With a tail-off in writing comes an opportunity to read a bit more. Ireland has a rich literary history and this continues through to the present day. I’ve been fortunate recently to read three separate and quite different novels which I review briefly below. You might find something to appeal to you.

The House Where It Happened – Martina Devlin
I always look out for Martina’s column in the Irish Independent where she is particularly hot on feminist issues. She is also an experienced author though this is the first one of hers that I’ve picked up.

Wouldn’t you know – I’m just about to launch a book which revolves around a house with a mind of its own but Martina has beaten me to it! But this is a much different work. It’s an historical novel set in the 1600s, on the peninsula of Islandmagee in Antrim in what is now Northern Ireland. Based on fact, and with diligent research, Martina weaves a tale of a house haunted and taunted by the spirit of the evil Hamilton Lock. It dwells on the apparent possession and witching of an innocent young woman and the subsequent denouncement of a number of local women as witches.

Cleverly written Ulster Scots dialogue give this story a unique flavour, seen through the eyes of the housemaid. The story grips through to the end until the evil is defeated. Or is it?

Sadly the ebook is badly formatted – at least my download was, and this did spoil the enjoyment a little. Maybe best to invest in the paperback version.

Keep Away From Those Ferraris – Pat Fitzpatrick
Nothing to do with cars and all to do with the seamier side of Dublin post-Tiger. The good times are receding rapidly and everyone is looking for a last payday before they disappear completely. Kidnap, extortion, sex. They are all there together with dollops of humour to remind you that nothing is serious about this book. Rather it can be seen as a parody of the Irish management classes that ‘lost the run of themselves’ chasing investments and property ever upwards.

Pat’s book is all good fun, pacy and readable.  It’s a debut novel and I’m guessing that #2, when it arrives, will build on this excellent start.

The Mad Marys of Dunworley, and Other Stories – Paul Kestell
Ah now, here is an off-beat book that I really liked. It’s a collection of five novellas, each of them set in the small West Cork coastal village of Courtmacsherry, indeed in and around the same building.

Each of the stories is self-contained, telling of those who live in the village or who visit for a short while. The characters, the estuary landscape, the surrounding countryside are all described so that you can almost feel yourself there.

In St Joan the narrator is obsessed with the historical character and her dementia leads her to drastic measures when she imagines her misportrayed. Undercover is a strange affair when a reporter infiltrates what he believes to be an illegal brothel. I confess I didn’t quite ‘get’ the denouement here. The Richard Hanley Radio Hour continues a thread of insanity to hilarious effect, but shudders to a horrible end. The Fuschia Walk looks sensitively at the issue of celibacy and temptation among the priesthood.

Then we get to The Mad Marys of Dunworley. You’ll struggle to find Dunworley on a map but I remember it, maybe 50 years on, as a wild, Atlantic beach. Here the author sets the tale of the three sisters who would bathe naked and the young Downs Syndrome girl who meets their spirits many years later. Beautifully written.

Paul has a quirky though engaging manner of writing and I hope he is encouraged to produce more work of this nature.

I always look forward to diving into a debut novel. It’s a scary moment for the author the minute you let go of your work and lay it open to critique by the whole world. There’s no taking it back. You can’t claim, months later, that you didn’t mean to write it in quite that way. The die is cast.

And you pretty well know that it’s unlikely to be perfect and a potential million seller. The writing world doesn’t work like that, though it throws up the very occasional lottery winner for reasons that are often unfathomable.

And I, as a sometime author, always learn stuff from other writers. In Carrie Rubin’s excellent debut novel there is a single and totally unexpected ‘gasp’ moment. If I wasn’t already hooked by the enthusiasm of her writing I was at that moment.

The Seneca Scourge is a medico thriller playing on our lurking fear that there is a disease pandemic around the corner. They have happened before and there are periodic scares of a new virus strain about to escape its origins and run amok. Our female protagonist Sydney McKnight is a newly-qualified doctor at Boston General when the first, unexpected deaths occur. The author uses her own professional experiences to describe how an already fully-stretched hospital suddenly has to find new ways of coping with this new and frightening turn of events.

McKnight is as frantic as anyone to find the answer before it’s too late. She is driven to break into the apartment of famous virologist Casper Jones. Here is the ‘gasp’ moment which drives the story, literally, into a new dimension. Read on to see if the world survives!

A pacy novel, always moving onwards. The author is comfortable in her medical knowledge and language though the likes of me have to take her word for it. Well-defined characters set against the background of a busy hospital and McKnight battles to retain her professionalism while dealing with some heartbreaking situations and even the loss of friends and colleagues.

Ms Rubin has set up the prospect of a good series here if that is her intention. An excellent debut.

Anything written by my blogging colleague AMB is always worth reading. I therefore jumped into her debut novel with anticipation. Written in the first person Two Lovely Berries is the exploration by one half of a set of female twins of her relationship with both her sister and her wider family.

Both girls attend the same school and eventually the same college. They are close friends but the raconteur, Abigail, always looks to her marginally older sister Aubrey to lead and advise. When they eventually go their separate ways it is, almost inevitably, to hook up with a pair of brothers with both relations proving to be flawed. Abigail misses her sister badly but the reciprocity no longer seems to be there.

