Three years after its first publication, Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These was Ireland’s bestselling book of 2024, buoyed by the release of the film adaptation starring Cillian Murphy and its place on the Leaving Certificate curriculum.
Told over just 116 pages, the story of a coal merchant’s crisis of conscience when he discovers a young girl is being abused by one of his biggest clients, a Magdalene laundry, in New Ross in the 1980s, became the shortest book to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022.
Keegan’s novel sold 58,882 copies in the Republic last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, which compiles the publishing industry’s official charts. It is the third year that it has featured in the Irish top 10, and it has now sold more than 130,000 copies in the Republic alone.
Long Island, Colm Tóibín’s sequel to his most successful novel, Brooklyn, was the second bestselling book, with 51,358 sales, closely followed by former Irish rugby international Johnny Sexton’s autobiography Obsessed, which sold 48,256 for Sandycove, making it the top-selling book by an Irish publisher.
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Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, finished fourth, with 46,918, while Graham Norton’s fifth novel, Frankie, was fifth, with 38,257. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover, Ireland’s bestselling book of 2022, was sixth (30,705), followed by Dav Pilkey’s children’s book Dog Man 12: The Scarlet Shedder (28,710).
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Ireland’s Book of the Year in 2023, was eighth (27,967), while Prophet Song, Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize winning novel and Ireland’s bestselling book of 2023, came ninth (26, 641). The top 10 is completed by Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hot Mess (26, 623).
Other titles in the Irish adult fiction top 12 were: My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes (11th overall); It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover (13th); We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (15th); Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan (16th); and No One Saw a Thing by crime writer Andrea Mara (17th).
Apart from Sexton’s autobiography, the top 10 nonfiction titles were: Hector Ó hEochagáin‘s The Irish Words You Should Know (12th overall); Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan (14th); Joe Canning: My Story (19th); Rozanna Purcell’s The Hike Life: 50 More to Explore (20th); Money by David McWilliams (22nd); Atomic Habits by James Clear (23rd); The Racket by Conor Niland (28th); This Boy’s Heart by John Creedon (34th); and Bored of Lunch Healthy Slow Cooker by Nathan Anthony (37th).
Richard Osman dominated the UK charts. We Solve Murders was the bestselling title with 482,909 sales, and The Last Devil to Die in second place (423,118), just ahead of It Ends With Us (419,507). Nathan Anthony had the bestselling book by an Irish author, selling 182,943 copies of Bored of Lunch: Healthy Slow Cooker. Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo was 31st (161,726), followed by Andrea Mara’s No One Saw a Thing in 37th (148,996).
Other Irish titles to feature in the top 500 were The Bee Sting (61st); Sam McBratney’s children’s classic Guess How Much I Love You (99th); The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods (150th); Small Things Like These (170th); Sally Rooney’s Normal People (177th); Prophet Song (286th); Kala by Colin Walsh (312th); The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (361st); Long Island (409th); My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes (434th); Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (463rd); and Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll (484th).
Nielsen BookScan covers 70 per cent of all retail sales in Ireland and 90 per cent in the UK.
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