Irish Novelists I Should Read

Yeah Banville's writing is turgid with the exception of "The Book of Evidence" which has a lean crime fiction feel to it rather than his more acclaimed stuff

Ralph Cusack's /Cadenza/ currently sitting on my nighttable waiting to be read.

Read this

Really enjoyed The Horse's Mouth recently----almost the only one I've ever read from the POV of a painter. though also want to re-read Berger's A Painter of Our Time, which was so long ago I don't really remember---also the rest of Cary's trilogy, from the POV of other amazing characters in THM. Any others of his I should read?

Elizabeth Bowen more often writes about English than Irish, at least in The Collected Stories---haven't read her novels---but she's a trip, and something of an outside-to-inside agitator (observation and invention-wise).

JG Farrell - Troubles (one of the best novels about Anglo-Irish relations by a not quite Englishman/not quite Irishman)

darraghmac have you read Kevin Barry?

I heard him read and briefly met him last year. Maybe his fiction could be up your lane.

_Ralph Cusack's /Cadenza/ currently sitting on my nighttable waiting to be read._

Read this

The latter, I assume

Allow me to second the years-old endorsements of Flann O'Brien (The Third Policeman) and Colm Toibin (Brooklyn).

In the latter case, forget all about the movie, even if you've seen it.

I don't remember a movie of BROOKLYN!

I should catch up with that.

I've devoured Kevin Barry's shorts stories and enjoyed that novel about a post apocalyptic Limerick far more than the reviews. Well diagnosed!

He's grand. As I said elsewhere, I even enjoyed his Lennon book, and I can't stand Lennon.

I did not enjoy the Lennon book at all

i love kevin barry but a book about lennon doesn't appeal to me. his short story image of a food-addict garda eating an entire swiss roll in his squad car has stayed with me, not due to total affinity but nonetheless.

it's prob been said but modern irish short fiction is in a v good place, kevin barry, colin barrett, stinging fly journal in general, claire keegan, danielle mclaughlin. there are many more.

mike mccarthy's solar bones is an absolutely brilliant novel, from last year. i know i've raved about it on facebook so it won't be news to some ilxors.

the indelible Barry moment for me is when the amnesiac guy wakes up on a bus and finds out he's bought a chipper

I'm a bit intimidated by the McCarthy book I have to admit

i actually found it a page-turner. i couldn't leave it alone. ymmv but that was my experience of it and i gave it to a friend who said the same.

he has a 90s compilation of short stories that are entirely original and weird too, called "getting it in the head". he writes about tools and industry and engineering, that kind of thing, in a way i've never seen done by others.

You mean Mike McCormarck?

I loved Claire-Louise Bennett's Pond and v interested to read Eimear McBride - has anyone here engaged with her work?

Anne Enright's "The Gathering" is excellent. I second the Keegan and McCormack recs. Anyone read McCormack's sci-to novel "notes from a coma"? It sounds intriguing

Sci-fi

I've only read The Lesser Bohemians among McBride's texts, but I found her prose vivid and rigorous in its attention to sensory experience.

Thanks - I'll check it out.

I read " A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing" last year and thought it good (without being bowled over) - it's in the experimental tradition of your BS Johnsons / Ann Quins but I thought it a weakish version of those. Worth a go though, and there are people with far finer tastes than mine who'll rep for it v hard.

I think Tim's about right except that I admire the book slightly more than he does. I might not call it fun but I think the writing is intense and distinctive, even if sometimes it's doing something fairly obvious (interior monologue of a fractured self, say).

(- but then I think if you try to describe precisely what it's doing, it's not that obvious, as eg what voice are we really listening to? Not what she says to herself in the moment, not like what Joyce affects to be doing in much of Ulysses, but a more stylized narration of life that doesn't exactly belong anywhere discursively.)

I don't know Quin and don't know BSJ hugely - the other thing is that the lilt, rhythm etc can feel very close to Joyce, including FW, and some other Irish writers. It took me a while to see the Beckett affinity that I think Adam Mars-Jones originally posited.

Haven't read the second book, have heard it is worse.

It seems there are also people with far finer tastes than mine who will rep for it moderately.

I did indeed mean Mike McCormack upthread - somehow I confused him with a journeyman rugby player.

I've been meaning to check out mcbride since I saw her talk/read here a few years ago (part of a IS MODERNISM DEAD panel iirc) - seemed interesting, and she did a pretty good job reading a passage from finnegans wake too

many xps to blechh: both - I was saying that I'd read it and recommending it to darragh/thread

what edna o'brien should I read

Country Girls trilogy is key, and any short story collection. Bonus points if you can get a hold of any of the gratuitously nippley 1970s Penguin paperbacks.