Some suggestions for books as Christmas gifts
I’m a big fan of giving books as presents. I still have some books I received as a child and my own child, now an adult, is the same. Here are some suggestions for books as Christmas gifts, all highlights of 2023.
This list is not exhaustive – the year that’s nearly over was a marvellous year for fiction and nonfiction, with some mammoth big titles, but a person can only read so many books in a year. So, for instance, Irish writer Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, which won the Booker Prize, is not here as a recommendation because I haven’t read it. Yet!
But I can personally vouch for the books that are here, 12 fiction and 12 nonfiction for the 12 days of Christmas, catering for all kinds of readers who’d love a book in Christmas wrapping. Happy gifting, happy reading and happy Christmas.
Nonfiction
From Malin Head to Mizen Head (Gill) by TV meteorologist Joanna Donnelly is not just for the weather geeks. Donnelly took to long-distance driving as a way of handling her bereavement when her mother died. She journeyed to those headlands that sound so familiar from the weather forecast and began to feel better, later producing this lovely book, a mix of history, science, nature, anecdotes, people and places.
Sunday Miscellany: A Selection 2018-2023 (New Island) edited by Sara Binchy is a collection of original pieces broadcast on the programme in the last six years. The theme music of this programme never fails to reel a person back to childhood, with RTÉ Radio 1 on the wireless and memories of the Sunday morning scramble to get ready for Mass. Featuring a mix from unknown and well-known writers, it’s a perfect ‘dipper’ of a book, suitable for everyone.
The Credit Union Schools Quiz Book (Gill). The Credit Union Schools Quiz has been a fondly remembered and hotly contested feature of Irish school life for more than 30 years. This book would be a great asset to any family for the quiet evenings of the Christmas period, especially those who have done Trivial Pursuit to death. It’s an ideal book for generating some homespun fun (and fights!)
A History of Ireland in 100 Episodes (Gill) by Jonathan Bardon is ideal for the history buffs, and coincidentally was completed by Fergal Tobin, the author of A City Runs Through Them, also featured here, after the death of Bardon himself. It’s based on the very popular BBC TV series, A Short History of Ireland, and each episode stands alone, the 100 episodes sweeping through our history from the Ice Age right up to the Peace Process.
The Woman in Me (Gallery Books) by Britney Spears is the only memoir I’ve included here because it’s really a story about coercive control and the (male) abuse of power. To have Spears labelled as ‘mad’ in 2008 was convenient for some parties, and the fact that her paternal grandfather had committed both of his wives to asylums didn’t seem somehow relevant. Really? She has survived an unbelievable experience, and you don’t need to be a Spears fan to be absorbed in her shocking story.
In The Blood by Pat Spillane (Gill) is a memoir from the retired footballer and winner of eight All-Ireland medals. Spillane, who also clocked up 30 years as a TV commentator, told the Sunday World at the time of publication that it’s “a love story to my family, to the community, to Kerry and to Templenoe. It’s a feel-good story.” It’s a must for GAA fans.
An Eye on Ireland (Hachette) by Justine McCarthy is a collection of features, stories and social commentary by one of Ireland’s finest journalists. Beginning with Mary Robinson’s election as president, these pieces are mostly about women and feminist issues, covering the landmark stories that dragged Ireland into being a somewhat fairer society than in the mid-20th century. It’s an excellent book, not so much a stroll down memory lane as a jolt.
The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park (Gill) by Donal Fallon is a high gloss, beautifully produced book tracing the history of the Flanagan family, who have been lighting the streetlamps in the park since 1890. The family’s history is related alongside that of the park, from the notorious 1888 murders up to the present day. A sumptuous treat from the author of the award-winning Three Castles Burning.
Cocaine Cowboys (Eriu) by Nicola Tallant, crime reporter with the Sunday World, follows the development of the cocaine trade in Ireland and the multi-millionaires it has created in the process. She follows the ‘white supply’ and she follows the money, too, for the last 20 years, culminating in what one psychiatrist describes as a ‘public health emergency’. Very sobering stuff, bravely told, and a fascinating story.
Windfall (Gill) edited by Jane Clarke and illustrated by Jane Carkill is a beautifully bound hardback collection of some of the finest nature poems by some of our finest poets and it’s really a keeper. It’s another book you can dip in and out of, although why the great Gerard Manley Hopkins was omitted here is anyone’s guess. But it’s still a gorgeous book and a great gift for any poetry lover.
A City Runs Through Them: Dublin and its Twenty River Bridges (Atlantic) by Fergal Tobin is a highly original take on the history of the city, as told through the history of its bridges. Fergal Tobin sadly died earlier this year but the historian and publisher with Gill left a large body of historical research and published works behind, this being his final one. A treat for the history lovers.
