Fancy making a present of some smart fiction to Him or Her this Christmas? Paddy Kehoe has six suggestions from 2014.
THREE FOR HER:
Cecelia Ahern The Year I Met you
(Harper Collins)
Jasmine loves her sister and her work, but when her work is taken away she has no idea who she is. Matt loves his family and the booze. Without them, he hits rock bottom. One New Year’s Eve, these two people’s paths meet. Both have time on their hands, both are at a crossroads. As the year unfolds, through moonlit nights and suburban days, an unlikely friendship slowly starts to blossom.
Mary Costello Academy Street
(Canongate)
Growing up in the west of Ireland in the 1940s, Tess is a shy introverted child who emigrates to New York in the 1960. On Academy Street in upper Manhattan, Tess encounters love and loss. The novel concludes with a reunion with her family after forty years of exile. Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award 2014, Academy Street was named Eason Novel of the Year at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.
Marian Keyes The Woman Who Stole My Life
Michael Joseph
Dubliner Stella Sweeney works with her ambitious sister Karen in their beauty salon. One day, Stella, attempting a good deed, causes a minor car accident after which she must face the wrath of handsome stranger. Every cloud has a silver lining and Stella embarks on a thrilling glamorous new life, a life that other people might start to covet.
THREE FOR HIM . .
Joseph O’Neill The Dog
(4th Estate)
Long-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize, The Dog promises belly laughs a-plenty, unlike the author’s previous, more reflective Netherland, which was also short-listed for the prize in 2008. A New York attorney, known as X, is reeling after the end of relationship when he accepts a job offer in Dubai, managing a local family fortune. Once arrived in the desert city of skyscrapers and high finance, O’Neill’s anti-hero begins to regret the move. The author’s has a penchant for useful apercus, such as the following: “ the accumulation of experience amounts, when all is said and pondered, simply to extra weight.”
Georges Simenon The Saint-Fiacre Affair / The Mahé Circle
(Penguin Classics)
Inspector Maigret's past comes to life in this vivid new translation of The Saint-Fiacre Affair. The last time Maigret went home to the village of his birth -Saint-Fiacre in the Auvergne region of France- was for his father's funeral. However, an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls' Day Mass draws him back. Penguin is currently publishing the entire series of Maigret novels and The Mahé Circle also comes highly recommended. Nobody could understand why Dr. Mahé continued to drag his family to Porquerolles for the summer. Had he really become obsessed with the girl dressed in red? Or was it a longing to go fishing and play boules with the locals?
Richard Flanagan The Narrow Road to the Deep North
(Chatto & Windus)
Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North won this year’s Man Booker prize and has received many plaudits. Languishing in a Japanese POW camp during the Second World War, the surgeon Dorrigo Evans is obsessed with the love affair he had with his uncle’s wife. Meanwhile, he struggles to save the lives of the prisoners who are working on the Thailand-Burma `Death Railway.’ One day, Evans receives a letter which will have a profound effect on the course of his life.
