First Chapter book reviews looks ahead to 2024
Ireland ran away with the Booker Prize this year – congrats to Paul Lynch with his winning novel Prophet Song, and also to Paul Murray for his novel The Bee Sting being shortlisted. 2024 has some great novels on the way too and here’s a look at some of them.
JANUARY
Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses (Jonathan Cape) is about a smalltime drug dealer in Ballina whose teenage brother is captured by the local ‘enforcers’. Enter the teenage brother’s girlfriend, intent on his release. And her revenge.
Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits (Penguin) is set in Syracuse, Italy in 412 BC, where a group of Athenian POWs, being held captive in a Syracuse quarry, are encouraged by two unemployed local potters to stage a production of Eurypides’ Medea. Cos you can hate the Greeks but still love their poetry!
Classic Love Stories, edited by Becky Brown (Macmillan), includes stories from the great short story writers like Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield and O. Henry. A collection of romances with a difference, often viewed through a rather jaundiced lens.
Cathy Seeney’s Breakdown (W&N) sees an ordinary suburban mother get up on a dark November morning, leave the house and embark on a road trip. Without telling anyone. But ordinary mothers can’t just up sticks and leave. She must have had a breakdown. Or did she?
Nita Prose’s The Mystery Guest (Harper Collins) returns to the Regency Grand Hotel, where Molly the maid still works hard. A celebrated author drops dead in the Grand Tearoom, it looks mysterious, and Molly realises she used to know him. A standalone sequel from the author of the very successful The Maid.
FEBRUARY
Fourteen Days, edited by Margaret Atwood (Penguin) is a collaborative novel, written by the likes of Atwood herself, Celeste Ng, Scott Turow and our own Emma Donoghue, with many more, telling the story of a group of tenants in a New York apartment block who meet every night during Covid lockdown to ‘spin yarns’. What a novel idea!
Asako Yuzuki’s Butter (4th Estate) is a translation from the Japanese and tells the story of Manako Kajii, a female chef and conwoman who’s also a serial murderer, now doing life in a Tokyo prison. A huge hit in Japan, it’s based on a true story.
The Island Swimmer by Lorraine Kelly (Orion) is about a woman returning home to the Orkney Islands after her father’s death and renewing childhood friendship through a bout of sea swimming, formerly known as swimming. And yes, it’s that Lorraine Kelly, the TV personality.
A woman who’s more of a radio personality and who’s already earned her stripes as a writer, Rachael English’s Whatever Happened to Birdy Troy (Hachette) reels us back to the 1980s and Ireland’s most famous girl band on the cusp of international fame. And then they disappeared. A young podcaster goes looking for them, particularly their lead singer, Birdy Troy.
A new novel by a Booker prizewinner, Lucas Rijneveld’s My Heavenly Favourite (Faber) is a disturbing Lolita-type story where a lonely vet falls for a farmer’s daughter who’s just 14 years old.
MARCH
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Until August (Viking) is a lost novel, only recently found and now posthumously published and concerns JS Bach’s young wife, Ana Magdalena, taking a trip once a year to visit her mother’s grave and getting up to all sorts while she’s away.
Mary Costello’s Barcelona (Canongate) is a new short story collection with tales of faltering marriages and strained relationships between parents and their adult children, all beautifully rendered with trademark Costello elegance.
Anthony Glavin’s Way Out West (New Island) sees young Fintan leave 1950s Donegal to emigrate to America and finding a life that’s a far cry from the American Dream.
Edel Coffey’s In Her Place (Sphere) has Ann finally meeting her soulmate, a man whose wife is in the last throes of a terminal illness, and moving in with him in haste. But the wife makes a full recovery and is now coming home. What to do?
Imram Mahmood’s Finding Sophie (Bloomsbury) is about a teenage girl gone missing, her frantic parents, and a strange neighbour the parents begin to suspect, even if the police don’t. Excellent domestic noir.
APRIL
Sinéad Gleeson’s Hagstone (4th Estate) is about an artist commissioned to produce a piece for a mysterious community of women called the Inions on a small island off the west coast of Ireland, her life unravelling in the making.
Lionel Shriver’s Mania (Borough Press) sees a woman’s life endangered because she speaks up against the Mental Parity Movement, who are currently in power in a society where you can’t say anyone is stupid and intelligence is no longer valued – or even required.
Nuala O’Connor’s Seaborne (New Island) is a fictionalised account of the life of Anne Bonny, the legendary pirate. We may all have heard of her, but who knew she was actually a pirate for just two short months?
You Are Here (Sceptre) by David Nicholls is a love story with a difference, as two lonely people are thrown together by a mutual friend and embark on an ‘epic walk’. Will they survive the journey?
Maggie Armstrong’s Old Romantics (Tramp Press) follows an unreliable narrator through her bad life choices and chaotic consequences, as told in a collection of short stories.
MAY
My Favourite Mistake (Penguin) by Marian Keyes has Anna leaving a high-flying PR career in the US to return to her native Ireland, where her career becomes more low-flying and some old personal scores need settling.
Table for Two (Hutchinson Heinemann) by Amor Towles is a collection of six short stories and a novella. The novella follows Eve, from his first novel Rules of Civility, as she travels to golden age Hollywood to make her fortune. Or maybe not.
John Boyne’s Earth (Doubleday) is the second novella in his quartet of stories about sex abuse. Here, two footballers are in the dock for sexual assault. A series of texts between them points to their guilt, but will they get away with it? Ring any bells?
You Like it Darker by Stephen King (Hodder) is another collection of short stories, as strange and odd and scary as ever, guaranteed to cause discomfort.
Finally, Estelle Birdy’s Ravelling (Lilliput) follows a group of Leaving Cert boys from the Liberties, all gearing themselves up for a life of post-schooldays trouble, from trouble with the gardaí to trouble with drug dealers and heaps of trouble with their families.
Happy new year and happy reading.