Fiction
Peter Ackroyd , The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (Penguin UK) Witty re-creation of the lift of the tragic, abused artist in exile; a superbparody and an absolute must for anyone so familar with Wilde's epigrams, they wish he'd written more. John Banville , The Nowton Letter (Minerva; David R. Godine); The Book of Evidence (Picador; Waner); Ghosts (Picador; Vintage); Athena (Picador; Vintage); The Untouchable (Picador; Vintage). Five novels from first-rate Irish novelist, including his 1989, Booker Prize nomination. The Book of Evidence , a sleazy tale of a weird Dublin murder. The Untouchable is a superb fiction based on the life of Anthony Blunk, full of deception and treachery. Banville's talents show no sign of waning in his most recent novel Eclipse (Picador), in which an actor plays out his own psychological crisis by a return to his childhood home. Leland Bardwell , The House (Brandon Books o/p; Longwood o/p); There We Have Been (Attic; In Book o/p). Quirky, bleak prose, often dealing with domestic violence, male cruelty, drink and poverty; but funny too, in a black way. Sebastian Barry , The Whereabouts of Eneas Mc Nulty (Picador; Penguin. Tremendously moving, tragic account of one of Barry's ancestors who fought for the British in both world wars, and the life he then had to lead as consequense. Colin Bateman , Cycle of Violence; Divorcing Jack, Of Wee Sweetic Mice and Men (all HaperCollins; Arcade); and Empire State (HarperCollins; Acacia). Sparkling and increasingly fast-paced tales of violence and men in crisis by one of the North's most successful novelists. Samuel Beckett , More Pricks Than Kicks (Calder; Grovel): Beckett Trilogy, including Molloy, Malone Dies and THE Unnable (Calder, Grove) Beckett's early short stories, grotesque tales set around the eccentric character of Belaccqua Shuah, were followed by his wonderful and increasingly bleak trilogy of breakdown and glum humour. Brendan Behan , Borstal Boy (Arrow; David R. Godline). Behan's gutsy roman a clef about his early life in the IRA and in jail. Dermot Bolger , The Journey Home (Penguin UK). Dublin unforgettbly imagined as both heaven and hell. A Second Life (Penguin UK) is an assured novel about a man who, miraculously given a second chance at life, sets out to find out the truth about his adoption. Father Music (Flamingo; HarperCollins). Dublin's criminal underworld is the setting for this psychological thriller. Elizabeth Bowen , The Death of the Heart (Penguin; Anchor) and The Last September (Vintage). The former is a finely tuned tale of the anguish of unrequited love, generally rated as the master piece of this obliquely stylish writer. In the latter, the immense political change of 1920s Cock forms the setting for a tale of an upper class woman's coming of age; now a film by Neil Jordan. Clare Boylan , Home Rule (Abacus UK); Room For a Single Lady (Abacus UK); Holy Pictures (Abacus UK) and Nail on the Head (Penguin o/p; Viking o/p). A rising star of contemporary lrish fiction, her Room for a Single Lady features 1950s Dublin and a cast of eccentric lodgers. Philip Casey , The Fabulists (Lilliput; Serif). Deftly woven tale of love and storytelling; a fine first novel. The Waer Star (Picador UK) is a similarly compassionate novel about a group of people rebuilding their lives in postwar London. Seamus Deane , Reading in the Dark (Vintage). A turbulent semi-autobiographical tale set in Derry in the 1950s and 1960s, full of ghosts, fear and political enmities. J.P. Donleavy , The Ginger Man (Abacus; Atlantic Monthly). Outlandish exploits of a consummate bounder; semi-autobiographical; banned in lreland for some time. Emma Donoghue , Stir-fry (Penguin; Harper o/p). Well-wrought love story from young lrish lesbian writer. Hood (Penguin; Alyson). Painful and at times funny story about overcoming bereavement. Roddy Doyle , Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Minerva; Penguin). Hilarious and deeply moving novel of Dublin family strife that won the Booker Prize in 1993. The earlier Barrytown Trilogy , including The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van (Vintage; Penguin), is lighter and funnier and made Doyle's reputation. In The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (Minerva; Penguin), Doyle shifts to the darker theme of domestic violence, while A Star called Henry (Jonathan Cape; Penguin) is an irreverent romp through