‘Let’s Play Rugby’, say Gordon D’arcy and Ross O’Carroll Kelly
It’s another mixed bag this week, almost all fiction except for a rugby manual for rugrats!
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix, Nightfire, €15.99
Putting girls and young women away in ‘homes’ for unwed mothers wasn’t just the thing to do in Ireland, it was a widespread practice. The mistreatment of those girls was widespread too, just as it was here. It’s 1970 and Neva is 15 years old, pregnant and in deep despair. Her father is driving her to a ‘home’ in Florida, so she can take her punishment on the chin, deliver her baby, have it adopted (or trafficked, as they did here) and carry on with her life ‘as if it never happened’. Indeed.
While incarcerated, she’s given a new name, Fern, in line with all the other girls who have been given botanic aliases. She and her new allies encounter a mysterious librarian who comes by in the mobile library. This librarian has a book on witchcraft and god knows these girls need some magic. And the nightmare begins…
Not just a horror story, Hendrix (a man) captures brilliantly the shame, the abandonment, the deep distress of the girls, now intent on taking revenge on their so-called carers by fair means or foul. It’s excellent.
The Dark Hours, Amy Jordan, HQ, €16.99
Retired Garda Detective Julia Harte has finally fulfilled her dream of owning a small country cottage where she can live out her golden years in splendid isolation. But she’s hardly settled in to the tiny community of Cuan Beag when she’s struck by a blast from the past. A serial killer whose capture defined her career in 1994 has died of a heart attack in prison. In a dual timeline, the reader learns of James Cox’s unspeakable crimes in 1994. And soon after his death, to Julia’s horror, a copycat killer appears. James Cox’s impersonator is primarily out to get Julia.
This novel is tight and taut and tense and thrilling – all the Ts, really – from the first page to the last, and this new Cork crime writer will go far if she can keep up this breathless standard of storytelling. With plenty of ‘off-screen’ tensions cleverly mixed into the plot, it’s a seamless page-turner.
Hope, Andrew Ridker, Farrago, €18.99
This is only Ridker’s second novel and he’s been compared to John Irving, a writer who hasn’t been surpassed when it comes to family tragicomedy. I wouldn’t go that far, and I’m not sure Ridker would be happy with such a comparison, but he’s certainly a clever and engaging author and while he’s not as riotously funny as the young Irving, he’s got plenty of tongue-in-cheek wit, which is a breath of fresh air when one considers some of his contemporaries. Jonathan Franzen is another author he’s compared with, but really, Ridker is his own man with his own distinctive style.
The Greenspans are a wealthy and influential Jewish family living outside Boston. Father Scott is a famous cardiac surgeon, wife Deb a prominent philanthropist, their two adult children are doing well. Scott is involved in a research project, Human Outpatient Pericarditis Evaluation (the H.O.P.E. of the title) and is discovered to have tampered with some blood tests. That discovery spells the end of his illustrious career. And, of course, his family are forced to come tumbling down, too. The fallout is catastrophic. What could such a family do to recover even a tiny speck of self-respect? It’s a clever story, well spun and it pokes endless fun at Ivy League America, where a fall from grace is almost worse than death itself.
Sweat, Emma Healey, Hutchinson Heinemann, €15.99
Revenge thrillers are all the rage right now, which should offer contemporary philosophers some grimy food for thought, but the difference with this one is that it’s penned by the author of the superb Elizabeth is Missing. Maybe it was the setting (a lot of the story happens in the gym) or maybe it’s the endless descriptions of the extremes to which some gym bunnies are prepared to push themselves, but let’s just say there’s a lot of physical exercise in this novel! Which is fine if that’s your thing, but I struggled in parts – it ain’t my thing! When Cassie met Liam, all he wanted for her was to reach her full physical potential, which required some long hours and buckets of sweat. It took Cassie two years in a relationship with Liam to realise this wasn’t about fitness at all, the relationship was about coercive control. And she finally escaped.
She’s now a personal trainer, and Liam shows up in the gym one day, needing her help to get back to full fitness after a long break. Thing is, he doesn’t know it’s Cassie he’s dealing with, as he’s lost his sight in the intervening period. And Cassie realises that she can easily wreak her revenge on her weakened and physically hampered ex. So she does! How far it will go is the stuff of this unusual novel, where the victim finally gets the power.
Let’s Play Rugby, Gordon D’arcy and Paul Howard, Little Island, €11.99
One of our rugby greats has teamed up with Ross O’Carroll Kelly to produce this hands-on, fully interactive book for tiny rugby fans or players-to-be. Written to facilitate giving rugby a go in their bedrooms or back gardens or living rooms (but mind the telly!), it puts the kids in the boots of a young player navigating a match, using all the skills the pros use to come out on top. Fully illustrated with effective pics from Ashwin Chacko, this picture book will help rugby fans everywhere to make promising little players of their tots. Game on, what?
Footnotes
The Bull’s Arse, Navan’s creative writing group named after the sculpture, is back after a brief hiatus. Fortnightly get-togethers take place in the Central’s Ruby Room, Trimgate Street. Next meeting is Wednesday February 12, 7-9pm. It’s free, friendly and all are welcome.
If there are other creative writing groups around the midlands, please let me know and I’ll post the details here. Email anne.cunningham@meathchronicle.ie.