Molly McCloskey, Sally Rooney, Rachael English, Katie Kitamura and Vivek Shanbhag have all brought out novels which will feature on end-of-year favourite lists. Why wait until December? Put them instantly on your summer list of beach reads..
Molly McCloskey - When Light is Like Water (Penguin Ireland)
Molly McCloskey's brilliant new novel details the fall-out from a young American woman's reckless love affair, played out in Sligo and Dublin. It's late '80s Ireland, and Alice is working as a barmaid in Sligo town when she falls for the kindly and unruffled Eddie, for whom she pulls a pint one day. They begin a relationship, and following their marriage, there is a feeble attempt to make herself something more than `Eddie’s wife’ in what she sees as the claustrophobic social cauldron of Sligo.
Marriage has brought her into the company of professionals; doctors, solicitors, all friends of Eddie, quite unlike the bohemian milieu she was part of when she first arrived. Then Alice meets the arty, distracted Cauley, who is 28 and a few years younger than her. McCloskey tracks the clandestine progress of their liaison with immense narrative skill.
The 216-page story is told in flashback from the vantage point of more prosperous times, but the novel begins in the bleak yet sensually potent year of 1989. (Paddy Kehoe)
Sally Rooney - Conversations with Friends (Faber)
Sally Rooney has produced an intellectual novel about youth - or rather young adults growing up, finding their way in the world and discovering who they are. Using the complex relationship dynamics of a ménage a quatre, Rooney cultivates a journey of self-discovery- but not in the clichéd way one might expect. Conversations With Friends is set in modern day Dublin, where girlfriends (and former lovers) Frances and Bobby study literature and history respectably, in Trinity College Dublin.
During one of the pair's spoken-word performances they meet Melissa, an older photographer and somewhat academic writer. Bobby is instantly taken with Melissa, while Frances has her own reservations about the older woman.
Later that evening, however, Melissa introduces the girls to her husband Nick, a charmingly handsome and successful actor - little does Frances know how much this chance encounter will affect her life and challenge her beliefs. Conversations With Friends is the perfect novel for a young adult migrating from one phase of their life to the next. (Grace Keane)
Rachael English - The American Girl (Hachette)
The American Girl, a tale told in two parts, centres around Martha Sheeran, who following her recent separation, finds herself with more questions than answers about her life, and where it might be taking her. Martha is persuaded by her teenage daughter Evanne to look into the circumstances of her adoption more than forty years ago.
As the novel opens in Boston in 1968, the reader is already better informed that Martha herself on how her adoption came to pass. But as the story takes shape, we explore with Martha the tragic events which unfolded between Ireland and Boston in the months and years that followed.
As Martha and Evanne piece together the information they unearth, they must also carefully navigate a path with Martha’s adoptive parents, who may be guarding secrets of their own. An easy read but an edifying one, heart-breaking and uplifting all at once. (Céire Duggan)
Katie Kitamura - A Separation (Clerkenwell Press)
Katie Kitamura casts a hard yet elegiac gaze on a protagonist who becomes embroiled in what may well be a murder mystery, following her husband’s disappearance in the Mani peninsula of mainland Greece.
The unnamed woman of the piece is pushed out to Greece in pursuit of her husband Christopher by her decisive and persuasive mother-in-law Isabella. Christopher is researching a book on the Mani peninsula, but he has not been in contact, and the wife must make tracks, however reluctantly, and find out what he is up to.
The problem, however, is that the wife has been sworn to secrecy by the same Christopher not to divulge that the couple have recently separated. Moreover, the woman is already involved in a new relationship with another man in London.
Thus the woman arrives in the sparsely-populated village of Gerolimenas in September, off-season, booked into an almost funereally quiet hotel by the mother-in-law, who also arranged the flight. Enough said, any more is to spoil - A Separation might yet be novel of the year for those fortunate to discover it. (Paddy Kehoe)
Vivek Shanbhag - Ghachar Ghochar (Faber)
Originally written in the Indian language known as Kannada, Ghacahar Ghochar is an illuminating, pithy tale which demonstrates with great subtlety how sudden wealth enfeebles and fragments an Indian family. Translated by Srinath Perur, Shanbhag's novel has the potent feel of great fly-on-the-wall reportage; the genuine blas of what poverty might feel like in a decent family who are making do with little, in a tiny, rented house in Bangalore.
In one vivid sequence, each of the tiny rooms and the sparse furniture within and how they facilitate sleeping and dining arrangements are patiently listed and described. Shanbhag's attention to significant detail is striking - and yet the novel is a mere 128 pages long. However, sudden riches turn everything `ghachar ghochar' (or tri na chéile, to use another Irish phrase) - tangled up, in other words, impossible to unravel. There may be trauma at the heart of this novel - brought on by cumbersome wealth - but the author has a light touch and can balance humour and gravity with admirable verve. (Paddy Kehoe)
