By John Banville I have a thing against Venice. In fact, I have a number of things against Venice. The avarice. The tourists. The smells. Some years ago I was strolling along one of those dim, dank alleyways near St Mark’s Square, in the company of a friend who shares my aversion to the place. Suddenly a rat scuttled past us and dived part way into a drain, leaving its long pink tail draped on the flagstones. My friend and …
Category: Irish Fiction
Garrett Carr on help he received from old fishermen when writing The Boy from the Sea. The Boy from the Sea unfolds over twenty years and is about a fishing …
I have always been drawn to untold stories. Perhaps this instinct stems from the immigrant experience, having been brought up by Irish parents living in England, who then migrated back …
Caoilinn Hughes’ new novel explores the bonds of sisterhood and the ways those bonds can be tested. Read on… The novel follows four Irish sisters, all in their thirties, who …
The unknowables of the pandemic arrested my writing for a bit. I was sitting at my desk in 2020, worried about my sick father, unable to cross the country to …
Here is a fantastic piece by Sinéad Gleeson for her fiction debut, Hagstone. Taking readers to the darker side of human nature and the mysteries of faith and the natural …
It’s a heat-wave summer in the small West of Ireland village of Ardnakelty. Cal Hooper, who took early retirement from the Chicago police force and moved there looking for peace, …
Anne Doyle tells us about her new new read, Tales of the Otherworld. Ghosts have always been a part of my life. This isn’t something I acknowledge easily, nor is …
I was eight years old, visiting my Dublin cousins. It was always a big thing for myself and my sister to be in the big smoke – all the things …
Caroline O’Donoghue shares some her inspiration behind The Rachel Incident… James and Rachel are two 20-somethings who meet working at a bookshop in 2010. I set it in a bookshop …
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