Book Reviews | Literature & Books Reviews |The Irish Times

Tom Hanks’s short story collection is like a box of chocolates

Uncommon Type Review: While twee at times, the collection shows Hanks is more than an actor

The Ninth Hour: An exploration of quietly heroic lives of Catholic women in Brooklyn

Bookended by two deaths, Alice McDermott’s ninth novel is concerned with alternative family constructions

Seven Days of Us review: Christmas claustrophobia captured

Sparky debut novel wittily details a family’s not so festive period

Magnum Manifesto review: Idealism behind 70 years of photojournalism

Exploring the struggle at the agency Cartier-Bresson called ‘a photographic utopia’

Sugar Money review: vivid depiction of Caribbean slavery

Jane Harris’s third novel is an unashamedly old-school adventure story in the vein of Robert Louis Stevenson

Sylvia Plath’s youthful letters rescue her from the bell jar

In her own words, Plath’s passion for life and carefree side get a welcome airing

Cold Feet: The Lost Years, by Carmel Harrington

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Devotion, by Patti Smith

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Eamon de Valera: Unfulfilled academic with an iron will

Micheál Martin reviews a rigorous but ‘not sympathetic’ biography by David McCullagh

Lincoln in the Bardo review: George Saunders’ Man Booker Prize winner

George Saunders’s first novel focuses on the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie. Despite its highly original conceit it’s his most straightforward fiction

Chris Mullin: far right is driving Europe back to dark age

‘Go Back to Where you Came From’ analyses the problem well but has few solutions

Devil’s Day by Andrew Michael Hurley review: the importance of folklore proves the strongest refrain

‘Devil’s Day’ is an assured follow-up to ‘The Loney’ that considers the themes of exile, mythology and rural traditions

The Woodcutter and His Family by Frank McGuinness

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History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

The captivating Man Booker shortlisted debut explores the arbitrary nature of justice and the difference between action and thought

Remembering the Troubles review: “a vicious and vengeful time”

Contesting the Recent Past in Northern Ireland makes valuable contribution to study of Troubles memories

Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen by James Suzman

At times a profoundly moving work of literary non-fiction, Dr Suzman’s honest and sharp account is no retread of the ‘noble savage’ theory

Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time review

Hilary Spurling takes us through the life and his many literary friendships, pointing out landmarks and influences which made their way into ‘Dance’ and his other writings

Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes, translated by Frank Wynne review: One of the books of the year, if not the decade

Bold and sophisticated, this thrilling, magnificently audacious picaresque is about France and is also about all of us

Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides review: an uneven collection

For a collection written over such a long period, the stories are strikingly repetitive in structure

In the Name of the Son, The Gerry Conlon Story by Richard O’Rawe ‘is a salutary and important book’

A harrowing story without hagiography, it also shows how our nearest neighbour has not yet grasped that the malfeasance of its legal system sent many innocent people to prison

Brexit & Ireland review: A harsh reality check at the Border

Tony Connolly challenges the wishful thinking that we can avoid a hard border

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s heart-tugging, hilarious and masterful stories

Selected Stories displays Ní Dhuibhne’s gift at interweaving old and new

Bombs, Bullets and the Border, by Patrick Mulroe

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When Black Dogs Sing by Tanya Farrelly

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The bloody Battle of Passchendaele is shrouded in shame for the British

Review: Nick Lloyd’s Passchendaele: A New History

David Bowie: A Life is a flawed but thrilling read

Constructed from interviews with 182 people who knew Bowie, there’s a lot of repetition

I opened Dave Hannigan’s ‘Boy Wonder’ with great expectations

Eamon Dunphy: This sportswriter's memoir of Cork is evocative but lacks wider reach

First Time Ever by Peggy Seeger – an elegy for folk music

There are no sonorous signals of big moments, rather a series of chronological arabesques, which is why this amazing life reads more like a novel

Manhattan Beach review: A luminous New York story

Jennifer Egan dives deep to tell a war-time story, compelling in its vivid intensity

The Rub of Time review: stylistic essays played on male court

Self-declared ‘gynocrat’ Martin Amis applies patriarchal privilege to little real effect

