Reading of the Green: Irish Writers

 

It’s said that Ireland is a nation of storytellers.  A list of famous writers would include Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Edna O’Brien, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, C.S. Lewis, and George Bernard Shaw, and that’s not including the Irish American writers.  Here are some of our most popular books by Irish authors:

Maeve Binchy was a beloved author known for her stories sent in rural Ireland. She writes warmly about believable characters in situations others can identify with and appreciate.  Tara Road is the story of Ria Lynch, a happily married wife and mother whose world is shattered when she discovers her husband has had an affair and is expecting a child with another woman. Broken-hearted, Ria decides to temporarily trade houses with a woman from America, letting both women discover a new country as well as things about themselves.  Other popular titles include  Circle of Friends, The Glass Lake, and Quentins.

Colm Toibin has recently written a sequel to his 2009 novel Brooklyn. Set in the 1950s, Brooklyn is told from the point of view of Ellis Lacey, a young Irish woman unable to find work.  Learning from a visiting priest that there are jobs in America, Ellis sets off for a strange new land where she does find opportunities but struggles to make a new life while longing for home.  The sequel, Long Island, picks up Ellis’ story twenty years later, and makes her ponder if she made the right choice all those years ago.

Tana French was born in Burlington, Vermont but grew up travelling the world with her parents, including a stay in Ireland. She attended Trinity College and has lived in Dublin for many years with her family.  She writes crime fiction, and her best known series is the Dublin Murder Squad, which follows various detectives as they investigate homicides. Her debut novel, In the Woods, centers around Detective Rob Ryan who is sent to investigate a case involving a child’s death—which turns out to have a connection with a traumatic incident in Rob’s childhood.

John Banville writes in a number of genres, including historical novel on the lives of astronomers such as Copernicus and Kepler.  He has also written crime novels, such as Snow.  Set in 1957, the protestant Detective Inspector St. John Stafford is called to a country house to investigate the murder of a Catholic priest when a storm traps the inhabitants with a murderer on the loose. Banville has also written under the name Benjamin Black.

Niall Williams’ first books were non-fiction, writing with his wife Christine Breen.  While Niall was born in Dublin, he and Christine were living in New York City before deciding to move to rural Ireland to Christine’s grandfather’s 200 year old house. O Come Ye Back to Ireland was a best-seller and inspired several sequels. In his novel Time of the Child, Dr. Jack Troy and his adult daughter Ronnie end up with an abandoned baby. It’s 1962,and for unmarried Ronnie to have an infant is going to cause scandal and gossip.