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Irish Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
The best books for summer 2025: our critics' top picks
Claire Adam A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay. Fast approaching her 100th birthday, the indomitable Miss Pauline is anxious to unburden herself of certain secrets before she dies. If the Jamaican dialect is difficult, as it was for me, try reading parts out loud until you get the hang of it. The Borrowed Hills by Scott Preston. I read this as a judge for the Sunday Times Young Writer Award. (It was shortlisted.) It's a sort of cowboy western in Cumbria, set during the foot-and-mouth crisis. Gritty and bloody, but also beautiful and moving, and an absolute page-turner. I loved it. Claire Adam's latest novel is Love Forms (Faber) Oliver Farry Omar El Akkad's One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is the standout book on the war in Gaza. Part-memoir, part-despairing jeremiad, it will likely be read and studied long after the present conflict and has an inspired title that has already entered the vernacular. Tim MacGabhann's The Black Pool is an often harrowing but stylish account of the author's addiction and recovery that is brilliantly atmospheric, imbued with the heat and dust of Mexico, where much of it takes place. Olga Tokarczuk's The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story continues her intertextual excavation of Central European history with this acerbic feminist riposte to The Magic Mountain. Oliver Farry is a foreign correspondent and book reviewer READ MORE Ferdia Lennon The announcement of a new Andrew Miller novel is always a cause for celebration, and The Land in Winter really is a wonder. Strikingly well observed, Miller's evocation of the coldest British winter on record is the perfect summer read by way of contrast. We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown is a blistering coming-of-age tale about three best friends, Shaz, Rach and Kel, growing up in Doncaster in the noughties. Utterly immersive, hilarious, and very moving. Read it. Closer to home, Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh is a brilliant and bittersweet ode to young love, friendship and GAA set over a single summer. Ferdia Lennon's debut novel is Glorious Exploits (Penguin) Éilís Ní Dhuibhne Andrew Meehan's Best Friends, a lively love story about two septuagenarians, is 'perfect summer reading' according to its Irish Times reviewer (me). It's just right for the plane or train – especially if you've got the travel pass. Patrick Holloway's debut, The Language of Remembering, is a refreshing take on the trope of the single mother in the dark 1970s, which ultimately celebrates love. One of the most entertaining novels as Gaeilge I've reviewed in ages, Darach Ó Scolaí's Bódlaer, is a sparkling, lighthearted satire on the poetry scene in Gaelic Ireland. Brilliant. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's latest book is Selected Stories (Blackstaff) John Boyne Róisín Lanigan's I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There has stayed with me since I read it in January. An unsettling debut about a couple renting a London flat, the novel develops a Rosemary's Baby vibe when central character Áine finds her sense of reality being undermined. A chapter featuring a foster dog is extraordinary. Sameer Pandya's Our Beautiful Boys delves into the aftermath of a school bully being viciously assaulted and the lengths the parents of his assaulters will go to in order to keep them out of jail. A literary page-turner with a nice twist at the end. John Boyne's latest novel is Air (Doubleday) [ 'I don't write a lot of personal stuff': author Róisín Lanigan on being married, divorced and surviving cancer before her 30s Opens in new window ] Sarah Moss Assuming that by 'summer reading' we mean 'life changing reading' as well as 'amusing reading', I suggest Adrienne Maree Brown's Pleasure Activism, which will invite you to think differently, more permissively, about the practice and meaning of enjoyment. It's an anthology, so between dips into it you could read Samantha Ellis's Chopping Onions on my Heart, which is also about how to be intelligently happy when there are reasons for sorrow. For absorbing fiction, Sarah Hall's new book Helm is predictably superb. Sarah Moss's latest novel is Ripeness (Picador) Claire Hennessy Campus shenanigans of decades past are skilfully evoked in two very different but equally compulsive titles: Anna Carey's Our Song , a swoony but grounded second-chance romance, and Lisa Harding's deliciously dark psychological mystery The Wildelings. Two impressive debuts: Claire Gleeson's Show Me Where It Hurts and Roisin O'Donnell's Nesting tackle impossibly painful family situations with care and nuance. Poetry lovers might want to dip into the thought-provoking new collections from Alice Kinsella (The Ethics of Cats) and Kimberly Campanello (An Interesting Detail). YA-wise , Caroline O'Donoghue's addictive romantasy Skipshock and Grainne O'Brien's delicate verse novel Solo are this summer's must-reads. Claire Hennessy's latest book