Acclaimed children’s author proves he’s every bit as capable of writing adult fiction
This week there’s a manual on parenting, a manual on dying gracefully (in both novel and semi-autobiographical form), a history of Ireland artfully told through the prism of a fantasy novel and a treat for ‘uplit’ fiction aficionados.
Should I be Worried?, Dr Niamh Lynch, Hachette, €16.99
Dr Niamh Lynch is an award-winning paediatric consultant based in Cork. If you’re wondering do we need another child healthcare manual, it seems we do. Especially one for first-time mothers. I just had the one myself (a child that is, not a doctor) and I remember incidents of gently poking her while she was asleep in early infancy, just to make sure she was breathing! (I later discovered I wasn’t the only new mammy doing it!) Is that, I would ask my clueless self, nappy rash or leprosy? Is that face she’s making just wind or does she hate me?
Every new mother can rattle off a long list of worries about their baby, many of them remembered long after the child is no longer a child. During Covid lockdown, Dr Lynch began sharing fact-based information about child health on social media, resulting in over 300K followers. Now a mother herself, she understands the regular panic of first-time motherhood and here she provides simple, practical ‘no-panic’ advice.
Sister Wake, Dave Rudden, Hodderscape, €16.99
Dave Rudden is an acclaimed children’s author and no stranger to the creation of fantasy worlds. In this, his first fantasy novel for adults, he hits the ground running and proves he’s every bit as capable of writing adult fiction. Here he builds the world of Croí, an island that has been colonised by its neighbour, the Empire of the Answering, for centuries. But the gods have now risen up to reclaim their country and wreak havoc on their colonisers.
This is, of course, a mythical retelling of the colonisation of Ireland, told in rich, mystical language that includes a number of instances of cúpla focail (there’s a glossary). “It was the Answering who had declared war on a language, on religion, on proper burials, on the names you were allowed to call your child.” That’s as succinct a summary of Irish history over the last half-millennium as you’re ever likely to encounter. And it’s an example of Rudden’s intelligence and scholarship. There are oodles of fantasy novels out there, but very few of them are as beautifully crafted as this.
The story is narrated by three characters; the unlikely and unwilling Sister Wake, whose strange ‘canonization’ occurs in the very first chapter, Abelard, son of an Answering lord, and Talasa, a foreign princess who finds herself flung into this battle. It’s a powerful saga that draws the reader into the darkest chambers of Irish mythology, full of inventiveness and vigour. And this reader won’t be surprised if the movie people come calling on Rudden. Sweeping and cinematic, I figure this novel would smash it.
Departure(s), Julian Barnes, Jonathan Cape, €19.99
I’ve been a devoted fan of Julian Barnes since the 1980s and was waiting on this novel with much anticipation. But it’s not a novel, or only partially so. Barnes, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday, has announced it will be his last book. It’s the story (with a hole in the middle, as he says) of Jean and Stephen, lovers in their 20s and reunited in their 60s, with Barnes playing Cupid in both instances. Their hole-in-the-middle love story is nothing if not fraught, and observing their complaints allows Barnes to indulge his mischievous sense of humour.
But he’s also living with cancer and reflecting on a life well-lived while pondering the inevitability of death. What he ends up with is work of exquisite elegance, part memoir, part essay (in which that garrulous ol’ comedian Proust pops up regularly), part meditation on life and the ensuing nothingness he believes is our ultimate fate. There’s a seeping sadness throughout – even through the funny bits, often starring a Jack Russell called Jimmy – and it prompts a Barnes fan-girl like me (or more correctly a Barnes fan-sean-bhean like me) to long for another novel. Just one more. Or two. Comedy and grief work brilliantly together in the right hands and Barnes knows about grief. In his 1984 novel, Flaubert’s Parrot, he wrote: “And you do come out of it [grief], that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.”
If you’re to read nothing else at all this year, read Departures.
City Girls Forever, Patricia Scanlan, Simon and Schuster, €11.99
Patricia Scanlan fans will be delighted to know her latest novel, City Girls Forever, is out in paperback less than two weeks from now. Here she returns to Maggie, Caroline and Devlin 35 years on from her original City Girls series. All three women are professionally successful but have troubled personal lives. Devlin’s anniversary party for her City Girls gym threatens to be ruined by a ghost from her past. Caroline is facing into old age alone and not happy about it, while Maggie struggles with the deadline for her book while minding her elderly, infirm mother. There’s a birth, a wedding and a funeral along with myriad issues to be handled and Scanlan does so with aplomb.
It’s a heartfelt tribute to the power and indeed the necessity of long-term friendship, one that Scanlan’s squillions of followers can’t miss.
Footnotes
The ‘Classics Now’ festival, focusing on a modern way to view the ancient Greeks and Romans, takes place in Dublin and online this weekend, January 30 to February 1, with a blend of live events around Dublin, film screenings in the IFI and online events. See classicsnow.ie for details. The John McFadden Festival also takes place this weekend in Mayo, described as a festival of culture, music and community. See johnmcfadden.org for details.