irish fiction

Is there such thing as an Irish voice in fiction? 

Reading yet more extraordinary fiction from Irish novelists (OK Emma Donoghue actually now lives in Canada, but she's originally Irish): Kate and Cassie on Paul Lynch's Prophet Song, Anne Enright's The Wren, The Wren, and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart with guests critic and novelist Gretchen Shirm and poet Beth Spencer

Former Booker Prize winner Anne Enright says she's drawn to life's contradictions and in her latest The Wren, The Wren she explores the complicated, messy relationships at the heart of one family. Also, Marija Peričić on one man's love of a dead woman, and Laura Elizabeth Woollett's changing relationship with her hometown, Perth.

In this episode, Jenna interviews debut author Chloe Michelle Howarth about her brand-new, Irish-set sapphic coming-of-age novel, SUNBURN (publishing 22nd June 2023). 

Graham Norton, Diana Reid and Holly Throsby discuss why they enjoy writing about women in fiction. Graham Norton's fourth novel Forever Home is about a woman saying a slow goodbye to her partner (and wondering about a weird smell in the basement). Diana Reid's second novel Seeing Other People unapologetically explores the anxieties of young, educated women in Sydney and musician Holly Throsby's novel Clarke is partly inspired by the case of Lynette Dawson, who famously went missing from her family home in the 1980s.

Here Goes Nothing is the last in what Steve Toltz calls his trilogy of fear which began with A Fraction of the Whole. This latest book is narrated by a ghost who discovers there is an afterlife hierarchy and he is at the bottom.

Also, Irish writer Audrey Magee on her second novel The Colony which is colonisation in microcosm and Toni Jordan's sixth novel, Dinner with the Schnabels, billed as a family dramedy.

Kicking off the New Year right, by interviewing one of my favourite living writers.  

John Connolly is the author of the bestselling Charlie Parker series, a 19 book odyssey that takes us from the Maine coast to the darkest corners of the USA (and elsewhere), in the process, transmuting hardboiled detective noir into cosmic horror.

After two decades of reading about Parker, you can be sure I have plenty to ask John – about writing American horror as an Irishman, Maine’s hostile spaces, the thrilling allure of literary violence, and whether he has an end in sight.

But John is also here to talk about a whole other beast. Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction is his mammoth attempt to map the contours of his native literature, and expose the snobbery that has suppressed it. We talk a lot about how genre works (and doesn’t work), and how Irish fiction is at the very bedrock of this horror thing we all love.

I’m a fanboy this week, no point denying it. I just did my best not to embarrass myself – especially as we were both enjoying a festive drink!

Enjoy!!

Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction was published October 2021 by Hodder and Stoughton. 

Other books mentioned in this episode include:

• Every Dead Thing (1999), by John Connolly – the first Charlie Parker book.
• Dark Matter (2010), by Michelle Paver
• All the White Spaces (2022), by Ally Wilkes
• The Art of the Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories (2020), by Sinéad Gleeson
• American Gods (2001), by Neil Gaiman
• The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), by Robert B. Parker (first appearance of Spenser)

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This week I bring you a ghost story, as befitting the season. Though it’s a little more lurid than Charles Dickens would have liked.

The guest is A.J. West;   the book is The Spirit Engineer. It’s one of my very favourites of 2021. 

Set in Belfast between the sinking of the Titanic and the outbreak of war, it’s a tale of science and the supernatural. Of William Crawford, a man who wants proof of the beyond, and will risk everything to grasp it. It’s actually based on real people and events, which I didn’t know, and still find incredible.

A.J and I talk about spiritualism and deceit, about the links between sex and seances, and about the rare appearance of a truly unlikeable male protagonist. We disagree a little, AJ thinks William’s he’s an antihero, I think he’s an asshole, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is the standout character of the year for me.

I hope you get chance to pour a drink, pull up a chair, and read this book over Christmas. 

Enjoy  

You can read more about the story behind The Spirit Engineer on A.J’s website, ajwestauthor.com

Support Talking Scared on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod

Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, and TikTok 

Or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com 

Download Novellic on Google Play or Apple Store.