Tales of a Patchwork Life: A Memoir of the Stories That Keep Me by Brighid ‘Biddy’ McLaughlin (Mercier, €19.95)
Journalist Biddy McLaughlin’s wise, self-excavating life stories full of melancholy read more as a novel than a memoir. Accounts of jet-setting and celebrity interviewing give way to alcoholism, murder and life-threatening illness. “The tears keep coming, waves and waves.” Written perhaps primarily for those familiar with McLaughlin’s life and writings, Tales of a Patchwork Life manages to extend its appeal to anyone with a curiosity about journalism or late 20th-century Ireland. Everything about these stories – bar the famous figures encountered – feels contemporary. The only drawback is McLaughlin’s tendency to lose her thread, occasionally reintroducing the same people and anecdotes. If anything, this roughness only adds to the patchwork charm. Emily Formstone
Calls May be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes by Katharina Volckmer (Indigo Press, £12.99)
To describe this novel as reserved may seem unusual. However, whereas Volckmer’s previous novel, The Appointment, explored a German woman’s sexual fantasies about the Führer, this examines the more restrained fantasies (sexual and otherwise) of a queer Italian working in a call centre. If you’re wondering about the tone of the novel, consider the epigraph borrowed from Thomas Bernhard – “Instead of committing suicide, people go to work” – or the cover art, wherein a gender nonconforming worker derives pleasure from their headset. High on slapstick and low on humanity, this novel will make you feel. You may enjoy that feeling. You may not. Brigid O’Dea
The Afghans: Three lives through war, love and revolt by Asne Seierstad (Virago, £25)
“Killing is easy, being killed is easy. Governing fairly is something else”. The last time Norwegian author Seierstad wrote about Afghanistan was in her bestselling The Bookseller of Kabul, at a time when the Taliban had fallen from power. Now they are back. The Taliban’s ascendancy is told, through the portrait of three main figures: Jamila, a women’s rights activist, whose disability granted her a freedom rare to her gender; Bashir, a Taliban commander who began his jihadist journey at the age of 12; and Ariana, whose future lies at the centre of the tug of war between competing ideologies. With a lens focused on women’s lives under the patriarchal regime, The Afghans is a gripping tale of violence, oppression, hubris, distrust, bravery and dogged resilience. Brigid O’Dea
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Holding The Line: Women in The Great Arizona Mine Strike by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber, £16.99)
Holding The Line is, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver, “the book nobody knows about”. First published in 1989, it charts the pivotal role that women occupied in the Great Arizona Miners’ Strike of 1983-1984, which would prove a seminal event in the history of industrial conflict. Published this year for the first time in the UK, Holding The Line is a prescient and discouraging read. “The four decades since I wrote this book have not been kind to workers of the world,” Kingsolver notes in an updated introduction to the book. The tenacity and sorority of the strikers shines in Kingsolver’s telling, though her narration, at times, doesn’t match the power of this remarkable story. Brigid O’Dea
I Hope You’re Happy by Marni Appleton (Indigo Press, £12.99)
Marni Appleton delivers a thunderous first collection of stories in a distinctive, wholly contemporary style. She presents a world besieged by digital communication and prey to viral trends at every turn. After an Insta snap of a supermodel scarfing a hot dog sparks an online vortex, a woman stops eating and adopts the new fashion of veiling her mouth. Two best friends conduct their fractious relationship exclusively by text. A rape victim’s girly peers collectively decide she is guilty, and their subsequent bullying is as lethal as a crowd-stoning. The joy and bewildering horror of being young and female in the 21st century, trying to negotiate traditional relationships and plain old human desire, is parsed in pithy, dark and often ruthless scenarios. Crystal-sharp dialogue and a keen sense of humour throughout make this a thoroughly engaging read. Helena Mulkerns
The Keeper of the Bees by Eimear Chaomhánach (O’Brien Press, €19.99)
Bees are alchemists, turning pollen and nectar into wax and “liquid gold” honey. They love the colour blue, gather closely and slow their wing beats for safety during forest fires, and like to be kept up to date with family news. From the time of Aristotle, the founder of scientific beekeeping, they have fascinated us. Eimear Chaomhánach’s beautifully presented and illustrated book, shares a gentle pride in her father’s lifelong care of these essential creatures, delving into beekeeping etiquette through folklore and fairytales that surround the matriarchal communities which work tirelessly to generate their own food and heat sources in an elegant illustration of self-sufficiency. It’s the perfect read as we wait for winter’s cold fingers to loosen their grip and allow spring to arrive. Claire Looby
