The Dublin-based writer of the acclaimed novels "Ghost Wall", "Summerwater" and "Names for the Sea" picks her favourite books. Her new book, the memoir "My Good Bright Wolf", is out now.
The Grasmere Journals
This been in my pantheon since I was a PhD student trying to reconcile my subversive respect for domestic skills with scholarly ambition. In a time and place where it seemed that baking and research were inimical, and that no one would take seriously the research of a woman who made jam, it proclaimed that kitchen work, sociability, art and scholarship could be interwoven as the stuff of a good life.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf, 1929
Woolf seems to offer the opposite view, that without property and solitude there can be no writing, but it's much more radical. She returns to the body and its needs, insisting on the necessity of pleasure, of abundance rather than adequacy, and she's way before her time in describing the inseparability of patriarchy and white supremacy.
Ordinary Notes
Christina Sharpe, 2023
Sharpe's book is, among other things, "A Room of One's Own" for modern times, exploring the conditions in which we might practise decolonised, anti-racist art and scholarship. It's a work that invites return, reflection, rereading. I'm still near the beginning of my conversation with it.
All My Puny Sorrows
Miriam Toews, 2014
There are many novels I reread, but most of them are predictable. I ration my returns to Miriam Toews's "All My Puny Sorrows", a model of how to look darkness in the eyes and giggle. It's about a single mother, her friends, her suicidal sister and their mother. It's sad and smart and funny and I quote it at sad and smart and funny moments.
The Book of Delights
Ross Gay, 2019
I didn't read "The Book of Delights" for ages because I thought it would be sentimental. I was wrong. Each essay is a delicious little controlled explosion of joy, which is activism in a broken world.
-
Striking homes with indoor poolsFeature Featuring a Queen Anne mansion near Chicago and mid-century modern masterpiece in Washington
-
Why are federal and local authorities feuding over investigating ICE?TODAY’S BIG QUESTION Minneapolis has become ground zero for a growing battle over jurisdictional authority
-
‘Even those in the United States legally are targets’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Striking homes with indoor pools
Feature Featuring a Queen Anne mansion near Chicago and mid-century modern masterpiece in Washington
-
One great cookbook: Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson’s ‘Kismet: Bright, Fresh, Vegetable-Loving Recipes’the week recommends The beauty and wonder of great ingredients and smart cooking
-
Film reviews: ‘No Other Choice,’ ‘Dead Man’s Wire,’ and ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’Feature A victim of downsizing turns murderous, an angry Indiana man takes a lender hostage, and a portrait of family by way of three awkward gatherings
-
Courgette and leek ijeh (Arabic frittata) recipeThe Week Recommends Soft leeks, tender courgette, and fragrant spices make a crisp frittata
-
A modern ‘Lord of the Flies,’ a zombie sequel and Jodie Foster’s first French-speaking lead role in January moviesthe week recommends This month’s new releases include ‘The Plague,’ ‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ and ‘A Private Life’
-
How to rekindle a reading habitThe Week Recommends Fall in love with reading again, or start a brand new relationship with it
-
Avatar: Fire and Ash – third instalment feels like ‘a relic of an earlier era’Talking Point Latest sequel in James Cameron’s passion project is even ‘more humourless’ than the last
-
The Zorg: meticulously researched book is likely to ‘become a classic’The Week Recommends Siddharth Kara’s harrowing account of the voyage that helped kick-start the anti-slavery movement