The Sparsholt Affair review: A blitz of gay longing

Alan Hollinghurst is very good on aspects of gay life in a novel to admire, perhaps, rather than love

A distinctive voice on feminism, nationalism and war

Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Suffragette and Sinn Féiner, by Margaret Ward

Latest Freud-bashing tome is based on whimsical hearsay

Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews does little to understand the complex scope of the psychoanalyst’s intellectual canvas

In White Ink by Elske Rahill

A captivating collection of modern motherhood and marriage with plenty of heart

Mrs Osmond by John Banville: An entertaining homage to Henry James

If Banville succeeds in making readers return to Henry James, this lively enterprise will prove a useful and generous gesture to a rich and nuanced American classic

The Innocent of Falkland Road by Carlo Gébler

This is sentimental fare, as much in its picture-postcard Sixties backdrop as its heart-warming if slightly saccharine storyline

Black Rock White City, by AS Patric

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James Joyce Unplugged, by Anthony J Jordan

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The Wireless Past: Anglo-Irish Writers and the BBC, by Emily C Bloom

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Whispers from the past, personal reflections on revolutionary Kerry

Diarmaid Ferriter on ‘Wounds: a memoir of war and love’ by Fergal Keane

You don’t expect to run into the sand with a Robert Harris novel

Munich review: Robert Harris fails to find the tension in Hitler’s rise

The Leavers review: A riveting tale of immigrants in New York

This stunning and fearless debut novel is about adoption and the desire to belong

Sally Rooney on Go, Went, Gone: Timely and compelling

Jenny Erpenbeck’s book is far from perfect, but asks important questions

Edward Lear leaps off the page in a poignant, exciting biography

Jenny Uglow gets to grips with the Victorian poet, painter and polished letter writer

Stephen King and son: the family business is in safe hands

‘Sleeping Beauties’ is an unabashed feminist fable that feels very timely

Travels in a Dervish Cloak by Isambard Wilkinson: Pakistan through its mystics, tribal chiefs and feudal lords

The lone foreigner came to appreciate Pakistan’s spontaneous brand of hospitality, offered by rich and poor alike

Get Me The Urgent Biscuits by Sweetpea Slight

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Paper: Paging Through History by Mark Kurlansky

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In Sight of Yellow Mountain by Philip Judge

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Unfinished Business review: The financial crash and its terrible cost, 10 years on

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe on an IMF insider’s analysis of all that went wrong

Yawningly long: more florid prose from Salman Rushdie

Review: The Golden House is a messy soap opera full of cliche and sexism, writes Eileen Battersby

Crossing the Line review: A vivid account of reporting the Troubles

Susan McKay on Martin Dillon’s memoir of his life and journalism

A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré: moral grotesques and hidden humanity

A glance back to the bleak covert landscapes of the cold war

Inventing the Myth, Political Passions and the Ulster Protestant Imagination

Connal Parr has produced a timely and scholarly monograph on (primarily) playwrights whose backgrounds are generally and deeply influenced by their Protestant upbringing

Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State – Accessible, insightful and even-handed

Andrew Pepper convincingly argues for the benefits of seeing the elements of modernity in older texts and the precedents behind contemporary crime fiction

Clinton’s ‘What Happened’ does not tell what really happened

Review: This well-written account is a catharsis for wounded Hillary Clinton

Operation Trumpsformation review: Rosser’s on form again

Ross O’Carroll-Kelly rugby-tackles class, gender, sexual and actual politics in his new book

One Star Awake by Andrew Meehan: Blackout in the city of light

A debut novel from an Irish author shines on the subjects of trauma and memory loss

Acts of Allegiance by Peter Cunningham: Signs of a great writer

A sharp reminder of what evil can be done in the name of good, and how condescension and arrogance can lead to disaster

The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair

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This Cruel Station by Martin Malone

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Believe Me by Eddie Izzard

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Atlas of the Irish Revolution is mammoth and magnificent

Diarmaid Ferriter: This book distills a huge range of perspectives in an accessible format

The Wardrobe Mistress: Theatrical triumph from a master of English Gothic

Patrick McGrath’s 10th novel is set in bleak postwar London, and steeped in greasepaint

