The best books of 2023 so far: Anne Enright, Joseph O’Connor, Liz Nugent, Colm Tóibín and more have their say

Joseph O’Connor

Sarah Davis-Goff’s novel Silent City is a brilliantly powerful dystopian thriller set in the Dublin of the future but it’s a city that’s hauntingly recognisable. Adventures in Wonderland, the wonderfully chatty and indiscreet memoir by Magherafelt-born rock n roll promoter Paul Charles will be relished by all music fans for its account of a life in which the amp often went up to 11. Sarah Gilmartin’s haunting and compelling second novel, Service, is written and shaped with great skill. If there’s a young child in your life, I’d recommend A Limerick Fairytale by Gráinne O’Brien, which is funny, wry, mischievous and uplifting. The Art Thief by Michael Finkel presents the vividly written and outrageous story of an unusual man who stole a remarkable number of artworks. It’s an entertaining book that also manages to say a lot about how value and worth are measured. – Joseph O’Connor’s bestselling novel My Father’s House is published by Vintage. He will give a reading at the John Hewitt Festival in Armagh on July 24th

Fintan O’Toole

Joseph O’Connor’s historical novel My Father’s House manages to be at once a ripping yarn and a profound exploration of moral choices in the worst of times. It follows very closely the real exploits of the extraordinary Irish priest Hugh O’Flaherty in fascist Rome in 1943 as he operates an underground escape route for Jewish refugees and escaped Allied soldiers. With lyrical evocation of time and place, scabrous humour and heart-stopping tension, it combines the pleasures of the ideal holiday read with those of a literary masterpiece. – Fintan O’Toole’s latest book is We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958

Edel Coffey

If you are one of the few people remaining in Ireland who has not yet read Liz Nugent’s Strange Sally Diamond, I have yet to read a more gripping or stunning book this year. If you have read it, two other brilliant Irish novels to try are Elaine Feeney’s How To Build A Boat, a beautiful meditation on love and community, and Claire Kilroy’s Soldier, Sailor, a commando crawl through the trenches of early motherhood. – Edel Coffey is the author of Breaking Point

Colm Tóibín

Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time and Joseph O’Connor’s My Father’s House explore the legacy of the past and show how the power and influence of the Catholic Church comes in many guises. Both books are also explorations of literary style and its possibilities, the art of making it new. Barry’s writing is bravura, superbly wrought, O’Connor’s is cooler, plainer, more ironic. Both dramatise shadows and secrecy, carefully circling the story that has been waiting to be told. – Colm Tóibín’s latest work is The Magician

[ Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry: A dark but warm book of memory, lyricism and death ]

Roy Foster

Pushkin Press have just published a revised, expanded version of Michael Ignatieff’s luminous and beautifully written Isaiah Berlin: a Life, illuminating anew the liberal philosopher’s gimlet-like acuteness, extraordinarily complex and influential life in several worlds, and formidable charm. The legendary 1945 night-long meeting with Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad is in some ways the hinge of the book, and reads like something from a Russian novel. Edward Chisholm’s A Waiter in Paris is riveting in a different way: an Orwellian memoir of life at the bottom of the food chain, laying bare the dark underbelly of la ville lumière. – Roy Foster’s latest book is On Seamus Heaney

Liz Nugent

The Close by Jane Casey. Simmering sexual tension between Maeve Kerrigan and her boss threatens to boil over but solving a crime gets in the way. Jane’s best yet. Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry. Even Sebastian was surprised and delighted to learn that he’d written a thriller. The writing as always, is exquisite. Bill Whelan’s The Road to Riverdance tells the story of the child from Barrington Street in Limerick who grew up to revolutionise Irish traditional music and bring it to a global audience. – Liz Nugent’s latest novel is Strange Sally Diamond