is In the Movie of Her Life (Doire Press) [ Good books: The 20 best holiday reads this summer Opens in new window ] Joseph O'Connor I'd recommend The Kings Head, an excellent debut novel from Kelly Frost set in the Teddy Girl subculture of postwar England, a fascinating movement documented by the photography of Ken Russell. Frost's vivid, supple, filmic prose is a pleasure; she's a writer to watch. Sharon Guard's Assembling Ailish, June O'Sullivan's The Lighthouse Keeper's Wife and Grainne O'Brien's Young Adult novel in verse Solo, are fine achievements, as is Noelle Lynskey's debut collection of poems, Featherweight. Martin Dyar's The Meek is an exceptional second collection from a poet who is also a gifted storyteller. Full of precision, acute observation and reverent encounters with the natural world, it's a book I'll come back to many times. Joseph O'Connor's latest novel is The Ghosts of Rome (Harvill Secker) Kevin Power The best Irish book I've read so far this year is Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuin , published by Stinging Fly Press. It's a collection of long stories, mostly set in contemporary Derry, mostly about young people, partly about the legacies of the Troubles and wholly about trauma. But the seriousness of Ni Chuinn's stories is inseparable from their superlatively rich, readable, perceptive, highly original prose. I also wholeheartedly recommend Lamorna Ash's Don't Forget, We're Here Forever (Bloomsbury), a brilliant and deeply personal book about the various meanings of Christianity in the contemporary UK. Kevin Power's latest novel is White City (Scribner UK) Rónán Hession Top of my summer reading list is The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth by my favourite contemporary Irish writer, Adrian Duncan. I'm looking forward to Saltburn by Drew Gummerson and Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan, the funniest writers around. My favourite books this year were On the Calculation of Volume, Volumes I and II, by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland – she also translated the sublime Encircling trilogy by Karl Frode Tiller, which has obsessed me. I heartily recommend The Book of All Loves by Augustín Fernández Mallo, translated by Thomas Bunstead, and What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard. Rónán Hession's latest novel is Ghost Mountain (Bluemoose) John Self I loved Michael Amherst's novel The Boyhood of Cain , a debut with its voice fully formed, about a boy growing up in a school where his father is the headmaster. It's sad, funny, rigorous, elegant and very Coetzeean. Irish-Trinidadian writer Amanda Smyth has written a glorious autobiographical novel, Look at You, which is a string of intensely vivid scenes from adolescence and young adulthood: love, sex, family drama, the lot. And Hassan Blasim's Sololand is three novellas around and about postwar Iraq, which are far more blackly funny than they have any right to be. He's a star. John Self is a critic Ruby Eastwood The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant are sharp and deadpan, marked by moments of striking insight. This newly gathered volume spans five decades of her work: tales of spiritually exiled characters drifting through shabby boarding houses and inhospitable cities, struggling with fraught, often impossible relationships. Her prose is composed yet surges in unexpected places. The strongest pieces feel loosely assembled: landscape and mannerisms rendered with precise clarity but never quite falling into the recognisable shape of a story. This is how Gallant operates, making her imagined world familiar, then leading you towards an unexpected or elusive truth. Ruby Eastwood is a book reviewer John Banville Collisions by Alec Nevala-Lee is the biography of the American scientist Luis Alvarez (1911-1988). He was closely involved in some of the most significant, innovative – and deadly – scientific advances of the 20th century. He worked on the development of radar during the second World War, was part of the team at Los Alamos that built the first atomic bombs, put forward a controversial theory on the assassination of JFK, did important work on particle accelerators, and, late in life, discovered, along with his geologist son, that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by a gigantic meteorite hitting the coast of Yucatan. Oh, and he also taught himself glass-blowing and metallurgy. John Banville's latest novel is The Drowned (Faber) Jessica Traynor I've reviewed some great books this year, including Artists, Visionaries, Siblings by Judith Mackrell , an absorbing account of the lives of Gwen and Augustus John, and the poignant This Interim Time by Oona Frawley . I've loved Elaine Feeney's ambitious and multilayered Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way and Sean Hewitt's Open, Heaven had me entranced. Tim MacGabhann's The Black Pool is a wild and blackly funny ride through addiction and recovery. In poetry, I'd wholeheartedly recommend Keith Payne's Savage Acres, Charles Lang's The Oasis, and Dane Holt's Father's Father's Father. Jessica Traynor's latest collection is Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe) Martina Evans Tommy Orange's multigenerational Native American novel Wandering Stars spans two centuries yet reads with all the fizz, poetry and pain of something deeply remembered. Terrific characters drive a vital, unputdownable story. Disturbing, wry, riveting, Joe Dunthorne's memoir Children of Radium tells European history like never before. Dunthorne's research into his German great grandfather – scientist, inventor of radioactive toothpaste, Jewish refugee – reveals a literally poisonous family secret. The poems in Bernard O'Donoghue's The Anchorage are easy to read, impossible to forget. Exact and complicated on the joys and pitfalls of memory. A keeper. Martina Evans's latest book is The Coming Thing (Carcanet) Henrietta McKervey Beginning with a trim, hand-luggage-only sized novel, Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection elegantly skewers the perfectly curated lives of a Berlin-based hipster couple. Set six months into the Nazi occupation of Rome, the intertwined fates of three strangers are the propulsive force driving Joseph O'Connor's excellent The Ghosts of Rome , the second in his Escape Line trilogy. A novel about a UN deradicalisation programme doesn't sound like it would be a bundle of laughs, yet Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, the story of an academic who goes to Iraq to run a UN programme to deradicalise Islamic State brides, is witty, smart and entertaining. Henrietta McKervey's latest novel is A Talented Man (Hachette Books Ireland) Neil Hegarty In Seán Farrell's first novel, Frogs for Watchdogs , we meet a little boy living in the midst of change, and we are introduced to a world crowded with danger and with fear. The novel's power lies in its intensity of feeling: a child's experience is elemental and stark and filled with powerful emotions, and love and hatred in this universe are clean-cut presences, sharply lit, vivid, unmistakable. Farrell sustains this remarkably full-tilt atmosphere throughout: and in my reading life, I have seldom felt so wholly slotted in behind a child's eyes, seeing the world as something new and – always – incalculable. Neil Hegarty's latest novel is The Jewel (Head of Zeus) Edel Coffey Abigail Dean's The Death Of Us really stood out for me this year. It's a hybrid crime novel/love story that examines the disintegration of a marriage following a violent home invasion. Laila Lalami's The Dream Hotel is a high-concept dystopian novel about a not-too-distant future where everyone has a 'risk rating' compiled via their metadata. This offers much food for thought on the topics of personal data, freedom and authoritarianism. I also loved Elaine Feeney's new novel Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way, which is the story of a woman's relationship, but also the story of how our personal and shared cultural histories impact our lives. Edel Coffey's latest novel is In Her Place (Sphere) Michael Cronin Summer is typically when the kids are not in school, so what better time to reflect on schools and our expectations of them? Joseph Dunne, Ireland's leading educational philosopher, has written What's the Good of Education?, a challenging and compelling exploration of how education can contribute to a flourishing democracy provided that our classrooms are not hijacked by tech oligarchs and bean counters. Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive? is another urgently persuasive work from the author of Landmarks and Underworld. A master storyteller, Macfarlane uses richly poetic and precise prose to make a timely plea for the rescue of our rivers from callous neglect and wanton destruction. Michael Cronin is professor of French at Trinity College Dublin Sarah Gilmartin In Greece earlier this month, I disturbed the peace of other sunbathers with intermittent shrieking laughter. The culprits? Miranda July's All Fours and Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident . Both are brilliantly observed, funny, provocative, and my favourite kind of beach read: deceptively easy. For crime fans, Andrea Carter's first stand-alone novel There-Came-A-Tapping is an involving, intelligent story, full of intrigue (and ravens). Of this year's debuts, Wendy Erskine's The Benefactors and Garrett Carr's The Boy from the Sea are two standouts, such brightly inventive storytelling from born writers. Sarah Gilmartin's latest novel is Service (One) Wendy Erskine I found Thirst Trap by Gráinne O'Hare , a story about three young women in a Belfast shared house, so funny, taut and complex. David Collard's A Crumpled Swan, which offers 50 brief essays on an Abigail Parry poem, is an ingenious and companiable book, which considers aspects of poetics – and so much more. Marcia Hutchinson's The Mercy Step, told from the perspective of a child, is vibrant and striking, its voice distinctive. And Avi Shlaim's Three Worlds, Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, conveys the personal and political so precisely and compellingly. Wendy Erskine's latest book is The Benefactors (Sceptre) Naoise Dolan I'm currently reading Deepa Bhasthi's