Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

Despite the fact that this book has been at hand for more than a year, somehow I never got round to reading it. The curse of the familiar bedside book, the “oh, I’ll read it soon” book! Somehow, though, it made its way through several culls as I moved and packed, managing to land in my travelling bag as something a captive audience

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This delicious book is a witty comedy of contemporary manners, as well as a charming homage to the art of novel-writing. Brought together by a shared love of Jane Austen, five women and one man meet monthly to discuss her six novels. As the six characters go in search of the author – each has their own “private Austen” – they

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I was fortunate enough to read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson this year. Blown away by her brilliance, I then set out to read Housekeeping – the only other work of fiction Robinson has written.

Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly. First they are under the care of their competent grandmother

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Jennifer Johnston is a great storyteller, that much is true. I’m told graduates of the Irish secondary school system are likely to have encountered her coming-of-age novel Shadows on Our Skin, which was Booker Prize listed in 1977, but I had never come across her work until I read and thoroughly enjoyed This is not a Novel in 2002. I was quietly

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First Love, Last Rites is Ian McEwan’s first collection of short stories; it won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.

McEwan’s characters are a strange lot; a man who ‘disappears’ his wife, a paedophile, a rapist, orphans and an infantilised man. What is stranger, however, is that any shock value one could attribute to the choosing

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