCNQBANMLY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/FYSSVSZJVJADREZJ5U66ML7RMA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/PCFXDWILRVBANIS7TD3RCLNTMA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Fun](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IVP62UTGKNDAVKCLM76SKX4UEA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/HYEU376JCJFCDLEGX54KMAIMIM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"On](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/S6EO55JSKZEQZGZKOZIXSIVMFY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/K44R3UR425HTLGRTHZK7Y7K4Q4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Olga](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/HMBAXRI7RBBUZDGELGV2BTBT5A.jpg\")
<\/p>\n