John Self

Three novels about the various ages of woman have thrilled me this year. Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of This Book is a one-of-a-kind account of being a daughter: funny, touching and true. Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, a new mother’s cry of rage, is a slender juggernaut that deserves to flatten all competition. And Lore Segal’s Ladies’ Lunch is a compendium of stories about nonagenarian friends in Manhattan, that I wished were five times longer. Oh, but I can’t forget Paul Murray’s triumphant The Bee Sting, which is the best sort of holiday reading: engrossingly long, incredibly funny, impossibly sad. – John Self is a Belfast-based critic

Sarah Gilmartin

It’s an all-Irish bonanza for the first half of the year. Two striking, immersive novels from literary stalwarts: Joseph O’Connor’s My Father’s House and The Home Scar by Kathleen MacMahon. Nailing the difficult second novel: Elaine Feeney’s How to Build a Boat, Darragh McKeon’s Remembrance Sunday and Una Mannion’s Tell Me What I Am. Stylish, intricate debuts: Michael Magee’s Close to Home, Aoife Fitzpatrick’s The Red Bird Sings and Brendan Casey’s She That Lay Silent-Like Upon Our Shore. And finally, Up Late, the devastating poetry collection from Nick Laird, who had a roomful of people in tears at Listowel Writers Week. – Sarah Gilmartin’s latest novel is Service

[ My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor: A masterful, seamless blend of fact and fiction ]

Lisa McInerney

The late author Tezer Özlü's Cold Nights of Childhood (Serpent’s Tail) was first published in Turkish in 1980, but translated into English by Maureen Freely only this year. It’s a fragmentary, freewheeling novel about one woman’s madness and resilience in a rapidly changing Turkey, and it’s fierce and frightening, but witty and deeply affecting, too. I read it in early June, and I promise it stands up to the sun, despite the chilly title. – Lisa McInerney is an author and editor of the Stinging Fly Magazine

Malachy Clerkin

The Grass Ceiling by Eimear Ryan is a gorgeous memoir about a life lived in sport, specifically a female, Irish, rural life. The writing is by turns lyrical, urgent, wise and bracing – I read it in two sittings. LeBron by Jeff Benedict might be the only book you’ll ever need to read on one of the planet’s most famous people. Sport in Modern Irish Life by Paul Rouse is a wonderfully enjoyable collection of essays on everything to do with sport by the Offaly writer and historian. Finally, How Westminster Works… And Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt is a meticulous, angry and brilliant snapshot of everything that is currently wrong with British politics. – Malachy Clerkin is a sports journalist on The Irish Times

Catherine Ryan Howard

My top crime-fiction pick so far this year is the masterful The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon. Go in blind and be blown away. Hazel Gaynor’s The Last Lifeboat, inspired by a real tragedy that struck Britain’s “Seaevacuee” programme for children during the second World War, is as enthralling as it is heartbreaking. Many a writers’ WhatsApp group was set alight by RF Kuang’s Yellowface – come for the wicked publishing satire, stay for the outstanding literary thriller. (Is it satire though? Hmmm...) – Catherine Ryan Howard’s latest novel The Trap is out on August 3rd

Kit de Waal

Youth by Kevin Curran. Here’s a rasping book, full of the kick and verve of the inner city. Loved the dialogue, the vernacular of working-class Dublin and all the minor and major concerns of youth. It’s easy to forget what it is to be young when looked at from the other end of life but Kevin made me remember the fine line between triumph and disaster with his great writing and love for his characters. Great book. – Kit de Waal’s latest book is Supporting Cast

[ ‘You cannot teach where I teach, and be in my classroom and not feel uplifted, or have hope for the future’ ]

Kit de Waal’s latest book is Supporting Cast

Paschal Donohoe

The Lock Up by John Banville is the next wonderful instalment in the sequence of crime novels featuring the weary, wounded but driven Quirke. Familiar characters abound from earlier novels, including the equally beautiful Snow. How Economics Can Save the World by Erik Angner is not a read for the pool or by the beachside. But as the holidays wind down, and as the mind warms up again, this a fun and highly informative read. – Paschal Donohoe is Minister for Public Expenditure and a regular book reviewer

