This week's books: 'An extremely clever literary thriller'

This week there’s a memoir of sorts wrapped in the cloak of an anthology of essays, there’s a great novel and two books for the kids to while away the school break.

Giant, Judith McQuoid, Little Island, €11.60

For young readers aged 9+ and on their school holidays, there’s the story of the childhood of CS Lewis in Belfast, which would surely appeal to fans of his Narnia books, still as popular and perennial as they ever were. Here we meet Davy, a working-class boy in Belfast in 1908, who’s sent to work in the well-off Lewis household and befriends Jack (CS Lewis’s nickname among his family).

Davy is taken with Jack’s love of books and adventure stories, and a firm friendship quickly ensues. The relationship will foster Davy’s creative side, but soon a job offer for Davy at the shipyard and Jack’s mother falling gravely ill threatens to end their friendship. Will they survive it?

This is a fine work of imagination on the author’s part, whose grandfather worked on the shipyard in Belfast and was a contemporary of Lewis. It’s beautifully written and if your child hasn’t read the Narnia novels, it could provide a perfect gateway.

Solo, Grainne O’Brien, Little Island, €9.49

In this novel for teenagers (also on school holidays!) Daisy’s 18th birthday is not what she would have dreamt it to be. Her boyfriend has broken up with her and her older twin brothers are sailing through their lives in college while Daisy struggles, especially to fit into her family unit.

She loves her family but feels she’s the black sheep. The month after her birthday she’s back at school and a new schoolfriend helps her to change, to open up a little. She finds herself reconnecting with her first love, music, and gaining a more hopeful perspective on things as she gains confidence in her recorder performances. And then her father falls gravely ill.

Told completely in verse, this is a story about the trials of growing up. Each chapter is headed by a musical instruction (e.g. Allegro, Risoluto) and the story, told in Daisy’s voice, is delicately and sensitively wrought. Fans of Sarah Crossan will love this book.

Writers Anonymous, William Wall, New Island, €16.95

An extremely clever literary thriller, strewn with allusions about everything from ancient Greece to Trump’s fiascos, in the middle of this multi-faceted novel is the story of a boy, Mattie Lantry, killed in 1980, and nobody is ever charged for his murder.

Jim Winter is a well-known writer, stifled during the 2020 lockdowns, who decides to form a writing group, Writers Anonymous, where both he and his writing students must conceal their identities. He advertises on social media and quickly picks the best of the bunch. One writer, Deirdre, tells the story of murdered Mattie Lantry with uncanny recall, not even bothering to change names or placenames.

Jim is intrigued at first. He was a schoolfriend of Mattie. But his intrigue morphs into something more consuming. What does Deirdre know and – more importantly – how can she know? There are myriad sidelines to the central plot; the rapid spread of Covid from the author’s beloved Italy, the tricks we dreamt up to allow us travel further than 2km, the Covid death of a much-loved friend, the allure of West Cork.

Wall plays with his protagonist, a flawed man full of his own importance at times, and also takes the odd swipe at the current ‘pandemic’ of writers workshops all over the place, every one of them uniformly damning the adverb to hell! Tim Parks’ Hotel Milano and Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat, both ‘lockdown’ novels, have stayed with me long after reading. Writers Anonymous makes it a finely tuned trio.

Unsavory Thoughts, Thomas Walton, Sagging Meniscus, €22.99

This book is and isn’t an autobiography. It’s certainly autobiographical but it dodges the constrictions of timeline by presenting itself as an anthology of essays, rather than a start-to-finish fait accompli. It’s a clever approach, especially for a writer who insists he has no great memories of childhood (although he seems to have more than he originally states).

The result for the reader is that although Walton really does start at the beginning (it’s a good place to start), he allows a certain amount of ‘dipping’ in and out, of veering wildly from childhood to adulthood, even to fatherhood, if that’s what the reader should choose, without being left feeling there’s a hole in the plot. And there are no holes in the writing, that’s for sure. It’s funny, and tragic and ironic and all shades in between.

The self-effacement is possibly laid on a bit thick, but then again, we’re Irish, we own it, so we’ll loan him the luxury and not begrudge. He also spends much of his time at sixes and sevens with the world in general, something that will surely resonate. He writes: ‘Even now I feel like people who are well-adjusted are either highly medicated, extremely adept at self-deception, or mentally ill’, reminding me of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s line: ‘It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society’.

And I must say this book has the knack of reminding the reader of other ideas and inspirations, even though it’s wholly and spectacularly original. His seemingly chaotic spill of words is in fact martialled out on the page with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel and it’s a joy to see. Highly recommended.

Footnotes

All of the principal family venues, including the ‘Big Houses’ and their gardens, are hosting Easter Egg hunts for the little people this weekend. You can google them for times, tickets and details.

Easter weekend will be a quiet one on the festival scene for adults, but shortly afterwards there are two festivals worth checking out. The first is the Waterford Festival of Food, on April 25-27 featuring more than 80 events, including tours and trails, cookery demonstrations, unique dining experiences and festival markets with more than 100 artisan stalls. See waterfordfestivaloffood.com for details.

The Cork International Choral Festival takes place from April 30 to May 4, with gala concerts, school concerts, national and international competitions and world-class choral performances. See corkchoral.ie for details.