Search Results for: the friend

Close to Home by Michael Magee

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Close to Home

Anaesthetised lives

With its timely publication coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the award-winning Close to Home by Michael Magee considers the legacy left for the following generation of Belfast youth. The scars of The Troubles run deep for 22-year-old Sean, leading a precarious existence of casual employment, impecunity and thwarted dreams, his chief escape that of boozy nights out with mates and ‘baggies of white.’ When he’s found guilty of Actual Bodily Assault following yet another chaotic evening, Sean’s life looks set to unravel, unless he can come to terms with the traumas of his family and community’s past.

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Our Favourite Reads of 2023

Well, that went fast! 2023 is coming to a close and we’ve had a look back at our best reads of the year. 2023 hasn’t been a year of many huge literary hits. Rather, we’ve poked around and found some smaller, perhaps less well-known books, that we’ve enjoyed at least as much as big best-sellers. You’ll find the full review by clicking on the titles. Happy reading and Merry Christmas!

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The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore

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The Glutton

Villain or victim?

We’re in France at the brink of the revolution. A sinister, Hannibal-Lecter-like character rumoured to be devouring everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, including forks, rats and babies, is imprisoned in a monastery. Sister Perpetue has the unenviable task of guarding him. But who is this mysterious Tarare and what is his story? The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore is one the better books I’ve read this year. A brutal story of poverty, survival and class, set against the backdrop of revolutionary France and written by a hugely talented young author. Go get it.

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Enter the Water by Jack Wiltshire

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Enter the Water

A brilliantly idiosyncratic call to courage

Early on in Enter the Water by Jack Wiltshire, we’re casually told that there’s no hero story to be found here, but by the end of this exhilarating verse novel, you may well disagree. It tells the story of a vulnerable Cambridge student, evicted from his flat and sleeping on a park bench. Setting out on an odyssey to the coast, accompanied by pigeons, a blackbird and the forces of Nature itself, his story is a clarion call for appreciating the natural world and cultivating stoicism in our infinitely troubled times.

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How to Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum

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How to Love Your Daughter

 Maternal mania

The first time Yoella lays eyes on her young granddaughters, it is through the window panes of their Groningen home. Having travelled thousands of miles to see them, she is hiding in the gathering dusk of their front garden, concealed and mesmerised. In the prize-winning How to Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum, Yoella retraces the painful path that has led to estrangement between herself and her only child, Leah. Setting the reader the compelling task of unpicking her account and assessing the silences, Yoella’s story is one of intense introspection and all-consuming love.

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Cosima Unfortunate Steals a Star by Laura Noakes

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Cosima Unfortunate Steals A Star

8-11 years

Thrillingly energetic and inclusive Victorian caper

All dedicated bookworms are familiar with the Victorian orphanage, looming large in children’s literature as a place of gruel and gruesomeness. Here we have something much much worse, the Home for Unfortunate Girls, an institution that houses girls with disabilities ‘that make it improper for them to be part of polite society.’ For 12-year-old Cosima and her officially ‘defective’ friends, years go by in ceaseless monotony. Until one fateful week in 1899, when they’re called upon to simultaneously foil a villain, stage a heist, and reveal family secrets, in the inspiring Cosima Unfortunate Steals A Star by Laura Noakes.

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Vivaldi by Helge Torvund

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Vivaldi

5-8 years

A tender tale for hesitant back-to-schoolers

Vivaldi by Helge Torvund is the perfect book for back-to-schoolers with ‘dread in their little knees’. It tells the story of Tyra, a little girl whose classroom experience has left her sad and silent. Her interior life is gloriously vivid, but at school she feels unseen. She’s in need of a friend, and as all true cat lovers know, friendship often arrives in feline form, in this case with the bluest eyes Tyra has ever seen. With her new pet, supportive family, and the inspiring music of Vivaldi, maybe life can be different. If only it were that simple.

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Penance by Eliza Clark

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Penance

A gripping debut novel on true crime obsession

Penance by Eliza Clark is not a read for the faint-hearted. It tells the story of Joan Wilson, a teenager tortured and burnt to death by three other schoolgirls on the night of the Brexit vote. Joan Wilson is, mercifully, not a real person. Clark has produced what one reviewer describes as an untrue – that is to say, made-up – true crime story. The character Clark invents to tell this tale is Alec Z. Carelli, a disgraced journalist on the hunt for a scandal sensational enough to fill a whole book and to help him rebuild his career in the true crime universe.

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Owlish by Dorothy Tse

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Owlish

Surreal and subversive tale of repression and identity

Professor Q is a somewhat dull academic, apathetically teaching literature at a middling university and uninterested in his wife, Maria. She, in turn, is just grateful that Q appears to have lost any carnal urges. Supposing that the andropause has come for him, Maria is unaware that her hitherto predictable husband is in love with a mechanical music-box ballerina. Her name is Aliss and he is willing her to life. Both a political allegory and a deep dive into the recesses of the human psyche, Owlish by Dorothy Tse is a subversive and exhilarating affair.

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The Skull by Jon Klassen

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The Skull

5-8 years

Deliciously strange tale of friendship and courage

One snowy night, a little girl named Otilla runs away from home, into the deep dark woods. She runs all through the night, escaping we know not what, but in the best tradition of spooky tales, she comes upon an old and neglected house. Here lives a lonely skull, separated from his body and in need of a friend. We join this odd couple in The Skull by Jon Klassen. Adapted from an obscure Tyrolean folktale, it’s a strange and charming story of facing fear and finding friendship in unlikely places.

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