A Second Life by Dermot Bolger.
New Island: €13.95. Kindle: €6.96. Sean Blake, a press photographer and father of two young children is involved in a near fatal car crash outside the gates of the Botanic Gardens. His heart stops for a…
Maureen Gallagher
As a child, Maureen spent a lot of time with her grandmother – time she spent reading voraciously. Maureen taught in primary schools in Dublin for a few years, ending up in a school for travellers…
Tom McGrath.
Tom had a happy childhood until his parents died. “I was at boarding school at the time,” he says. “I was 14 when my mother died, and my father died a year later.” He met…
Claudia Carroll
Claudia Carroll is unlucky in love. She’s had a terrible time on dating sites – never, ever, meeting anyone she clicked with, and when, one day, she read a story of someone’s date from hell, it…
Eoghan Daltun
As a child, Eoghan spent a lot of time outside, mucking about. “We played a on bits of wasteland,” he says. Leaving school, Eoghan moved to London and learned various practical crafts like welding. And…
Shane Cradock
As a child, Shane loved sport, and drama. “I was always putting on plays for my friends and family.” After college, he worked for Bord na Móna. “I was on the graduate programme working in New…
My Top Books of 2022.
These Days. Lucy Caldwell. Faber: €1820. Kindle: €9.24. It’s Spring 1941 in Belfast, and the inhabitants are starting to hope that they’ve escaped the worst of the war. But in the four nights that comprise the…
Sara O’Donovan
Brought up in the world of horseracing, Sara has been a lifelong show-jumper. “My father was a jump-jockey, and then a head lad,” she says. “I loved pony books – and at ten I wrote…
Bronagh Curran.
As a child Bronagh wanted to be a poet. Then, after BBC’s watching BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, she wanted to adapt classics for film and TV. After college she landed a job writing features for the…
Talking Ghostwriting.
I’m often asked to talk to the press about the art of ghostwriting, but this article, prompted by Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, is the most comprehensive I’ve contributed to. Journalist Patrice Harrington, writing in The Sunday…
Florence Gillan.
As a child, reading a book a day, Florence was terrified that she would run out of books. “It was such a relief when I first went to the library,” she says, “and realised that I…
Fiacre Ryan
Fiacre has autism and is non-verbal, but he loved having stories read to him as a child. Favourites included Horrid Henry, Harry Potter, and history books. “My mother, who is a teacher, read me a…