Irish Fiction

A selection of fiction set on, or by authors of, the Emerald Isle. Compiled by the subscribers of the Fiction_L mailing list.

	Sebastian Barry. The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty An acclaimed playwright's novel--the heartbreaking epic of a fugitive everyman. When a Irish romantic innocent signs up to fight with the British in World War I, he is branded a traitor by his countrymen--and the IRA orders his assassination to be carried out by a childhood friend.
	Maeve Binchy. Circle of Friends From Knockglen to Dublin, heartbreak and betrayal follow three extraordinary and unforgettable women as an explosive confrontation brings hidden lies to the surface and tests the meaning of love and the bonds of friendship.
	Lisa Carey. The Mermaids Singing Somewhere off the coast of west Ireland lies Inis Muruach, the Island of the Mermaids, a world where myth is more powerful that truth, where the sea sings with the haunting voices of women, and where death is never as strong as the redemptive powers of family and love. It is here that Lisa Carey sets her novel, weaving together the voices of three generations of Irish and Irish-American women.
	Brendan O'Carroll. The Mammy A popular Irish comedian chronicles with raw humor and great affection the comic misadventures of a large and lively North Dublin family in the 1960s.
	Annabel Davis-Goff. The Dower House Molly Hassard grows up in the dower house, built to accommodate a series of Hassard widows displaced by the deaths of their husbands and the marriages of their sons. Molly, an upper-class orphan in an Ireland emerging from the post-war years, soon learns that coming-of-age means not merely growing up but finding her place between the romance of tradition and the allure of the new .
	Seamus Deane. Reading in the Dark Seamus Deane's first novel is a mesmerizing story of childhood set against the violence of Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. The boy narrator grows up haunted by a truth he both wants and does not want to discover. The matter: a deadly betrayal, unspoken and unspeakable, born of political enmity.
	Roddy Doyle. The Commitments This funky, rude, unpretentious first novel traces the short, funny, and furious career of a group of working-class Irish kids who form a band, The Commitments. Their mission: to bring soul to Dublin!
	Bartholomew Gill. Death in Dublin In Bartholomew Gill's last and most dramatic novel, Irish police chief Peter McGarr is plunged into the ratified atmosphere of Dublin's Trinity College as he investigates the cold-blooded murder of a library night watchman and the baffling disappearance of an Irish cultural icon--the Book of Kells.
	James Joyce. Dubliners Joyce paints vivid portraits of the denizens of the city of his birth, from the young boy encountering death in the first story to the middle-aged Gabriel of the haunting final story, "The Dead". One of the greatest short story collections in the English language.
	Walter Keady. Celibates & Other Lovers It is 1945, and in a rural Irish village called Creevagh, a young man waits eagerly for the mail, convinced that one letter will bring his salvation. Since the age of reason, Phelim O'Brien has been obsessed by a morbid fear of hell; and from the age of puberty, tormented by the certainty he'll wind up there. But his friend, Philpot Emmett, refuses to accept that the slightest tittle of carnal pleasure is a mortal sin, and where Phelim struggles, Philpot happily yields. Father Coyne admonishes, Catherine Ryan tempts, and the formidable Maura Higgins rebels against them all.
	Marian Keyes. Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married Lucy Sullivan is getting married . . . or is she? Truth be told, Lucy doesn't even have a boyfriend. But Mrs. Nolan has read her tarot cards and predicts that Lucy will soon be walking down the aisle--much to the dismay of her roommates, Karen and Charlotte.
	Morgan Llywelyn. Lion of Ireland Set against the barbaric splendors of the 10th century, this is a story rich in truth and legend and one of the great novels of Irish history.
	Pat McCabe. The Dead School The critically acclaimed author of The Butcher Boy returns to small-town Ireland to journey inside the world of a schoolteacher and a headmaster, as they grapple with their own demons and struggle to cope with the tragedy that strikes a young student in their charge.
	Edna O'Brien. Wild Decembers O'Brien's latest novel charts the quick and critical demise of relations between "the warring sons of warring sons" fighting over inherited land in the countryside of western Ireland.
	William Trevor. The Story of Lucy Gault The Gault family leads a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland, but the threat of arson leads nine-year-old Lucy's parents to leave Ireland for England. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away. In this profound and moving story of love, guilt and forgiveness, Trevor has written a novel that stands alongside the best literature in the English language.
	Leon Uris. Redemption The legendary author of Trinity explores the saga of the Irish people through the Larkin family in an epic that ranges from Ireland to New Zealand, Egypt, and Gallipoli and captures the love and loss, triumph and tragedy.
	Niall Williams. As It Is in Heaven Time has already stopped for Stephen Griffin. Twenty-eight years old and haunted by death, the tall, awkward, shy schoolteacher is content to care for his father in Dublin and let life pass him by. Then a miracle appears: a string ensemble from Venice and, with it, a violinist named Gabriella Castoldi. Even though the worldly, beautiful musician seems incapable of giving her heart, love seizes Stephen Griffin ... unbidden and shaking every particle of his spirit.