Martin Doyle

Close to Home (Hamish Hamilton) by Michael Magee is an outstanding debut novel. An authentic, original and entertaining working-class writer’s coming-of-age story set in contemporary Belfast. Soldier Sailor (Faber) by Claire Kilroy, about a mother struggling to cope with a new baby, is simply brilliant, a book you will bond with. I may be biased as I published her first story in English but Yan Ge’s Elsewhere (Faber) is a very impressive collection, demonstrating range and wit. – Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times

Alex Clark

I immensely enjoyed Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, a propulsive tale of a group of eco-activists who fall foul of a rapacious, asset-stripping billionaire in a remote part of New Zealand. Part-thriller, part-fable and part-horrifying vision of the future, it manages to be playful and deadly serious at once. In similar environmental vein, I’ve just finished Richard T Kelly’s gripping novel The Black Eden, a panoramic recreation of the hunt for North Sea oil off the coast of Scotland. –Alex Clark is a critic

Enda O’Doherty

February 1933: The Winter of Literature by Uwe Wittstock is a study of the advent of Nazism and the consequent destruction of democracy and legality. It focuses on the reactions of a group of writers suddenly faced with a choice between silence, perhaps even imprisonment, and exile, from both country and readers. Some, like Mann or Brecht, have long been widely read outside Germany; others are less well-known. Wittstock’s account covers just 46 days and is an enthralling narrative of the sudden collapse of civilised life. – Enda O’Doherty is co-editor of The Dublin Review of Books

Kevin Power

Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special is narrated by a young woman, Mae, who finds work as a typist at Andy Warhol’s New York Factory in the late 1960s; among younger Irish writers, Flattery stands out both as a prose stylist and as an artist who uses fiction to think about our world in sly and subtle ways. Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time (Faber) is a powerful novel about the legacy of clerical abuse in Ireland. – Kevin Power is a critic, academic and author of White City

Mia Levitin

Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, on motherhood, is a marvel. Alba de Céspedes’s 1952 Forbidden Notebook (translated by Ann Goldstein) nails midlife existential despair: it’s the female Stoner! Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss is a laugh-out-loud send-up of Hudson Valley hipsters and clever spin on the trauma plot. And I loved Muppets in Moscow, Natasha Lance Rogoff’s memoir about launching Sesame Street in Soviet Russia, before it was taken off the air under Putin. – Mia Levitin is a critic

[ Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy: An astute, provocative, intriguing novel about motherhood ]

Anne Enright

Two very different poetry collections are keeping my bedside table happy, Ocean Vuong’s thrilling Time is a Mother and Jane Clarke’s A Change of Air. Some of Clarke’s work, in particular, is so close to the way I am thinking now about care and compassion, I feel recognised and lifted by her lines. Elaine Feeney’s How To Build a Boat has a young character, Jamie, with a voice that carries us into the story on a wonderful run of prose: his voice is beautifully rendered and imagined. Packed for my holidays is Lorrie Moore’s latest, I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home – she is such a keeper, I cannot leave a word by this writer unread. – Anne Enright’s new novel, The Wren, The Wren is out on August 31st

Catriona Crowe

Girl in the Tunnel: My Story of Love and Loss as a Survivor of the Magdalene Laundries, by Maureen Sullivan is a harrowing story of familial child sexual abuse resulting in a 12-year-old girl being incarcerated in a Magdalene Laundry instead of being offered the help she needed. A grim reminder of what this country did to certain women and children. Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry is a lyrical, painful, ultimately ecstatic story about clerical abuse and the struggle to recover from it. A real triumph of imaginative fiction, written beautifully. Changing your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence by Michael Pollan – it’s all in the title. A fascinating look at a formerly discredited group of substances. – Catriona Crowe is former head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland