-
Jan 12, 2025 | 
irishtimes.com | Ruby Eastwood
Recently I saw a man on his hands and knees, moving with slow determination down an alley in Temple Bar. It was late and there was a cold wind blowing in from the river. I would have carried on walking but I was with two friends, and one of them went over to check whether the man was okay. When we reached him, he looked up at us with confused hostility. “Hey, man, are you okay?” my friend asked. It took a while to get anything out of him.
-
Jan 10, 2025 | 
independent.ie | Ruby Eastwood
FictionOn a bright summer evening, a woman waits with her bicycle on a lane near an exclusive gated neighbourhood in rural Ireland. When she hears a car, she waits at the bend, counting the seconds until it turns into her, and she feigns an accident. So begins Mary Watson’s atmospheric thriller The Cleaner. It’s a story of escalating horror, and that horror is class. As a cleaner for the ultra-privileged, Esmie slips by unnoticed.
-
Oct 25, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Ruby Eastwood
Laura McLoughlin’s The Many Ghosts of Donahue Byrnes carries the same romantic, autumnal and gently spooky tone as the John Mayer lyric that inspired it: “We can dance with the dead, you can rest your head on my shoulder if you want to get older with me.” The story begins with the funeral of Donahue Byrnes, the charming and enigmatic owner of Ballinadrum Hotel. The heroine, Mia Ann Moran, a young waitress, is the only person mourning Donahue.
-
Oct 14, 2024 | 
booksirelandmagazine.com | Let’s Dance |Lucy Byrne |Ruby Eastwood
by Ruby EastwoodLet’s Dance is a study of claustrophobia. Each of the stories in the collection enters the feeling from a different angle. The kind of entrapment Lucy Sweeney Byrne so unflinchingly describes is specifically feminine and modern.
-
Oct 11, 2024 | 
irishtimes.com | Ruby Eastwood
The American No Author: Rupert EverettISBN-13: 978-1408714195Publisher: AbacusGuideline Price: £20When pitching a story to Hollywood executives, you might be met with dazzling enthusiasm. “You leave the meeting walking on air. It’s in the bag. Then you never hear another word. It’s called the American No.” This showbiz in-joke is the framing device of Rupert Everett’s collection of short stories, born out of 20 years’ worth of movie ideas nobody wanted to put on.
-
Oct 11, 2024 | 
irishtimes.com | Ruby Eastwood
The Jesus TrilogySpace Upstairs, Project Arts Centre★★★★★At the beginning of JM Coetzee’s novel The Childhood of Jesus, the first part of his Jesus trilogy, travellers are carried by ship to Novilla, a place where all the rules are different. When they disembark, they are assigned new names, and their previous lives are forgotten. It’s a premise uniquely suited to theatre, where actors step into another identity and follow the internal logic of the stage.
-
Sep 20, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Ruby Eastwood
FictionFlorence Gillan’s third book opens with an unnamed woman flushing someone’s ashes down the toilet. This disturbing act sets an eerie tone that only intensifies as the novel progresses. Tangled Web is driven by its protagonist, Eimear Martin, who we meet during a moment of crisis. Her beloved mother Claire has recently died in a car crash, and her engagement to Donal ends after she uncovers his infidelity. Likeable and brimming with warmth and common sense, she is devoid of self-pity.
-
Sep 13, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Ruby Eastwood
Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything celebrates beauty in ordinary, complex, parochial livesFictionAmerican novelist and author Elisabeth Strout. Photo: Getty‘This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old when we are speaking of him.”So begins Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything, a portrait of an ordinary man who “would never believe he had anything worthy to document”.
-
Sep 6, 2024 | 
irishtimes.com | Ruby Eastwood
We value your privacyWe and our 83 partners store and access information on your device, such as unique IDs in cookies. This is done to process personal data. To take these actions we require your consent, which you can provide through the banner options. You can manage your preferences and object to processing based on legitimate interest at any time in the privacy policy page.
-
Aug 13, 2024 | 
irishtimes.com | Ruby Eastwood
ISBN-13: 978-1804440438Publisher: Footnote PressAuthor: Rebecca K ReillyPublisher: Hutchinson HeinemannThree novels shortlisted for this year’s Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize – Hanako Footman’s Mongrel, Rebecca K Reilly’s Greta & Valdin, and Josie Ferguson’s The Silence In Between- display the exciting thematic scope of new writers. In Mongrel, Hanako Footman weaves together the seemingly unconnected stories of three women that converge at the novel’s close.
