In the Movie of Her Life
By Claire Hennessy (Doíre Press, €16)
Claire Hennessy’s background as an angsty young-adult-fiction writer is felt in her debut book for adults. In the Movie of Her Life is a deeply felt collection of short stories with unusual range. A teacher fantasises about her student, a girl reckons with her mother’s suicide in an alternate dystopia, the relationship between two failing stand-up comedians breaks down, and a woman marries a woodchopper in a medieval forest. Formal tricks abound: expeditions in the second person, tense shifts, stories written as numbered lists or report forms. Despite these surface differences, the stories are thematically similar, perhaps too much so. Thwarted love is held up to the light to be turned around and around, yet nothing new is discovered. Ruby Eastwood
In the Good Seats: Essays on Film
(PVA, €15)
Following two lauded essay collections on music and animals, this short, dreamy set of meditations is for cinephiles and bibliophiles alike. These pieces are of interest because they track how writers in particular relate to film and understand its influence over their work and lives. The “good seats” have varying locations and meanings, yet the best essays of the bunch are those where the focus is not on the film but, instead, on the person in the seat. The collection shines when, rather than mulling over art-house classics, writers find something worth seeing in horror, blockbusters or even “terrible cinema”. In contributor Susannah Dickey’s words, the ones that don’t “force [their] inner armchair literary theorist to chew over the films like they were novels”. Emily Formstone
Unkind
By Victoria Smith (Fleet Books, £20)
Unkind presents itself as a feminist critique of civility culture, exploring the pressure on women to “just be kind”. But rather than offering a nuanced analysis of how femininity operates in society, Smith’s argument quickly reveals a preoccupation with rigid biological and social boundaries. She positions transgender women’s rights as inherently at odds with those of cisgender women, a framing that abandons critical inquiry in favour of agenda-driven rhetoric. The book hinges on the false necessity of trans-exclusionary feminism, suggesting that defending trans women’s rights is mere virtue-signalling; disregarding feminism’s historical evolution as a movement built on including those once excluded. What could have been a thoughtful interrogation of gender and power instead becomes a one-sided polemic that is more invested in deepening divides than fostering understanding. Liz MacBride
Frail Little Embers
By Fija Callaghan (Neem Tree Press, €9.99)
This collection of 21 illustrated short stories brings together a cast of characters including a selkie, a swan maiden, a shape-shifting fox, the Darling children who have become lost men, and a PhD student who gets trapped in fairyland while interviewing its inhabitants for her thesis, among others. The stories embed magic in the everyday – coffee shops, pubs and pavements out of which magic peeps between the lines of stories told among friends, keeping them warm amid a cold, sometimes uncaring world with which we’re all familiar. Magical realism can be an acquired taste, but if you suspend belief and open your heart you can be swept away by questions that might not have straight answers – the point of the question is the quest itself. Claire Looby
The Memorisers
By Rosemary Jenkinson (Arlen House, €15)
Jenkinson’s debut novel begins with an Orwellian quote. Two pages later; a “mental health warning” is issued. What follows is a work of satirical speculative fiction that explores both the sinister nature of war and what is referred to in the blurb as “the west’s current assault on free speech”. A lot for one book. Too much, one might argue. Set in a post-nuclear war dystopia between “the West” and Sino-Russian forces, the novel was sparked by a visit the Belfast author made to the Ukrainian frontline. As to the story itself? The author’s ideological drive comes at the cost of the narrative. There’s a love story there, but little to it. Having enjoyed Jenkinson’s previous collection of short stories, this debut novel disappoints. Brigid O’Dea
Angels in the Cellar
By Peter Hahn (Little Toller Books, £20)
For anyone who lingers on the fantasy of retreating from modern life to work as a winegrower in some bucolic setting. Peter Hahn perfectly captures the quiddity of such a quest: plenty of magical moments, yes, but he gently dispels romantic notions a reader may have, too. Wine-growing in the main is made up of meticulous, methodical and downright hard work, with small margins of material reward. This is an account of spiritual reward, however. Following a work-related breakdown Hahn realised he needed change, finding an answer on a small farm with a vineyard in the Loire Valley. He’s cordial company in the precarious cycles of agriculture, and 16 harvests are behind him and his wife Juliette (an invaluable presence) now, documented with a steady, thoughtful, pragmatic eye. NJ McGarrigle
