Nothing says snow day quite like curling up with a great read. Jennifer McShane recommends the new books worth diving into.
Eva Baltasar’s engrossing Mammoth (And Other Stories, approx €12.99) centres on a disenchanted young woman in Barcelona who, on her 24th birthday, secretly hopes to get pregnant at a “fertilisation party”. It isn’t that simple, being a lesbian, but she yearns to have “life course through her”. It doesn’t go to plan and she leaves for an isolated, simpler existence in a farmhouse in the mountains. There, she moves to her own tune: she nurses lambs, battles stray cats, and even dabbles in sex work – all in pursuit of a new way of life and her continuing desire to have a child. Raw, unsettlingly intense and poetic in parts, this one lingers long after the last page.
In Charlotte (The Lilliput Press, approx €16.95), journalist and author Martina Devlin takes us into the largely unspoken private life of the brilliant Brontë behind Jane Eyre. Charlotte spent much of her life searching for love and found it with Arthur Bell, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. They enjoyed a brief but happy honeymoon in Ireland before tragedy struck – Charlotte passed away just nine months into their marriage. The how and why is told through the eyes of Mary Nicholls, who later married Arthur. Devlin gives Charlotte Brontë some well-earned autonomy; more than her iconic story, she lived life beyond the page. The Irish writer beautifully weaves together three lives forever changed, with a fresh look at the iconic author’s short but impactful time on Irish shores.
Few books once read, make you feel the author wrote them just for you. This is what makes Marianne Power such a wonderful writer. Her story is her own, be it a quest for self-love or looking for romantic love, but the feelings are universal. The worry of being alone at 40, wondering what will happen if you don’t try – if you even want to try – and the fear of either outcome upending your life. In Love Me! (Picador, approx €15.99) she’s on another quest but this time, looking to herself and not a guru to find the answers. Determined to discover if a life full of love is possible without the traditional path, Marianne embarks on a journey to find out. From tantra and Skype sex to polyamory, her quest is hilarious, courageous and tear-inducing in the best possible way.
In Roddy Doyle’s third Paula Spencer novel, The Woman Behind the Door (Vintage, approx €18.992), this emotional mother-daughter drama unfolds as Paula, a widow in her mid-60s and a recovering alcoholic, returns home from a Covid-19 vaccine appointment to find her eldest daughter Nicola waiting for her. Nicola, who has always supported Paula, now seems to need care, having left her husband and children. Over the next 18 months, Paula battles the virus and financial worries while grappling with recovery and reconciliation. There’s something endlessly comforting about this Irish author’s prose and characters – we’ve grown and changed and they with us – and Paula and her story are as compellingly crafted as ever. A must-read.
Noh Inji is a hard-working woman nearing thirty with an unusual work/life balance problem. As an employee of New Marriage (NM), a successful dating company, Inji enters into short-term marriages with wealthy clients. These temporary unions involve all the elements of a real marriage – weddings, sex, and a bit of housework – before ending when the next client arrives. A seasoned pro, she is thrown off balance when her latest assignment brings her back to a former “husband” who wants her for another year. Simultaneously, a persistent new suitor enters her life. She must consider what she truly wants – all while her dark past comes to light. Kim Ryeo-ryeong’s Korean thriller The Trunk (Doubleday, approx €15.99) is the most unique story I’ve read in a long time.
There’s a lot to love in Ivy Fairbanks’ smart, sexy debut Morbidly Yours (Penguin, approx €9.99). Painfully shy Callum Flannelly must marry by his thirty-fifth birthday to inherit his family’s funeral business. Meanwhile, Texan animator Lark Thompson has relocated to Galway, Ireland, to rebuild her life after losing her husband – not to look for love and definitely not to be reminded of death by living next to a funeral home. When Lark learns of Callum’s predicament, she offers to help him find a bride, despite having sworn off anything of the sort herself. However, life has other plans, and the dating project takes a few unexpected turns. A refreshing take on life, love and beginning again.
This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of IMAGE.
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