Four novels and the 2023 Booker Prize

Irish authors more and more have been at the forefront of exceptional literary publishing in recent years. There are so many I could mention, but Louise Kennedy (Trespasses), Anne Enright (Actress), Kevin Barry (Night Boat to Tangiers), and Maggie O’Farrell (Hamnet) are the ones that immediately come to mind, and of course Claire Keegan (These Small Things). So I wasn’t too surprised when four Irish novels appeared on this year’s Booker Prize 2023 longlist of 13, “the most ever in a single year,” as expressed by the BBC. Sebastian Barry and Paul Murray’s novels among the longlisted four are available in U.S. bookshops and libraries now. The other two are coming in November and December.

For those who don’t know the Booker Prize, it’s one of the world’s top literary accolades given to a novel authored by a writer of any nationality, written in English, and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The shortlist of six will be announced next week.

Elaine Feeney’s How to Build a Boat is her second novel, a story about a 13-year-old boy who wants more than anything to build a Perpetual Motion Machine and to connect with his mother, Noelle, who died when he was born. “In his mind, these things are intimately linked,” the Booker Prize description says. “And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him.” How to Build a Boat is due to be released in the U.S. November 7 by publisher Biblioasis, whose publicist kindly sent me an advanced reading copy. She described the novel in a hand-written note as “a wide-eyed and optimistic story about a neurodivergent boy growing up without a mother inside a Catholic boys school in western Ireland.” Lots here to interest me, especially the optimism.

Paul Murray’s novel Skippy Dies was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010. Two copies sit on my bookshelf, one of them the paperback version in two volumes (the novel is more than 600 pages). I still plan to read it, but should I read The Bee Sting first and continue to skip over Skippy? The Bee Sting is similarly quite large at 645 pages, so it’s not like I can whip through both. That would be like whipping through War and Peace or Richard Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. The Booker judges call Murray’s new effort “hilarious and heartwarming,” which makes it quite appealing. So, too, the claim that it’s “an addictive read.” The plot description of this epic family drama goes something like this: Dickie’s prosperous car business is going under, his wife is selling her jewelry on eBay, and their teenage daughter is binge drinking her way through finals while their 12-year-old son contemplates running away. “So where did it all go wrong?” appears to be the catch point, the digging in, and finding the answer. But why does Skippy die? Oh dear. I have no idea what I’m going to do.

I’ve read Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time and can attest to its award-worthiness. It’s a stunning and unforgettable story. The narrative opens with former police detective Tom Kettle enjoying his newly retired life in a small living space annexed to a castle by the Irish Sea. That changes when O’Casey and Wilson, two former colleagues, arrive at his retreat seeking advice about a long-ago case involving murder and pedophilia. “‘We know that you had a right old time with the priests in the sixties. I mean, in those days—'” O’Casey begins. Kettle becomes agitated and interjects, “’Ah no, Jesus, no lads, not the fecking priests, no.’” He’s a fascinating protagonist who at times wonders if he’s going mad due to the unreliability of his memories and the occasional present-day disorientation. The raw portrayal of child abuse is difficult to read, but the realism feels necessary to honor the truth of it. Barry’s rich, engaging prose style, Kettle’s remembered life, and the mystery at hand create powerful storytelling.

The Booker Prize website describes the Prophet Song by Paul Lynch as an “exhilarating, propulsive, and confrontational portrait of a society on the brink.” That society is the Republic of Ireland “in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny.” Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police greet Dublin scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack at her front door intent on interrogating her husband, a trade unionist. “As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?” Told without paragraph breaks, the book has a breathless, claustrophobic atmosphere, according to The Guardian. I’m hesitant to read what feels of this time, a story about totalitarianism erasing Ireland’s democracy, and yet I can’t seem to turn away. On sale in the U.S. from Atlantic Monthly Press December 12.