June 16th. Another cloudless summer day. The RTE Six O’Clock News finishes with a montage of boater hats, round spectacles, moustaches and parasols. Colourful crowds gather each side of the …
Category: Fiction
Sally Rooney’s excellent novel Normal People has shown us what friendship, romance, and growing-up really looks like in all it’s ugly raw reality. Once the brilliant TV series also finished, I …
My book is coming out in the time of coronavirus. This doesn’t bother me as much as you might expect, but it does, perhaps, somewhat date its treatment of the …
Between 2016-2020, there have been three bicentenaries celebrating the lives of the Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte, and Anne. Even if you don’t recognise their names it is unlikely that you …
Few of us could have imagined the kind of world in which we find ourselves, with all the old certainties blown over like the seeds of a dancing dandelion. Life …
Virginia Woolf is one of those authors who, unfortunately, has a reputation for intimidating readers. Having been a massive fan of her since I was a teenager, I thought I …
One of my favourite aspects of children’s literature is the way that the unbelievable and impossible become believable and possible. Take for example The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh …
Of course there are plenty of books I have never read, but the ones staring down from my bookshelves really bug me. At some stage I paid good money for …
Imagery and a sense of place are extremely important and add to the full enjoyment of a good novel. These contribute to the proper immersion of the reader within the …
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