Never Understood: The Jesus and Mary Chain by William and Jim Reid – pleasantly spiky, unpleasantly needy
Sort-of autobiography of the band recounts the lives of its founding members, William and Jim Reid, in their own voices
Finding Mangan review: Innovative biography breathes vivid life into elusive poet
Bridget Hourican redefines biography in her engaging capture of neglected Famine poet James Clarence Mangan
New poetry: Paul Muldoon; Rory Waterman; Katie Donovan; and Harry Josephine Giles
Vona Groarke reviews Joy In Service on Rue Tagore; Come Here To This Gate; May Swim; Them
Who Killed Una Lynskey? by Mick Clifford – Garda heavy gang under the spotlight in the investigations of two disturbing 1970s murders
The author claims the infamous Garda squad decided on the narrative in the cases of Una Lynskey and Marty Kerrigan and built the evidence around it
The New India. The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy: a country with a very dark side
Being outnumbered by Muslims is a constant Hindu fear. Add to that Narendra Modi’s increasingly autocratic rule and what emerges is very far from a shiny India
Modernism in Irish Women’s Writing review: Great insights into work of female writers
Paige Reynolds argues women tend to adopt apparently realist modes of fiction but that experimentalism still creeps in
The Watermark by Sam Mills: Bizarre and dizzying novel-within-a-novel
Audacious narrative is filled with engaging characters and entertaining dialogue
Best new children’s fiction, from a crime-fighting duck to an inspiring introduction to art
The Tall Man by Mary Cathleen Brown; Evil Duck and the Feather of Fortune by Chris Judge; Cath Howe’s Muffin and the Shipwreck; Olivia Hope’s Little Lion Girl; This Book Will Make You An Artist by Ruth Millington; and First Term at Fernside by Sheena Wilkinson
The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable: An imaginative reconstruction of the life of the most celebrated virtuosa you’ve never heard of
Anna Maria della Pietà, a protegee of Vivaldi, is portrayed as having a synaesthetic appreciation of music as a spectrum of colours
The Invention of Charlotte Brontë by Graham Watson: How the influential 1857 biography of the writer took on a life of its own
Watson’s generally close adherence to the biographer Elizabeth Gaskell’s viewpoint enables effective narrative structuring, but excludes further exploration
Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan: ‘Companion’ novel to The Spinning Heart is a welcome return
Ryan’s prose is a masterclass in balance, which lets him get away with lines that could seem overwrought in less capable hands
Well, Holy God by Patsy McGarry: An eternal life as a religious correspondent in turbulent times for Irish Catholicism
McGarry is notably fair to all sides, despite him often being perceived by many insiders as a liberal crusader intent on damaging the Catholic Church
Accidental by Tim James: Scientific breakthroughs that only occurred because of slip-ups, disaster and chance
A grisly accident that resulted in part of someone’s brain being sliced out became a foundation stone for the emerging field of neuroscience
Translated fiction: books by Stefanie vor Schulte, Atsuhiro Yoshida, Maddalena Vaglio Tanet, Adèle Rosenfeld, Gerbrand Bakker and Fríða Ísberg
Reviewed: Boy with A Black Rooster; Goodnight Tokyo; Untold Stories; Jellyfish Have No Ears; The Hairdresser’s Son; and The Mark
Wife review: A spiky tale of love and hate between two women in academia
Charlotte Mendelson has written an intriguing and darkly hilarious book about the collapse of a relationship
The Last Disco: Stardust story puts families and survivors centre stage, validating their truth with empathy and humanity
Authors Sean Murray, Christine Bohan and Nicky Ryan have conducted extensive research into records going back more than half a century, and spent long hours interviewing many of those involved in the justice campaign
Behind You is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj: A humane portrayal of Palestinian life
An intricately woven mosaic novel which humanises Palestinian stories
Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J Bass - Essential reading
Bass is the ideal teller of this important story, as he combines elegance of language with wonderful forensic skill, bringing out how different the war in Asia was
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise review: Gardens excavated as agents of wider world change
Olivia Laing digs into horticulture and gardening to unearth a philosophy of ethics and growth
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler: Trademark cynicism intact in a yarn about millennials low on serotonin and high on snark
The final turn in a novel about a woman who returns home to a Midwestern town called X feels out of place
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