Clare O'Beara's 3 favorite reads in 2024

• 2023
• 2024

Peter Brennan has researched the effects of changes on Ireland of the near future. I found the first two books absorbing and at times, stressful. The final act of the trilogy about a flooded, frozen Ireland of the future starts a climatic swing back to temperate. The citizens of new Iceapelago however are in shrinking, isolated groups, with a small young population who don’t have prospective marriages. Two brave young people decide to travel to meet other island communities rather than spend the rest of their lives trying to get enough crops stored for winter. These are natural, understandable decisions.
These are not the only ones, as the beleaguered populace of Portugal, with a hostile climate and not enough food, are sending out a navy to claim new homes. Iceapelago is prime for occupation, and they are armed and ready. The tension is real.
As I am Irish this series really hits me hard, with landmarks I know well and possibilities which seem all too genuine. The ice falling off Greenland, one of the triggers for the sea level rise, serves as a warning to do what we can to prevent further climate change.

This tender and beautifully described memoir shows us a woman isolating herself during Covid lockdowns in a country cottage. We all used lockdown time as best we could – I wrote books and completed college. Nature came to Chloe in the form of a baby hare, a leveret, huddled on a lane. Afraid the hare would be killed by a dog, Chloe took it in and learned how to raise it. The hare grew up and repaid her kindness. I love the human-animal connection which might not have been possible in a year of coming and going, regular visitors and tourism.
Hares have suffered terribly from mechanised farming, Chloe learned, and pesticide use, hedgerow clearance and land use change have removed its habitats. If we want to have hares in the countryside, we must set land aside for their use and corridors for wildlife to let them travel. Recently I saw that Europe has probably lost the slender-billed curlew to extinction, from the same causes. We could, should, and need to do better.

I like the dual time periods, as a student in an English college learns to cope with life away from home, while taking on a history project. She discovers that her relative was a woman rebel during 1916’s Easter Rising in Ireland. We follow that rebellion unusually, through a woman’s eyes, the city of Dublin coming to life with well-drawn characters, hope, terror and sadness. While the rebellion was not an immediate success, it paved the way to independence for the nation and drew international attention.
The focus on women is important for me, and extremely well accomplished.
Our student learns that some rebels in her life are in it for what they can gain, and different rebels are in it to help other people. These are strong lessons for impressionable young persons.