Checkout 19: Claire-Louise Bennett (2021) ‘“We read in order to come to life.” With fierce imagination, a woman revisits the moments that shape her life; from crushes on teachers to navigating relationships in a fast-paced world; from overhearing her grandmothers’ peculiar stories to nurturing her own personal freedom and a boundless love of literature. Fusing […]
What most I may eye after, be in at the end ‘A luminous and haunting debut memoir from the prize-winning poet – a story of love, heartbreak and coming-of-age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma. When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with […]
‘Jamaica, 1785 Skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin’ call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her. Born into bondage in the corrupted paradise of a sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century, a time of uprisings and rebellion, Lilith has little hope […]
‘The intelligent and charming Newland Archer — a member of one of New York’s most prominent families — is living the life that has always been expected of him: he is engaged to the beautiful and well-connected May Welland and understands the rarefied world of Fifth Avenue society inside out. However, with the arrival of […]
‘It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him — and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church. The long-awaited new […]
‘From the oyster huts of Whitstable to the music halls of Victorian London, Tipping the Velvet is the glorious first novel from this much-loved author. “Piercing the shadows of the naked stage was a single shaft of rosy limelight, and in the centre of this was a girl: the most marvellous girl — I knew […]
‘Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. While weathering the storm that is his marriage of one-way love to his no-good wife Petal, disaster strikes and Petal is killed in a spectacular road accident. Set adrift on an aimless quest, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers — […]
’10…9…8…7…6… That’s about as far as you get, counting backwards, as you wait for surgery to begin — and that’s all most people know about what I do. But what happens between you conking out and waking up? And what does the anaesthetist have to do with it all? Do they just sit around playing […]
‘Two boys set fires while their worlds fall apart. A couple embark on a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. A widow seeks a stranger’s help to bury her grief. A horse crashes a house party. Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh’s debut collection of stories conjures […]
‘Alfa and Mademba are two of the many Senegalese soldiers fighting in the Great War. Together they climb dutifully out of their trenches to attack France’s German enemies whenever the whistle blows, until Mademba is wounded, and dies in a shell hole with his belly torn open. Without his more-than-brother, Alfa is alone and lost […]