early twentieth-century lrish history. Maria Edgeworth , Castle Rackrent (OUP). Best of the "Big House" books, in which Edgeworth displays a subversively subtle sympathy with her peasant narrator. Would have shocked her fellow aristos if they'd been able to figure it out. Anne Enright , The Portable Virgin (Vintage; Butterworth-Heinemann o/p). Highly original stories of life on the outside. The Wig My Father Wore (Minerva UK). A tale of sex, death and reproduction. Oliver Goldsmith , The Vicar of Wakefield (penguin; OUP). An affecting celebration of simple virtue. Hugo Hamilton , The Love Test (Faber UK o/p). Irish-German novelist's thriller set on both sides of the Berlin Wall, before and after its fall, combines excitement with a tender portrait of a disintegrating marriage. Dublin Where the Palm Trees Grow (Faber UK o/p) is a fine colletion of stories set with equal assurance in Berlin and middle-class Dublin. Anne Haverty , One Day as a Tiger (Vintage; Ecco). Delightful, arcadian tale of love and genetic engineering twists as the betrayals set in. A sentimental journey for our times. Dermot Healy , A Goat's Song (Harvil Press; Harcourt Brace). Dark and deep novel which convincingly weaves a study of obsessive love into a fresh view of the Northern conflict. The Bend for Home (Harvil Press; Harcourt Brace) is a touching memoir of the author's family life. Aidan Higgins , Flotsam & Jetsam (Minerva UK); Langrishe, Go Down (Minerva; Riverrun); Lions of the Grunewald (minerva UK). The most European of lrish writers, whose later works play with language in a mordantly humorous and deeply personal way. Desmond Hogan , The Ikon Maker (Faber UK). Impressive, impressionistic first novel from one of Ireland's most lyrical prose writers, about angst-ridden adolescence in the 1970s, before Ireland was hip. A Farewell to Prague (Faber UK) is an intense, episodic, autobiographical novel that wanders lonely through late-twentieth-century Europe. Neil Jordan , Night in Tunisia (Vintage; Randon House o/p). Film director Jordan first made his name with this impressive collection, which prefigures treatments and themes of his films. His most recent novel, Sunrise with Sea Monster (Vintage UK), is a delicate, powerful study in love and betrayal. The Past (Vintage UK) deals with the troubled early years of the Irish Free State. James Joyce , Dubliners; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses (all Penguin; Vintage); Finnegans Wake (Penguin). No novel written in English this century can match the linguistic verve of Ulysses , Joyce's monumental evocation of 24 hours in the life of Dublin. From the time of its completion until shortly before his death - a period of sixteen years - he laboured at Finnegans Wake , a dream-language recapitulation of the cycles of world history. Though indigestible as a whole, it contains passages of incomparable lyricism and wit - try the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" section, and you could be hooked. Molly Keane , Good Behaviour (Abacus; Knopf o/p). Highly successful comic reworking of the "Big House" novel. Benedict Kiely , God's Own Country: Selected Stories 1963 - 1993 (Mandarin UK). A good introduction to the quirky fiction of a veteran novelist and travel writer. Mary Lavin , In a Cafe: Selected Stories (Town House; Penguin). New collection of previously published stories by one of the great short-story writers, in the Chekhov tradition. Earlier books include The House on Clewe Street (Virago o/p; Viking o/p) and Stories (Constable; Viking o/p). Hugh Leonard , Parnell and the Englishwoman (Deutsh UK). Fictional biography focusing on Parnell's affair with Kitty O'Shea. Antonia Logue , Shadow-Box (Bloomsbury; Grove). This extraordinary first novel is an exhilarating mix of surrealism and boxing inspired by the life of Dadaist poet Mina Laoy. Bernard MacLaverty , Cal (Vintage; Norton); Lamb (Penguin; Norton). Both novels of loe beset by crisis; the first deals with an unwilling IRA man and the widow of one of his victims. Lamb is the disturbing tale of a Christian Brother who absconds from a borstal with a young boy. Grace Notes (Vintage; Norton). Finely crafted novel about grief, love and creativity. Deirdre Madden , Hidden Symptoms (Faber o/p); The Birds of the Innocent Wood (Faber UK); Remembering Light and stone (Faber UK); and Nothing is Black (Faber UK). Evocatively grim novels of life in the North. Aidan Mathews , Lipstick on the Host (Minerva; Harcourt Brace o/p). Delicate stories of breathtaking skill. Eugene McCabe , Death and Nightingales (Vintage UK). Powerfully relevant novel of love, land and violence, set in late-nineteenth-century Ireland. Patrick McCabe , The Butcher Boy (Picador; Dell); The Dead School (Picador; Delta). Scary, disturbing, but funny tales of Irish small-town life. Breakfast on Pluto (Picador; Harperperennial) is a camp and macabre satire in which McCabe's protagonist take his cross-dressing from his sleepy parochial home to a sleazy Londong underworld, and there's now a fesh crop of absurd short stories in Mondo Desperado (Picador; HarperCollins). Eugene McEldowney , The Faloorie Man (New Island Books IRE). Pleasantly understated autobographical novel set in pre-Troubles Belfast, enjoyable chiefly for the affectionate nature of the remniscences. John McGahern , The Dark (Faber; Viking o/p); The Barracks (Faber UK); Amongst Women (Faber; Penguin); Collected Stories (Faber; Vintage). The Barracks is classic McGahern; stark, murderous and not a spare adjective in sight. Amongst Women is an excellent tale of an old Republican and the oppression of rural and family life. Eoin McNamee , Resurrection Man (Picador). A darkly poetic and gripping tale of sectarian killings and the minds of the perpetrators, loosely based upon the Shankil Butchers. Frances Molloy , No Mate For The Magpie (Virago o/p; Persea). Written wholly in dialect, this is the moving tale of a working class northern woman who finds herself demonstrating outside the American Embassy in Dublin. Brian Moore , The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Flamingo; McClelland & Stewart). Moore's early novels are rooted in the landscape of his native Belfast; thish was his first, a poignant tale of emotional blight and the possibilities of late redemption by love. The some-what Cartlandesque The Magician's Wife (Bloomsbury; Penguin) is a tale of pernickety sexual repression at the court of Napoleon lll, while Black Robe (Flamingo; Plume) re-creates an extraordinary culture clash between seven teenth-century missionary Jesuits and native North American Indians. Mary Morrissey , A Lazy Eye (Vintage; Simon & Schuster o/p); Mother of Pearl (Vintage UK). Impressive stories and a novel by a rising star in the new generaton of writers. Her The Pretender (Jonathan Cape UK) tells the story of the Polish factory worker who claimed to be Anastasia, daughter of the last tsar of Russia. Christopher Nolan , Under the Eye of the Clock (Phoenix; Arcade). Extraordinary and explosive fiction debut: the largely autobiographical story of a handicapped boy's celebration of the power of language. The Banyan Tree (Phoenix; Arcade) is an evocative tale, chock full of poetry, about an elderly woman's love for her family and the land. Edna O'Brien , The Country Girls (penguin); Down by the River (Phoenix; Plume o/p). The Country Girls is a sensitively wrought novel from a top-calss writer sometimes accused, unjustly, of wavering too much towards Mills and Boon. In Down by the River , incest and bigotry in parochial Ireland is dealt with head-on and delivered with brutal poetry. Flann O'Brien , The Third Policeman (HarperCollins: Dalkey Archive). O'Brien's masterpiece of the ominously absurd and fiendishly humorous. At Swim-Two-Birds (Penguin; Dalkey Archive) is a complicated and hilarious blend of Gaelic fable and surrealism; essential reading. Frank O'Connor , Guests of the Nation (Poolbeg; Irish Book & Media o/p). Arguably the best Irish political fiction of the twentieth century. My Oedipus Complex & Other Stories (Penguin UK). Witty short stories from a master of the genre, especially enjoyable for Catholics. Joseph O'Connor , True Believers (HarperCollins; Trafalgar o/p); Cowboys and Indians (HarperCollins; Trafalgar o/p). Desperadoes (Flamingo UK); The Salesman (Secker; Picador); Inishowen (Secker & Warburg). The first two titles deal with life on the perpheries in London and Dublin: love and loss, madness and redemption. Desperadoes is a love story ranging from 1950s' Dublin to modern Nicaragua, while The Salesman is a pacy revenge thriller in which a man hunts the theif who has left his daughter in a coma. Inishowen is a comic novel set in small-town Donegal. Peadar O'Donnell , Islanders (Mercier o/p; Dufour o/p). Evocative, mesmerizing prose from important Republican figure. Julia O'Faolain , No Country