Dad is a workaholic and womaniser, Mum’s only ambition is to see her daughters happily married off.

Thoughtful and incisive, the author ensures the pages keep turning with her flowing style. There is always enough tension between the various parties to want to know how it’s all going to work out, for all of them. The narrator, Abigail, is a character that you root for even though she seems incapable of taking hard decisions without her sister by her side.

Relationship-driven, female readers in particular will like this story and empathise with the narrator.  I did find it rather one-paced, but indeed that is the essence of the Abigail character.

A very good debut novel and I look forward to more in the future.

I guessed Britt Skrabenek’s third book was going to be good. What I wasn’t expecting was to be taken on quite such a roller coaster. It starts a little jerkily with four main characters and three time frames but it soon gathers pace and takes the reader on a great ride.

We follow three young women playing professional baseball together in the 1940s, full of hope and joie de vivre. Nothing can stop them and they form a bond which, though soon broken, is to be re-formed later. The try-out day is portrayed with dash and humour as the ‘girlies’ are discarded and only those with toughness and talent, including the three protagonists Lippy, Toots and Farm Girl, make the grade.

But inevitably the good times end and the women go their separate ways into the real world. Life changes them. Love is won and lost. It is 1950s America which has just seen the landmark Brown v Board of Education court ruling desegregating black and white students. Here Britt’s research comes into its own with its intimate portrayal of Chicago life of the time. She specialises in fashions and her characters, male and female jump right off the page. Through her characters the author deals with relationships and the hopes and fears that go with them. Inter-racial relationships are examined in the light of attitudes of the day.

There are some beautifully worked passages. I loved the drive-in movie scene with Nola and her son. I was glad, at the end of Chapter 26 I wasn’t reading in public – I was in floods and had to take a break.

Whether intentional or not I saw the modern day character Jacks as an extension of the author herself in an omniscient role, together with mental cat. And it is through Jacks that it all came together at the end with an awesomeness that had me gasping.

Meticulously researched, humorous, poignant, entertaining. Britt’s best work yet.

Follow Britt’s blog here

Francis Geunette did it again. It isn’t easy to emulate an impressive debut novel, but Guenette manages it very well simply by building on the same formula.

It is certainly advisable to have read Disappearing In Plain Sight as the residents of Crater Lake are reintroduced to the reader several months on. The often-complex relationships between the characters are the strength of these stories, and in one or two cases these have moved on. Izzy and Liam are now a firm item whereas the intriguing Beulah/Bethany relationship is showing signs of fracture.

We were left wondering what would become of young Lisa-Marie. We soon find out as she rocks up again at the remote Crater Lake location pregnant with Liam’s child. Well, I’ve never known the arrival of a baby have such a huge knock-on effect on a community. Major drama which involves Lisa-Marie’s aunt Bethany, Liam of course, Lisa’s sort-of boyfriend Justin plus the consequent waves that occur. Readers from large families might have cause to smile.

Micah Camp, a residential refuge for disturbed young people, is an ideal device for introducing new characters. But, crucially to the story, Liam’s father turns up out of the blue with a young lad Robbie who steals the show.

Without any real plot or perceived endgame this story might have drifted. But Guenette has a great knack of giving each of her characters distinct personalities. Her storyboard technique maps the relationships and complex sub-relationships so that the reader is engaged throughout. The pages keep turning, an attempted suicide and a crazed gunman add spice when things might be moving too slowly.

I love the Beulah/Bethany relationship in particular, two entirely different women who are just destined to be together even when the barriers seem unsurmountable. And the central character, Izzy, is a saint and is the glue that seemingly keeps everyone else going in extreme circumstances.

The closing pages, with several goodbye scenes, would make a stone cry. But the author surpasses all with her beautifully-crafted ending which echoes the story’s title.

Very much a book for women but I still loved it. Guenette is a craftswoman who lets her work see the light of day only when she is sure it is as good as she can make it. Another five stars and I’m pleased that there’s a further work in the Crater Lake series in the pipeline.

This is crazy. I know a writer ought to read widely so as to improve one’s own craft but when you find yourself part-way through four books – never mind the others lurking – then something isn’t quite right. Here’s a list of my present reading:
Unfinished

• The Irish RM (Somerville & Ross) – A truly excellent collection of stories written at the start of the 20c, but losing its sparkle at 2/3 of the way through.
• Is It Really Too Much To Ask? (Jeremy Clarkson) – A collection of his bumptious Sunday Times articles, best read in the bathroom. Just started.
• Keep Away From Those Ferraris (Pat Fitzpatrick) – A contemporary action novel set in Dublin. Just started.
• A N Other – One I promised to review but I am trying to gather the strength to pick it up again.

Next on the list

• The Light Never Lies (Francis Guenette) – Fellow blogger/writer’s second book which is sure to be excellent and which I’ll definitely review; I’m trying not to read other reviews in the meantime.
• The Wily O’Reilly (Patrick Taylor) – Excitingly I’ve been sent a copy for review by the author’s New York publishers!
• Flood (Richard Doyle) – Recommended by my brother who is rarely wrong, an apocalyptic story which questions why so much of the UK’s resources are concentrated in a small and vulnerable area.

What happened to those far off days when we used to slouch around complaining we had nothing to do? Now don’t we all wish we had a gadget that would produce more time on demand?