Rick O'Shea

Book Thirty Two 2014:  Love Virtually by Daniel Glattauer I grabbed this straight after the lovely Maria Doyle Kennedy’s reading of the first part in Hodges Figgis on European Literature Night last week. The setup is simple enough – a woman is trying to cancel a subscription by e-mail to a magazine. She mails an address that is one letter out and starts a long running correspondence with the man she accidentally befriends and then becomes something more to… As with so much I’ve read this year I think I might have never picked this up based in the cover but after having heard the […]

Book Thirty One 2014:  Questions Of Travel by Michelle de Kretser So this is book number three after Donal Ryan and Marie NDiaye from this year’s Impac Prize list and all three have been top notch just to differing degrees. This is based around two very simple but different people, one, middle class and from Australia who ends up in London and working as a travel writer before ending up back in Australia again, the other poor and from Sri Lanka who loops from there to Australia for very different reasons. Persist with this one. After about 80 pages I was willing to give […]

Book Thirty 2014:  Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris I’m not reviewing this book. You need to go out now and buy it, simple as. The man is a genius of non-fiction observation and I have rarely laughed as much or as hard reading anything. The only thing better than reading him is listening to him reading it live as I did at the National Concert Hall recently. No, seriously, go out and get a copy. now.

Book Twenty Nine 2014:   The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August by Claire North Harry August is on his deathbed.  a little girl appears at his bedside. It’s the end of his 11th life. A small girl approaches him. ‘I nearly missed you, Doctor August,’ she says. ‘I need to send a message.’ See, you’re either one of two people. That has immediately hooked you and you want to read on (in which case move to the next paragraph), or you think that’s nonsense, in which case go away, I don’t like you. I will, as is my wont, reveal […]

Book Twenty Eight 2014:   Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye This is the second book I’ve read from this year’s International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award list after Donal Ryan’s incredible The Spinning Heart, and I’ll be honest, I picked it from the list because I’d just been through 2 huge 600+ page monsters. More honesty; I read the description on the back page and was pretty sure I’d be bored senseless, lash through it and that would be that. You can probably tell from my tone already that’s not what happened… Three Strong Women is a slightly misleading title as the book takes you […]

Book Twenty Seven 2014:   The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker This one comes much trumpeted as a book that’s already been a huge European hit prior to this English translation. Warner Bros have just bought the movie rights. All I read are sparkling reviews about how it’s the best thing since the last best thing and the future of thrillers. So why didn’t it work for me? Don’t get me wrong, for most of its 600-odd pages it’s a well drawn, atmospheric page turner about a blocked author desperate to write a second book after a sensational first […]