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Book Review – Half Lives by Krystle Zara Appiah
After loving Krystle Zara Appiah’s debut novel, Rootless, I jumped at the chance to read her latest book. It’s 1969 in Takoradi, Ghana, and sisters Evelyn and Maggie could not be more different. Evelyn, the golden child, especially in her mother’s eyes; Maggie, the unreliable one who doesn’t have her priorities straight. One thing they…
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Book Review – Where I End by Sophie White
Aoileann lives in a foreboding house on a remote island off Ireland’s coast. She has grown up here, bound by geographical confines and by the confines of her family. Her mother, ‘the bed-thing’, creaks and groans in her bed, needing constant care, uncommunicative by day but on the move at night. Aoileann’s hardened paternal grandmother,…
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Book Review – The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway
When Oisin’s mother Brigid’s health begins to decline, he is drawn from Brazil back to Ireland with his wife and young daughter. As they work at building a new life, and he seeks to reconnect with his mother who has early onset Alzheimer’s, the faces and places around him begin to stir up echoes from…
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Book Review – The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Set mainly in 1950s rural North Dakota, The Night Watchman is a captivating historical fiction centering around a controversial bill about to be put forward to congress. This bill claims to be about emancipation for Native Americans, but in fact aims to take away what little land they already have. One of our main protagonists,…
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Book Review – A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter
A Grandmother Begins the Story is a powerful and unique novel that tells the story of one fractured Métis family through a chorus of voices. We meet five generations of women, including voices coming through from the afterlife: Carter, Allie, Lucie, Geneviève, Velma and Mamé, with whom our story begins. Alongside their stories runs the…
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Book Review – The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
After having loved Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women, I was keen to read more by her, and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane might just have cemented See as a go-to author for me. In a remote mountain village in China, steeped in tradition, ritual and superstition, Li-yan lives and works, farming tea…
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Book Review – I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There by Róisín Lanigan
When Áine’s flatmate Laura moves out to move in with her boyfriend, the natural progression is for Aíne to move in with her boyfriend Elliott. So begins the stressful search for a place to call home. They can’t believe their luck when they find a place, just about in budget, in a trendy neighbourhood; but…
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Book Review – Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh
School is done for seventeen-year-old John Masterson, living on an island off Ireland’s west coast. The summer holidays loom ahead, full of potential and the uncertainty of what comes next. John is determined to make his mark on the football pitch, if he could just find his place in the team and play in the…
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Book Review – The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
The Island of Sea Women, set largely on the remote Korean island of Jeju, is a stunning and gripping story centering around two best friends, and spanning decades. Filled with heartache and hardship, with deep friendship, first love and devastating losses, and set across times of national and global upheaval, this was a story I…
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Book Review – Cork Stories
Cork Stories is a collection of contemporary short fiction set throughout Co Cork in Ireland, from the urban spaces to coastal towns and most rural corners, by writers who live in, or have some strong connection to, Cork. I love this concept for a collection, taking one place and viewing it through a variety of…
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The Resting Willow 