English translation of Heart Lamp: Selected Stories by Banu Mushtaq, the first story collection to win the Booker International. There's a translator's note where Bhasthi explains the cultural context of the original Kannada language and defends her choice not to italicise foreign words or use footnotes. Good woman for treating anglophone readers like adults. Up next is Labharfad le Cách (I Will Speak to You All) by Peig Sayers . I invariably love the writers people hated in school when I read them of my own volition, so let's see if the pattern holds. Naoise Dolan's latest novel is The Happy Couple (W&N) Diarmaid Ferriter I came late to Richard Flanagan's Question 7 , published in paperback last month, but it was worth the wait. It is an extraordinary mediation on his family story, blending memoir, history and fiction, covering his native Tasmania, nuclear physics and the atomic bomb, writers behaving badly, the natural environment, and his father's prisoner of war experience in Japan. Big questions are thread through the book, such as 'why do we do what we do to each other?', how we go on, and the meaning of love and forgiveness. Each time he seems headed in the direction of answers, he underlines the emptiness of meaning. This is a melancholic, direct, lyrical and beautiful book. Diarmaid Ferriter is professor of modern Irish history at UCD
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Judgment of History Won't Save Gaza
On Oct. 25, 2023, the Egyptian Canadian novelist Omar El Akkad shared on social media a video of a devastated, rubble-strewn Gaza street, the kind of image that at that time, still retained the power to shock. He added, 'One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.' In time, the post became a book, with a striking cover for the British edition that reprinted the original text as its title. In the United States, the cover bore a shorter version of the title: 'One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.' This month, as Israel began its sudden offensive against Iran and just before American bombers joined in — opening up the possibility of a much-expanded and much-extended regional conflict, or perhaps even World War III — I found myself staring at those book covers, and wondering … will they? Or is the world more likely to just move on, now? When the first Israeli strikes hit Iran on June 13, it seemed to open a new chapter in the global unraveling of the last few decades, in which the relative stability of what was once called an 'American-led international order' gave way to something both more violent and more chaotic. But it may also have marked the closing of a chapter: one in which Israel's conduct in Gaza was the subject of ongoing, if sporadic and not necessarily consequential, moral scrutiny. As recently as last month, the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, was calling the war in Gaza unjustifiable on television, and the prime minister of Spain was calling Israel a 'genocidal state' in the Spanish Parliament. The leaders of France, Canada and Britain jointly released a statement calling the suffering of Gazans 'intolerable,' the amount of humanitarian and food aid 'inadequate' and 'unacceptable' and, although they acknowledged Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism, a recent escalation 'wholly disproportionate' — and threatening concrete action if Israel did not suspend its offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid. Along with Australia, Norway, Canada and New Zealand, Britain also sanctioned two Israeli officials — Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — for 'repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities,' freezing their assets and blocking them from entering their countries. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hamilton Spectator
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
‘Elbows Up' anthology to include prominent patriots Margaret Atwood, Jay Baruchel, Atom Egoyan
TORONTO - An upcoming anthology to meet the recent swell in national pride will include essays by prominent Canadians including writers Margaret Atwood and Omar El Akkad, as well as filmmakers Atom Egoyan and Jay Baruchel. Its publisher McClelland & Stewart says 'Elbows Up!: Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance' will examine our relationship with the United States and ourselves. McClelland & Stewart publisher Stephanie Sinclair says she felt 'an urgent need' to create a time capsule that captures a pivotal period of history. She says it was inspired by the 1968 collection 'The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S.' It will feature excerpts from 'The New Romans,' including one by Atwood — who will also supply a new piece — and works by late writers Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat and Mordecai Richler. The book will be edited by CBC broadcaster Elamin Abdelmahmoud, and is set for release Oct. 14. New works will also come from writers Jeanne Beker, Niigaan Sinclair, Catherine Hernandez, Canisia Lubrin and Ann-Marie MacDonald. Another comes from Ken Dryden that was previously published in the Atlantic. 'This is a book that will be talked about for decades to come,' Sinclair said Thursday in a release. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘Elbows Up' anthology to include prominent patriots Margaret Atwood, Jay Baruchel, Atom Egoyan