Last Voices of the Irish Revolution (Gill) by Tom Hurley is one of the finest books to emerge in this year of commemorations, remembering the turbulent years of 1919-1923. There are Unionists as well as Republicans here, in fact it’s a broad sweep from 18 survivors who spoke at length to Hurley in 2003 and 2004, giving first-hand experiences of what life was like in those years. From the private and personal to the socially rebellious and the political, it’s a marvellous read.
Fiction
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis (Swift) tells the story of Brett Easton Ellis (but it’s fiction, not memoir) and his final year in a posh Los Angeles private school, when a spate of murders, all similarly themed, occur in the city, just as a charismatic new kid arrives in school. It’s violent, it’s typical Easton Ellis gore, but the backdrop of early 1980s music and culture is written with such vivid technicolour, it’s irresistible.
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber). Memory is viewed through a glass darky, as ex-garda, Tom Kettle, drifts through his retirement, haunted by ghosts of his past, when two young garda colleagues drop by to discuss a cold case. New facts have emerged in the case and Tom, a good man and a great cop, may be implicated. A story of the legacy of church abuse as experienced by one family, it’s both desperately tragic and magnificently heroic.
My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor (Penguin) is a fictionalised account of the war years of Monsignor Hugh O’Connor, Vatican cleric and saviour of thousands of Allied prisoners and Jews in Nazi-occupied Rome. He didn’t act alone, and O’Connor gives voice and colour to his many helpers in this lively, evocative and beautiful rendering of the faith and courage of the scholarly but humble Kerry priest.
Penance by Eliza Clark (Faber) takes the theme of Mean Girls to a whole new level as a small clutch of teenage best friends decide to take the life of the outsider in their group. The significance of the internet in this dark story is so sinister and so credible, it’s gob-smacking. That, and Clark’s ability to climb inside the heads of her characters, where we see them morph from merely silly and bitchy teenagers to murderers on a mission is quite the feat. A very superior kind of thriller.
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (Penguin) is both a parody of a self-important poet’s ego and a brutal portrait of what such an ego leaves behind when he abandons his wife and child. Nobody can write family like Enright and although this book has many amusing moments, it is the story of trauma passed down through generations. Another Enright masterpiece.
Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting (Penguin) is another family novel, in this case the family of a midlands car dealer destroyed by the financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent Troika years. If nobody writes family like Enright, nobody writes tragicomedy like Murray and this is both a riot and profoundly sad. Is it as good as his 2012 novel, Skippy Dies? The jury’s out, but it’s certainly close.
The Late Night Writers Club by Annie West (New Island) is a graphic novel and although I’m no fan of graphic novels, this charmer of a book is a standout exception, as an aspiring young writer goes to the National Library in an attempt to spark some inspiration, and gets way more than he bargained for. Funny and brilliant and different, it’s a trip.
Though the Bodies Fall by Noel O’Regan (Granta) missed an award this year although it shouldn’t have. It’s an excellent debut about family loyalty driven to extremes, as Michael Burns remains in the family home on Kerry head to keep watch for suicidal ‘jumpers’. The skill required to paint a tourist haven as a cold, desolate black spot is a feat in itself and O’Regan is a most promising newcomer.
The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan (W&N) is the antidote to Sally Rooney’s Normal People if ever there was one. The setting is the same, a young couple living in Dublin’s overpriced flatland. Except in this novel they’re due to marry soon. And that’s a terrible idea. Shot through with humour worthy of Oscar Wilde, it’s a terrific novel, teeming with colourful characters.
Scattered Love by Maylis Besserie (Lilliput) tells the fictional story of three villagers from Roquebrune (where Yeats was first buried, in a mass grave) travelling to Sligo to demand his exhumation, as they believe the bones of loved ones have been buried with the poet’s bones in his new Sligo grave. Peppered with allusions to the great poet, and tenderly told, this is an outstanding work, brilliantly translated by Clíona Ní Ríordáin.
The Lock-Up by John Banville (Faber) has his pathologist Quirke and his more recent creation, Detective Sergeant John Strafford (a Church of Ireland garda in 1950s Ireland! As if!) working on the same case, when a young woman is found dead in a locked garage in Dublin. It looks like suicide but it isn’t. And a German family who fled to Ireland during WW II looks innocent enough too. But they’re not. It’s evocative, dark and brilliant.
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Faber) is a lesson in extreme brevity when telling a sweeping story of casual and deeply ingrained misogyny in modern Ireland. Every tiny detail of this story is important, as Cathal clocks off work on an ordinary Friday and heads home to his solitary domestic life. But it’s not an ordinary Friday, it’s the day he was supposed to marry Sabine, his French girlfriend. Sabine is long gone, and word by precious word the reader finds out why. It’s a teeny tiny masterpiece.