Don’t miss this important, propulsive, breathtaking and seriously funny book
The books keep coming and as we approach the end of summer (and what a summer!), there are lots of titles worth reading. Go for ‘em, while the evenings are still long and anyway, you’re not allowed to water the garden! What else would you be doing?
Shadows in Stone, PW Rankine, Mysta Cordis Press, €17.99
If fantasy and speculative fiction is your thing, this is the first book of a trilogy, The Echoborne Saga, and it sweeps through the centuries from Alexandria in 5 BC, catching Ireland in the 1990s and on through to the east coast of Canada in 2034.
Three characters will converge in the story to find themselves in a mythical dimension, Echo Realm, where every choice has been counted, every act of love has been noted and every human loss endures, uninhibited by the constraints of time as we know it.
This novel crosses boundaries between science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction and is an impressive feat of both hard research and wild imagination.
Hey Man, Andrew Meehan, Muswell Press, €13.99
Andrew Meehan can do no wrong, in my opinion, and his latest book is a sublime delight. Books about male friendship aren’t as thick on the ground as you might expect, which makes this story of Tommy and Ian all the more precious. Tommy Carmody is a Dublin actor based in London in 1989.
He’s a friend of Ian’s father and it’s been arranged that young Ian will spend his Leaving Cert summer working on the building sites in London, to help with his medical school fees in September. He is to stay with Tommy, who’s as bohemian as they come, drinks hard and plays hard and lives life at full tilt, a kind of Peter O’Toole character, not as famous but not unknown either.
Ian is besotted with this older man and learns much about life while living in Tommy’s Crouch End house in the summer of ’89. The story weaves through the years, ending up in 2019. Ian is now a monk, Brother Eugene, and Tommy, on his third marriage, is ill. They are the most disparate pair but still the truest and deepest of friends.
There simply aren’t enough superlatives out there to do justice to this slim little novel, bursting with wisdom and love and loss and wonder at the nature of spiritual and human connection. One of my standout books of 2026.
Little Vanities, Sarah Gilmartin, Pushkin Press, €16.99
Irish Times journalist Sarah Gilmartin has already proven herself a gifted novelist in her two previous books and her third is an impressive tale about the ennui that can infest a marriage – two marriages in this case – and the lengths we might go to in order to sink or swim.
Ben is an out of work actor, always waiting on the big role that never comes. His partner Stevie is the primary breadwinner and puts up with a lot. Dylan was once a rugby star but illness has brought him down and he is minded by his wife, Rachel. Three out of the four of these characters are ex-Trinity students – Rachel is the only outlier – and there are instances in the story where this difference is keenly felt. All of these 30-somethings are struggling, both as couples and individuals.
And then Ben lands the role of a lifetime in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. Note the title! This story is full of betrayals, big and tiny and is told with Gilmartin’s assured sympathy. Like her other novels, it’s stylish and beautifully scaffolded, and her forensic eye for the fault lines in seemingly loving relationships is always present. Highly recommended.
Prestige Drama, Séamas O’Reilly, Fleet, €14.99
There’s a big bells-and-whistles TV production all ready to shoot in the city of Derry, and it’s set in the years of the Troubles. Crews have descended from the US and the UK and they’re hoping for authentic locations, places that have not ended up too gentrified. The writer of the show is Diarmuid, a Derry ex-pat who remembers his teenage friend Jamie being shot in the head by a British soldier. The solider fired, just because (a) he could, and (b) he knew he’d get away with it.
Young Jamie died on the spot and a whole community in Derry can’t forget it, including his mother Ann-Marie. The story of a city unable to accept its horrific past is in steady and artful hands here, and the result is two dramas slowly unfolding: the bad old days where kids got shot dead and the current days, where the TV production’s leading lady has gone missing.
Anyone who’s read O’Reilly’s memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? will be familiar with his style, where the more tragic a thing is, the funnier he makes it. There are absolutely no boundaries with his irreverence and that’s part of his huge appeal. So there’s lots of gallows humour in this book too. But there’s also an anger seeping from it, dripping from it, that no amount of black comedy can conceal.
O’Reilly is arguably too young to remember the worst days of the Troubles but the legacy is in his DNA, as it must be in every Northerner raised in the days after the Good Friday Agreement. It would remind you of Faulkner’s great line: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ Don’t miss this important, propulsive, breathtaking and seriously funny book.
Footnotes
The Kilkenny Arts Festival runs across 10 days and gathers many of the world’s finest musicians, performers, writers and artists in Ireland’s medieval city for live performances. This year the festival runs from August 6 to 16. See kilkennyarts.ie for details.
The Fleadh Cheoil continues in Belfast this week, wrapping up on Sunday 9th. Expected to attract half a million visitors, the city will be a haven for trad fans. See fleadhcheoil.ie for details.
The Howth Roots and Blues festival is on August 7-9, and the finest blues musicians plus a handful of international artists will be making an appearance. See howthrootsandblues.com for details.