Claire Keegan’s stories are miniature worlds – filled with exquisite detail, intimate and revealing.
I love the way she creates a continuous cinematic sequence – almost a single breath – following the daily life of a working man in a small Irish town in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Bill Furlong’s observations, encounters, recollections, and ultimate decisions build layers of color and depth to his character and world, creating the kind of complexity that weaves through all our lives and shapes, informing the way we choose to act and interact.
With a powerful subtext about the often unspoken control of the church and faith over people’s lives and behavior, this gently discomforting and reassuring novella is a masterpiece in how much can be achieved with so little.
"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers
Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him…
This year I travelled through northern Spain crossing through the Pyrenees to France and back by train.
I always like to read about the area I’m travelling through and so much better when these are stories by local authors. Irene Solà is a Catalan writer, artist, and award-winning poet and this collection of interlinked short stories combines nature writing, magical realism, and literary fiction into a distinctive and innovative work of imagination unlike anything I’ve ever read before.
I particularly admire writers who try to capture the non-human and non-living voices in the landscape and I love the way Sola gives voice to the dead, the mythic, the elements, and the animals as much as she does to the human characters in her multigenerational story of mountain life.
"Sola pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory." - C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold
When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war.
But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the…
Trying to write from a non-human perspective is a tricky decision for a writer as I think we find it easier to read and write about our own species.
So I really admire Laline Paull’s non-human stories (like Bees and Pod) and the way she writes from the most difficult first-person point of view. While it is impossible to truly understand what goes on in an animal’s head, Paull does an incredible job of pulling us away from our own narrow window on the world and making us to look at ourselves from the diverse perspectives of the marine animals and the dramatically changing world we’ve forced them to live in.
Be warned though, this book may appeal to younger readers, but it also has some quite confronting scenes.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION, 2023
'Knocked my socks off . . . it is set entirely in the ocean. It's not science fiction. It's realistic. It's set in the here and now . . . And it's fascinating' Barbara Kingsolver in the New York Times
'A pacy, provocative tale of survival in a fast-changing marine landscape' Daily Mail
Bestselling author Laline Paull returns with an immersive and transformative new novel of an ocean world - its extraordinary creatures, mysteries, and mythologies - that is increasingly haunted by the cruelty and ignorance of the human race.
Koalas regularly appeared in Australian biologist Danielle Clode’s backyard, but it was only when a bushfire threatened that she truly paid them attention. She soon realized how much she had to learn about these complex and mysterious animals.
In vivid, descriptive prose, Clode embarks on a delightful and surprising journey through evolutionary biology, natural history, and ecology to understand where these enigmatic animals came from and what their future may hold. Deeply researched and filled with wonder, Koala is both a tender and inquisitive paean to a species unlike any other and a call to ensure its survival.
