Six New Favourite Contemporary Irish Authors (Plus One)

We’ve done so many posts on famous Irish writers already: James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde… and we haven’t even mentioned Sheridan le Fanu, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Brendon Behan, Seamus Heaney, Flann O’Brien, Edna O’Brien (no relation), or tons of other classics! This post, though, is about contemporary Irish authors. Most of them are very well-known, but there are a couple who might be new to you.

Roddy Doyle

We’ve read a good bit of Roddy Doyle here and there. Our favourite is probably Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, about a ten-year old boy who has to assume a lot of responsibility when his parents split up. (It won the Booker Prize in 1993.) We’re also especially fond of The Snapper (1990), about an unmarried woman’s pregnancy and how it affects her family. It became a movie in 1993, and forms part of Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy. The rest of which (The Commitments and The Van, also movies) is also excellent. So essentially, we’re saying: not a bad tune in the bunch! (PS: the featured image credit is “Roddy Doyle – Chris Boland” by Chris Boland, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

Sally Rooney

County Mayo author Sally Rooney is hot stuff these days. The publication of her third novel, Beautiful World, Where are You?, was a major literary event a couple of years ago. We’ve not yet read that one but we did check out her first two novels, Conversations with People and Normal People. There are similarities in the two books. Both follow bookish young people who are misfits as they journey from Sligo in the west to Dublin and Trinity College. They must negotiate life and love, and they have trouble with both. Her writing is clean and at times gem-like; some have compared her distinctive narrative voice to Salinger‘s. Most critics thought the second novel not as good as the first but we preferred the second, not least because we liked the interactions among the characters better. In any case, we’re looking forward to reading the latest soon.

Colm Tóibín

One of the best-known contemporary novelists, Tóibín has written both fiction and non-fiction, and won numerous awards. Our two favourite novels of his are somewhat similar, in that both deal with famous novelists. The earlier one, The Master, is an astonishing novel, tracing but a few years in Henry James’ career. It begins in the aftermath of James’ famous failure of a play, Guy Domville (at the curtain call James thought they were cheering when in fact they were jeering) where James has retreated to Rye to escape his humiliation. The novel is all James’ inner voice as imagined by Tóibín, and there are passages of intense beauty throughout.

Tóibín’s more recent novel, The Magician, traces the career of Thomas Mann from his early life in Germany through his flight from the Nazis and his eventual landing (improbably) in Los Angeles. There is a much larger cast of characters here (Mann’s family and friends) and the work is more episodic than The Master. But it is still full of impressive insights, especially in its treatment of Mann’s hesitant relations with the Nazis and his friends left behind in Germany.

Maeve Binchy

She is a new discovery for us; loads of Irish friends have recommended her. And now we see why! She does a fabulous job of exploring post-war small-town Irish life, and has a remarkably generous view of human motivation. (I.e. even the bad guys are wholly explicable, even sympathetic.) We’d recommend starting with Circle of Friends, because it’s a stand-alone. It’s set in 1950’s Ireland and features two village women who head to Dublin for university. There are sixteen novels, plus a dozen short story collections, and we’re planning to read them all!

John Banville

Like Tóibín, Banville is one of the best-known contemporary Irish authors and has also won numerous awards. One of his most famous novels is The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 2005 (though not without controversy). This is a beautiful meditation on love and memory, as the narrator, Max Morden, a retired art-historian, reflects back on summers spent at the sea and the Graces, an unusual family with. These memories entwine with Max’s concurrent reflections on the death of his wife, Anna.

We liked also The Blue Guitar, published about eight years ago. The critics were harsh on this one, but we liked the story of Oliver Orme, a no-longer-practising artist and sometime thief, who reviews the tragic events surrounding his ex-wife and their friendship with another couple, Polly and Marcus. Oliver himself as narrator seems to move between insight and ignorance, and in the end seems to have little appreciation for his own role in the tragedy that unfolds. Banville has also written a series of novels under the name of Benjamin Black, which follow the career of Quirke, a pathologist in 1950s Dublin. We’ve only read the first one, Christine Falls, but we loved it and are looking forward to reading the others. (There’s also a related series, featuring detective St. John Strafford, which we liked less.)

Valerie Keogh

We know you know who Tana French is. And we have no beef with her, or with the Dublin Murder Squad series. But we thought we’d draw your attention to the less-known Valerie Keogh, whose Dublin Murder series is similarly gothic and tense. We’ve only read a couple so far, but she’s turning into one of our favourite Irish authors!

We know there are dozens of other fantastic Irish authors out there; we’re only just scratching the surface. (Send recommendations!) And, because we like you, here’s a bonus track: Pauline McLynn (yes, that one, from Father Ted). She writes mysteries too, featuring clever private detective Leo Street. If you like the work of Marian Keyes, give her a try!