Rick O'Shea

When a copy of a book proclaims it is “announcing the greatest American writer you may never have heard of”, you’re setting a high barrier. Best be careful you reach it… The eponymous Lucy is recovering in hospital in New York from what should have been a relatively simple operation. Her long-estranged mother appears at her bedside one day and, over the course of the time spends there, Lucy examines both the history of her life until then and the nature of her relationship with her mother. It’s a slow-burner, gently rambling, full of evocative descriptions of present and past, meaningful pauses and […]

As I might have mentioned when I started rattling on about how many books I was going to read this year, I’m also making a conscious effort too read more non-fiction. I used to be great at it (there were whole years when the vast majority of everything that traipsed around with me in my bag was sociology, politics, history, film or science based) but particularly in the last 12 months or so I’ve had so much interesting, readable and just extraordinary fiction coming my way that “fact” sort of fell by the wayside… This was a great place to […]

Yes, I know. It’s like me not reading Dickens until 2 years ago. Everyone has blindspots in their reading history… So, briefly (as there are thousands of reviews of this fairly seminal book online) it’s hugely readable, begs for more and deserves its place in both literary esteem and importance. The only thing that occurred to me as a reader in the 21st century is that for some you would have no idea of how shocking the material must have been when it was published in 1960. These days a young girl moving up to Dublin and getting drunk, having […]

I hate to say that this is one that came in earlier in 2015 and that I shamefully skimmed over the blurb of. I’ve said it here before but finding a great thriller is such a rare thing for me that I tend to skim over the blurb and if I don’t feel immediately engaged… Then I heard Declan Burke reviewing his best crime books of the year on Arena and immediately his explanation of what this was actually about made me dig it out from under the piles in the sub-TBR shelf. I’m so glad I did. A cult […]

You might remember that in 2014 I set myself the challenge of reading 100 books that year. I even wrote a newspaper column about it, chatted to Sean Rocks on Arena when it was happening, wrote a blog post about how I proposed to do it, finished the challenge with 1 day to spare and even had a lovely spreadsheet made up for me about the breakdown of the books. Last year I didn’t repeat it for a couple of reasons; I was mentally knackered after 2014, it had come to be a bit of a chore in the last […]

Right, for this I apologise wholeheartedly. Last year not only did I manage to read but also write reviews for 100 books. This year I’ve read less and even then have been so busy that I’ve allowed a backlog of reviews to develop. Thus, as today is my last day with blogging time before the end of the year, I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a stack of books all in one post with two line reviews. Who knows? Maybe you’ll prefer it this way… Book 41 – Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson: I’ve had this […]