First Quarters Round Up - Jan to March Book Releases 2013

The year so far has been great for book releases. Reviews on these pages have covered many exciting new books, several of which went into the Irish bestseller lists. Other releases from UK publishers that have been of interest are already plentiful but several caught my eye.

January saw the launch of Wool by Hugh Howey, Pow! by Mo Yan and Tenth of December by George Saunders in fiction.
       

Wool is part of a trilogy with Shift due out this month and Dust in October. A dystopian fiction described as the next Hunger Games the release of all three parts in the same year is a good marketing plan. Mo Yan's Pow! is dark humour as an elderly monk listens to his novices tales of low life, sin and excess. George Saunder's new collection of short stories comes from a master.

 How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti has been longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. A mix of real emails, transcribed conversations and fiction make this an innovative post-modern novel.

February releases of interest included Gone to the Forest by Katie Kitamura, described as one of literature's rising stars is set in a country in political turmoil.
    
Following his success with Maps for Lost Lovers, Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden is set soon after 9/11. Exodus by Lars Iyer is the final part of a trilogy, a black comedy about academic institutions.

March saw Mohsin Hamid came to Dublin to promote the release of  How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia a story of the rise from poverty to tycoon in modern Asia. 

    
The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee is a story of relocation, new identity and learning new language told by a very great writer. Rupert Thomson's Secrecy is a love story set in Florence in 1691 where repression is everywhere.
 The Spanish author Javier Marías's new book The Infatuations is ultimately a murder novel but one reimagined in its structure.

April releases and comments on future releases to come soon.

My Father's House by Bethany Dawson

The subject of flawed families seems to be a theme in the books I am reading at the moment. But isn't every family ultimately flawed and every book that addresses this issue will find a sympathetic and interested readership. My Father's House by Bethany Dawson, her first novel, tells of a son's reluctant return to the family home, from his comfortable life in Dublin to County Down.



To leave a rural landscape and travel to Dublin is a well trodden path. Bethany Dawson's story tells of a return and addresses how Robbie, the main character, faces up to what he left behind and what he has chosen to forget. The reason for his extended period away with no return visits soon begins to reveal itself in the character of his hard and cold father whom his mother has left and who is left living alone in his farmhouse in its advanced state of decay and who has a serious health condition.

The dynamics of the family are skillfully revealed. Robbie's two sisters help him to see both what he has tried to not accept and what he could not see. His mother's new relationship and home is a further challenge for him to come to terms with and the ultimate acceptance of his father's fragility brings both emotion and humanity to this powerful story.



As the second debut novel I have read and reviewed this week, the skill of Dawson's story telling is plain to see. An absorbing story, it is one that makes us question our obligations to our parents, their own need to live full lives and the complex relationships which are families.

My Father's House is one of those books that, although quietly understated, stays with the reader after the final page is turned, to drift back into the subconsciousness as the parting message is further thought about and considered.

My Father's House is published by Liberties Press www.libertiespress.com

Love is the Easy Bit by Mary Grehan

A great read has just been published. A debut novel for Mary Grehan, Love is the Easy Bit is well written, interesting, multi-layered and ultimately a love story - albeit that of learning to love. Addressing the taboo subject of a mother who admits to herself that she has never loved her child and feels that she has never been a good mother, this novel is real in its story telling and sometimes frightening in its honesty.

 

The primary relationship in this family is between Sylvia's daughter Kate and her father. Loving and normal, this feeling is alien to Sylvia for reasons that are explored as the story develops. Never unrealistic or over dramatic in its exploration of the psychology of Sylvia's need to explore her life and its past, this novel brings up the subject of what we give up when we move into different stages of our life and how some people are more ready for this forward progression than others.

"Get on with it" and "move on" are phrases easily showered upon those who are held back by the memory of past missed opportunities or seem unable to cope with what is considered to be a natural act. But motherhood is not easy or for some instinctive. Addressing post-natal depression without ever naming it, the acceptance by Sylvia that this was what she was actually experiencing is slowly revealed as she examines her life through the eyes of her sister and mother. Through this exploration more family secrets are revealed and aspects of Sylvia's life that she had chosen to shut off rather than accept exactly what they meant

 

As Mary Grehan's first novel this is a fine accomplishment. Stylish writing and an intelligent story keeps the reader interested throughout. To feel sympathy for a main protagonist who is ultimately presented as flawed is a show of a skilled story teller and Grehan's name is one to be looking out for in the future.

Love is the Easy Bit is published by Penguin Ireland www.penguin.com