TORONTO – An upcoming anthology to meet the recent swell in national pride will include essays by prominent Canadians including writers Margaret Atwood and Omar El Akkad, as well as filmmakers Atom Egoyan and Jay Baruchel. Its publisher McClelland & Stewart says 'Elbows Up!: Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance' will examine our relationship with the United States and ourselves. McClelland & Stewart publisher Stephanie Sinclair says she felt 'an urgent need' to create a time capsule that captures a pivotal period of history. She says it was inspired by the 1968 collection 'The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S.' It will feature excerpts from 'The New Romans,' including one by Atwood — who will also supply a new piece — and works by late writers Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat and Mordecai Richler. The book will be edited by CBC broadcaster Elamin Abdelmahmoud, and is set for release Oct. 14. New works will also come from writers Jeanne Beker, Niigaan Sinclair, Catherine Hernandez, Canisia Lubrin and Ann-Marie MacDonald. Another comes from Ken Dryden that was previously published in the Atlantic. 'This is a book that will be talked about for decades to come,' Sinclair said Thursday in a release. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 19, 2025.
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Madeleine Thien: ‘I ran in blizzards and -20C – all I wanted was to listen to Middlemarch'
My earliest reading memoryResting in my father's arms as he read the newspaper. I must have been three or four years old. He read the paper cover to cover, and for an hour or so each night, I watched the world go by. My favourite book growing upWhen I was 11 I would go to the library downtown and request microfilm of old newspapers. I clicked the spools into place and read and read. I was horrified and baffled and amazed that there existed so many decades, so much time, in which I was … nowhere and not yet. The book that changed me as a teenagerMy parents were educated in missionary schools in Hong Kong and Malaysia; in Vancouver, they enrolled me in a Catholic school. The religious texts and sermons that we read, and the things I saw around me, made me turn away from religion when I was a teenager; but those texts instilled in me a lasting relationship with philosophy. I left religion, but not its questions. The writer who changed my mindOmar El Akkad. I used to think that, sometimes, people are made speechless by the horror of events, by fear, by grief. Perhaps the words they need don't exist. But One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against Us reminds us that the words are there. We have the language to describe ethnic cleansing and genocide. When journalists are murdered, when 183 children are killed in a single day, when 15 paramedics are executed, and we stay silent, words don't fail us – we fail our vocation and each other. The book that made me want to be a writerPlurality! It's really all of them, isn't it? Contending with one another across time. Reading is prismatic, and a great writer shows us how to read far beyond their own works. John Berger, Canisia Lubrin, Rawi Hage, Yan Lianke, Balam Rodrigo, Yōko Ogawa, Adania Shibli, Ma Jian, Italo Calvino, James Baldwin, Alexis Wright, Kafka, my beloved Proust … and on it goes. The book or author I came back toDuring the pandemic, I ran 10km up and down a mountain every other day while listening to Middlemarch. I ran in blizzards and -20C – all I wanted to do was listen. The book I rereadBohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England. Hrabal's knowing, sorrowful, open-hearted, gleeful, broken genius. I love him as one loves a friend. The book I could never read againFor now but not forever, the work of a writer who shaped me, Alice Munro. Yet often I find myself thinking about the experience of reading her – this feeling that I knew the women in her stories, had lived among them, had loved them or fled them. The memory of reading, the imprint of the encounter, is a lifelong confrontation. The book I discovered later in lifeI read The Iliad when I was 15 but I feel as if I experienced it for the first time when I read Emily Watson's 2023 translation, which overflows with names and lives and which records the utter waste of war. Simone Weil's essay The Iliad, or the Poem of Force also changed me – her belief that, century after century, we've ignored or misunderstood or misrepresented what Homer was trying to tell us. Weil writes: 'Whatever is not war, whatever war destroys or threatens, The Iliad wraps in poetry; the realities of war, never.' The book I am currently readingÆdnan by Linnea Axelsson, and Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi. Everyone read these infinitely wise and haunting books. The Book of Records is published by Granta. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