How the fight against ‘poverty and squalidness’ created the welfare state

‘Bread for All’ engagingly traces the creation of the UK’s welfare state

A book tailor-made for the Prefab Sprout fanatic

First part of John Birch’s projected trilogy is full of precise, carefully extracted detail

The Lure of Greatness: the best book about Brexit so far

Fintan O'Toole on how the failure of Britain was deflected on to the EU

A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin: a fascinating and startling read

The author’s dazzling literary career was punctuated by many tragedies

The Taste of Blue Light: An original take on trauma and memory loss

The restorative power of art gets a colourful makeover in this debut YA novel

Ag bualadh clé is deas le Alan Titley

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Flesh and Blood by Stephen McGann

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The Cottingley Secret by Hazel Gaynor

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Worlds from the Word’s End review: wicked wordplay spelling out home truths

Joanna Walsh’s fourth collection of stories shows that, in life, words are not enough

My Absolute Darling: A compelling debut about horribly tainted love

A remarkable California teen comes to a realisation about her predatory father

Essayism review: Its own kind of self-made masterpiece

John Banville on Brian Dillon’s wonderful, subtle unpicking of the essay form

Lovers & Strangers review: An absorbing picture of immigrant Britain

Roy Foster on Clair Wills’s often scintillating study of people who cross borders

David Hayden’s exquisitely weird short story collection

Darker with the Lights On is fizzing with restless energy and dazzling, ludic virtuosity

Levitation review: Short stories that rise to the best of fiction

Sean O’Reilly’s new collection, many of them set in barber shops, is a cut above the rest

Orhan Pamuk’s new novel: a slow-moving drawl of a yarn

The Red-Haired Woman represents a poor effort at a shambolic narrative

Paul Lynch’s haunting and poetic Great Famine novel

Grace review: Lynch’s third novel hints at future greatness despite lapses into pretentiousness

Marian Keyes: the master of authentic female characters

In ‘The Break’, Keyes shows again why she gains readers’ affections like nobody else

Gerry Adams: An Unauthorised Life review – A hard man to get to grips with

Malachi O’Doherty has written better books, writes Susan McKay

Anna by Niccolò Ammaniti

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Refugee Tales II edited by David Herd and Anna Pincus

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A Book of Untruths by Miranda Doyle

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Grant & I review: The bromance at the core of The Go-Betweens

Robert Forster’s memoir of his bandmate and fellow songwriter, the late Grant McLennan, is an honest account of the close bond that powered the Australian band to greatness

Valuable addition to history of Magdalene laundries uses ‘private’ records

Book uses closed archives – which are unavailable to other researchers – to examine the order which ran the two biggest Magdalene laundries in Ireland

Ambassador Extraordinaire: Life of Daniel O’Daly 1595-1662 review

Margaret MacCurtain’s ‘experiment inreconstruction’ demonstrates her effective originality in methodology

When Belfast’s Catholics and Protestants rioted together

In the 1930s a cross-community class politics existed, as Seán Mitchell’s book elucidates

Roddy Doyle’s ‘Smile’: Ha ha ha but ultimately a failure

The novel keenly observes the middle age of its recently separated narrator

True story of a suicide bomb and a heart is a treacly mess

Book review: Despite rich material, Beat neither captures the heart nor engages the mind

We That Are Young review: Whips up a frenzy of injustice

A vivid retelling of Shakespeare’s Lear set in contemporary India by Preti Taneja

My Father’s Wake by Kevin Toolis: moving but unconvincing

Journalist examines how the Irish way of dying and mourning is unique

Melancholy Witness by Seán Hillen

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Jo Cox, More in Common by Brendan Cox

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Wilde Like Me by Louise Pentland

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My Shitty Twenties: A Memoir by Emily Morris

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Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie: provocative work from a brave author

Longlisted for the Man Booker prize, this nuanced examination of the place of Muslims in a hostile world will infuriate some readers and win the hearts of others

Strictly for the Byrds’ fanatics

Requiem For the Timeless Volume 2 review: The sequel to his epic study of the Byrds’ mothership, is essentially a collection of (not so) mini-biographies of the band’s supporting cast and cameo personnel