for Young Men (Penguin o/p; Carroll & Graf o/p). Spanning four generations, this ambitious novel traces the personal repercussions of the civil war. Sean O Faolain , Midsummer Night Madness (Penguin). A master of the short-story form and the juiciness of rural dialect. Liam O' Flaherty , Short Stories (Wolfhound IRE); The Collected Stories (St Martin's Press US). Best of the postwar generation of former IRA men turned writers. Kate O' Riordan , Involved (HarperCollins UK). A young Dublin woman's struggle to understand the passions at the root of Northern Irish republicanism. Glenn Patterson , Burning Your Own (Minerva UK). Distinctive young Northern writer gives Protestant child's-eye view of late 1960s' Northern Ireland just about to explode. Fat Lad (Minerva UK). A man gives up a promising career to return to Belfast; an uncompromising yet positive protrayal of the city. The International (Anchor UK). A fine novel set in pre-Troubles Belfast based around the lives of staff and guests of what was then just an ordinary provincial hotel. E.O. Someville and (Violet) Martin Ross , The Irish RM (Abacus; Little, Brown o/p). Hilarious tales in which the locals always out-wit the resident magistrate. Some Experiences of an Irish RM (Dent UK). The needle pushes the begorra factor a little too heavily here and there, but Someville and Ross write with witty flair and their tales are very significant for what they unwittingly reveal about a dying class. James Stephens , The Crock of Gold (Gill & MacMillan; Dover); The Charwoman's Daughter (Gill & Macmillan o/p; North Books); The Demi Gods (Butler o/p). Three fabulous masterpieces from the country's most underrated genius. Laurence Sterne , The Life and Opinion of Tristram Shandy (Penguin) and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (Penguim; Oxford World's Classics). Essential reading from an eighteenth-century comic genius. Bram Stoker , Dracula (Penguin; Signet). Stoker woke up after a nighmare brought on by a hefty lobster supper, and proceeded to write his way into the nightmares of the twentieth century. Francis Stuart , Black List Section H (Lilliput; Penguin). Once a protege of Yeats, Stuart has consistently maintained a stance of opposition, in his life and his art. Black List Section H, his masterpiece, depicts the life of an Irishman in wartime Germany. Eamon Sweeney , Waiting for the Healer (Picador), A single father's bleak descent into drink handled with wry humour. There's Only One Red Army (New Island Books IRE). A fictional memoir of a life led through alcoholism and an obsession with a third-rate football team. Jonathan Swift , Gulliver's Travels (Penguin; Oxford World's Classics); The Tale of a Tub and Other Stories (Oxford University Press UK). Acerbic satire from the only writer in the English language with as sharp a pen as Voltaire. Colm Toibin , The South (Picador; Penguin); The Heather Blazing (Picador; Penguin); The Story of the Night (Picador; Henry Holt); The Blackwater Lightship (Picador; Scribner). In The South a woman turns her back on Ireland for Spain and returns thirty years later to resolve her life, and to die. A powerfully understand novel, The Heather Blazing explores themes of personal and political loss, while his Story of the Night is a haunting love story set in Argentina at the time of the Generals. The Blackwater Lightship follows the grim journey of an ordinary family confronting AIDS. William Trevor , Collected Stories (Penguin). Five of Trevor's short-story collections in one volume, revealing more about Ireland than many a turgid sociological thesis. Often desperately moving, these stories confirm Trevor as one of the true giants of Irish fiction. Two Lives (Penguin), including Reading Turgenev , a sensitive account of an unhappy marriage, was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize. Oscar Wilde , The Picture of Dorian Gray (Penguin; Dover). Wilde's exploration of moral schizophrenia. A debauched socialite maintains his youthful good looks, while his portrait in the attic slowly disintegrates into a vision of evil. Robert McLiam Wilson , Ripley Bogle (Minerva; Ballantine). Very funny first novel in which the irrepressible and precocious down and out Bogle tells his tale in wonderfully extravagant tones. Eureka Street (Minerva; Ballantine). Acerbic, irreverent humour in both pre- and post-ceasefire Belfast.
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