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Book Review – The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Our story begins in 1891 in Butte, Montana, a rowdy mining town high in the Rocky Mountains full of immigrants seeking their fortune, and many Irish among them. Here we meet dope-smoking, hard-drinking Tom Rourke, burdened by premonitions, full of despair and yet clinging to hope; a writer who writes songs for those in need…
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Book Review – Spoilt Creatures by Amy Twigg
Restless in life and just out of a relationship, Iris moves back in with her mother. Walking the fields one day, she sees a woman; there is something magnetic, seductive, a bit unkempt about the woman, who she comes to know as Hazel, and who will lead her to Breach House, a rural refuge of…
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Book Review – Wild Ground by Emily Usher
When we meet Jennifer, she’s working in a London cafe, working hard to leave her past behind her; but when her past walks back into her present, we are taken back to her childhood and adolescence, to a time and place where she was known as Neef, and Neef and Danny were inseparable, until the…
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Book Review – The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
It’s the 1960s in a rural part of The Netherlands and Isabel lives alone in a large, rambling house, her mother dead and her brothers Hendrik and Louis off living their own lives. Always a solitary soul and an outsider, she becomes inextricably linked to the house, its walls and contents all tangible links to…
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Book Review – The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna
Lauren, a writing teacher just outside Washington D.C, is drifting through life, still grieving the sudden loss of her parents years earlier. An attentive, engaged teacher and friend to everyone in class, outside class she is unanchored and alone. While teaching her international class, she meets a kindred spirit in Siri, a young, charismatic Swedish…
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Book Review – The Marriage Sabbatical by Lian Dolan
Jason and Nicole are set to go on the trip of a lifetime motorbiking around South America; Jason’s trip of a lifetime, that is. Nicole is dreading it, and is brewing her own getaway to Santa Fe, to follow her dream in jewellery design. But how to make Jason come around to the idea of…
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Book Review – Academy Street by Mary Costello
Academy Street by Mary Costello is a sweeping and deeply moving story, a short book that spans decades, taking us from 1940s rural Ireland to 21st century New York. When we meet Tess first, her childlike voice relays her confused feelings and observations of those around her as she copes with the death of her…
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Book Review – A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume
Overwhelmed by urban life in Dublin, and life in general, artist Frankie, in her 20s, withdraws to live in her late grandmother’s rundown bungalow in the countryside. The novel moves back and forth in time, from her time in the bungalow to the city life she was fleeing to her rural childhood. With limited human…
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Book Review – Girl in the Making by Anna Fitzgerald
Jean is a gentle young girl growing up in 1970s and 1980s Dublin, living with her authoritarian and volatile father, her mother and siblings. She has a loving relationship with her mother until a new pregnancy leaves her exhausted. Jean’s solace at home is in her baby brother John and kind but meek Aunty Ida,…
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Book Review – The Divorcées by Rowan Beaird
It’s 1950s America and Lois, in her 20s, is making her way west. Stuck in a loveless marriage, Nevada’s laws will allow her a quick, clean divorce. All she has to do is be resident there for six weeks. So she spends her weeks at the Golden Yarrow, one of the more upmarket ‘divorce ranches’…
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The Resting Willow 