‘A powerful account of a loving son’s long quest for justice'

Broken Country, Clare Leslie Hall, John Murray, €17.99

Part love story and part thriller, this novel is the story of Beth and Gabriel. Gabriel is the upper-class boy in the village, Beth an ordinary villager who meets him while trespassing on his family property. They fall in love in rural 1950s Dorset, from where they both plan to move to Oxford when Gabriel goes to college. But the best laid plans and all that…

In 1968, Beth is happily married to local villager, Frank, and Gabriel is long gone. Beth is happy with their farming lot, although the couple still mourn the loss of their young son, now two years dead. Then Gabriel returns to the village, with his own son in tow but without a wife. And Beth is drawn to him like a moth to a flame, despite her deep love for her husband. This is not, however, a bog-standard tragic romance about a woman’s love being torn in two. There’s a murder. And Beth is called as a witness. The tension in this story is immense, as the reader is drip-fed only small pieces of information, and the plot moves from Britain in the 1950s to the late 1960s. Beautifully written.

Shadow Work, Pat Divilly, Gill, €18.99

Carl Jung had a huge interest in what he called our ‘shadow’ selves and believed they could unlock a path to our personal progress and development. Author and wellness specialist Pat Divilly runs with that idea, insisting that if we can acknowledge our ‘shadow selves’, we will gain more self-awareness and transform our relationships with others. So, what is the shadow self? Put simply, it’s that part of ourselves we tend to hide from the world, where our resentments and shames and fears and regrets lie. Everyone has negative emotions, but it’s in our nature to pack them away, to ‘keep calm and carry on’ and to show only a composed exterior. But stuffing our emotions comes with a price and Divilly says we would be far happier and more rounded human beings if we can take that negativity out and examine it, and work to resolve those issues we simply don’t want to talk about. Presented in a practical and no-nonsense way, this book would be a huge help to people who have, for various reasons, not faced elements in their lives that burden them. To be free, it appears we must walk through these shadows, not around them. An interesting read.

May All Your Skies be Blue, Fiona Scarlett, Faber, €14.99

Fiona Scarlett made a big impression with her first novel, Boys Don’t Cry, set in working-class Dublin, and this, her second novel, takes place in a similar setting. Shauna is now a middle-aged hairdresser in Hoodtown, a deprived and sprawling Dublin neighbourhood. The salon was passed on by Shauna’s mother and she remembers her first day there, feeling a bit scared to have moved to the neighbourhood but quickly befriended by Dean, Mark and Pamela. They went on to form a close quartet, though it was obvious that there was a spark between Shauna and Dean. That was in 1991. Thirty years have passed since and nobody in that quartet got the life they dreamed of.

A love story and a coming-of-age story, this novel depicts what can happen when kids are not supported properly in their most vulnerable adolescent years. It’s a well-crafted storyline, straddling dual timelines, and for many a reader will be a reminder of their hopeful and hope-filled salad days.

Justice for my Father, Austin Stack, Eriu, €16.99

Austin Stack was 14 years old when his father, Brian, an off-duty Portlaoise prison officer, was shot in the back of the head by an IRA gunman and left brain damaged. He survived for just 18 months and is the only Irish prison officer killed during the Troubles. Austin believes the shooting was ordered by the IRA because his father had foiled an attempted jailbreak from Portlaoise by Republican prisoners. In a recent BBC interview, he said: “Justice for me means somebody actually saying ‘we did this’. I’d like to meet the person. What I’d say to them is ‘why did you do this, what was in your head’? For me that would be a sense of closure.”

Closure, so far, has not come. Paul Williams, in the book’s blurb, describes it as ‘A powerful account of a loving son’s long quest for justice.’ And indeed it’s a troubling account, too.

Show Don’t Tell, Curtis Sittenfeld, Doubleday, €16.99

While fans of Sittenfeld, certainly on this side of the Atlantic, have enjoyed her novels, they may not be so familiar with her short stories, where her wit is as sharp as ever. Middle age responsibilities loom large for most of the protagonists in these wry, often caustic stories where her characters look back at the promise of their younger days, promise that has delivered for some and not for others. A wealthy wellness guru invites his old college friends for a reunion in his opulent home, unaware that the other seven have habitually called him ‘Anus’ down through the years. And there’s another, similarly disastrous, school reunion in a different story. A documentary maker is exposed by a young assistant as being merely an ‘infomercial’ maker. In another story, a woman waits in fear for her biopsy test results, a biopsy that she hasn’t even bothered to tell her husband about, so great is the distance in their marriage. They are stories full of sadness but also full of her trademark humour. Sittenfeld is a force to be reckoned with.

Footnotes

For those who missed them the first time around, Patricia Scanlan’s first City Girl novels are being republished by New Island. City Girl, City Woman and City Lives are now in the shops.

Listowel Writers Week runs this year from May 28 to June 4. It has become the foremost week in this country for writers and emerging writers and gets booked up well in advance, so if you’re planning on going, see writersweek.ie.

The 2025 RTÉ Short Story Competition has a closing date of Friday 23 May. For details see rte.ie/writing.