HOMETOWN OF John B Keane and Bryan McMahon, Listowel, Co Kerry, is also host to one of Ireland’s most established arts festivals – Writers’ Week.
Central to the celebration now in its 40th year is the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, past winners of which include John McGahern, William Trevor and Sebastian Barry.
This year's shortlist, announced in Dublin yesterday, brings together the current One City, One Book selection, Joseph O'Connor's Ghost Light, a romance inspired by the love of playwright JM Synge for Molly Allgood; one of last year's Man Booker contenders, Room, by Emma Donoghue, which is also a favourite for this year's Orange Prize; and an exciting debut in the form of William Ryan's atmospheric thriller The Holy Thief,set in Russia in 1936.
Also on the list is Mistakenby film-maker and writer Neil Jordan; and a further confirmation of an intelligent and astute selection made by judges Kate O'Toole and journalist John Boland is the inspired inclusion of Claire Keegan's brilliant short story Foster, now in an extended version.
A previous winner of the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award, Foster is a remarkable work and is both influenced by and a celebration of the traditional short story. John B Keane and Bryan McMahon would both have been impressed by it. Equally, Emma Donoghue's Room, which explores the intense relationship a mother has with her small son while both are imprisoned by an exploitative captor, fulfils Keane's belief that literature should tell us about society.
The Irish thriller genre has been consolidated by a large group of writers producing international fiction, much of it based in Dublin. The inclusion of William Ryan’s first novel is an important acknowledgment of the strength of the Irish thriller, although his book looks to the history of the Stalinist era.
Two very different faces of Dublin emerge from Ghost Lightand Mistaken. While O'Connor looks to the Edwardian Dublin of Synge and Yeats in the early sequences of a novel that follows Molly Allgood from youth to old age in London, Neil Jordan in Mistakendraws on the city of his youth and evokes the cinemas, bars and literary clubs of the 1960s and 1970s. His narrator is tormented by regret and a malign coincidence, yet is comforted by memories.
Keegan’s intimate study of a young girl’s discovery of a different kind of love stands shoulder to shoulder with four novels: but can it win? We will find out during Writers’ Week, which runs from June 1st-5th.
The Shortlist Irish Fiction Award:
Emma DonoghueRoom
Neil JordanMistaken
Claire KeeganFoster
Joseph O'ConnorGhost Light
William RyanThe Holy Thief
