Books like A Place Apart — picked by fans

Set in 1975, Louise Kennedy’s novel deals with some themes particular to Northern Ireland and its sectarian characteristics, such as the challenges of navigating conversational and attitudinal hurdles when engaging with someone from the ‘other’ community and the travails of undertaking ‘everyday’ tasks against the invasive background of the security situation. 

However, I liked that the work also dealt with wider issues, such as differences in expectations and behavior in rural and urban settings and the impact that class and education may have on social interactions. I enjoyed the novel both as a love story between the young Catholic barmaid and the older married Protestant lawyer (who doesn’t like a love story?) but also as an observational analysis of the conditions in Northern Ireland at the time and their sad outworkings on the lives of people only peripherally involved in the politics of that society.   

I am sometimes put off by ‘big’ sprawling works of history, that cover hundreds of years in hundreds of pages and may end up sitting on my shelf both goading and embarrassing me for my failure to do them the courtesy of finishing them. (Although admittedly, maybe looking good when people pop around!).

Paul Bew’s engaging examination of over 200 years of Irish history is an exception to this. Written by one of Ireland’s most eminent historians, it manages to combine academic rigor with accessibility (no mean feat). Bew offers a survey of the development and course of conflict in Ireland as well as an analysis of the decisions (and mistakes) made by key leaders along the way.

It covers a period much longer than the years Northern Ireland has existed as a political entity, but I found the analysis helpful in explaining its emergence and development.

The emergence of the violent phase of the conflict in Northern Ireland (euphemistically known as ‘The Troubles’) in the late 1960s has been subject to much debate over the years. But there is a danger that, given what happened once the violence erupted, its origins and their complexity have been obscured. 

Many now see the conflict as simply about which jurisdiction should have sovereignty over the region. I like that Bob Purdie’s book on the civil rights movement (CRM) brought nuance and complexity back into the debate. The tendency of some books to either downplay the CRM or portray it as just another facet of the constitutional/jurisdictional question is avoided (and indeed refuted) in this book.

Purdie encourages us to question the structures and politics of Northern Ireland before the violence started and to examine the relationship between the CRM and the violence that followed it. The book made me… show more.

Michael Magee’s novel is a cracking exploration of life in contemporary Belfast. The examination of a young man’s quest to find some direction and economic stability whilst working in precarious employment had me hooked from the outset. His attempts to deal with the fall-out from a casual act of violence and his romantic/friendship dilemmas seemed to sum up well the struggles many faced in their early 20s, between university and their ‘future’ (alas, a distant memory for me now). 

So far, so rite of passage-y. But what I think makes the book an informative read on Northern Ireland and its conflict is the fact that the impact of that violent period is an ever-present but infrequently acknowledged factor in a book set 30 years after the violence (largely) ended. When it does appear in the novel, it is often unheralded, disruptive, and fleeting. This made me reflect on the extent… show more.

This book is set in a time period and situation, the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, which I knew well, which is what drew me to it in the first place. It is a classic espionage thriller that pitches two men against each other. Like all good books, it has that air of authenticity.

I sympathized with Harry Brown, who was sent to Belfast to hunt down the killer of a British Cabinet Minister. I found its air of tragedy invigorating, and it has quite a twist in the tail. I know it got my juices flowing to create my own agent. It, too, was made into a TV series with memorable music.

Although the poet Michael Longley was a Titan of the Irish literary landscape, many of my favorites among his poems are the tiniest of things. In this collection (which is almost his last), he catalogs the birds and creatures that populate his little corner of Ireland.

Like the ‘peasant poet’ John Clare before him, he has an eye for the particular–for the sound a bird makes or the shape of its nest. These miniatures are exquisitely beautiful and I treasure each one for its precision and truth. 

A masked IRA gunman presses a bullet into a small hand. He warns the boy he’ll put the same bullet into his father if instructions are disobeyed. It’s a pointed detail because it happened. The author was that boy. This story glides between fiction and nonfiction in search of truths about two rural murders and a vanished informer. But, as we have been learning here, dissecting darkness reveals only darkness. At heart this is a tale of a family’s composure, of a faithful bond to land, of being at odds with truths and lies. And that omnipresent terrain, with its moving shadows and thorny wilds, played witness to it all. This story takes place near where I grew up. It has stayed with me longer than I’m used to.

Tara Doherty has come to live in Connemara following the death of her husband. She’s distraught and lonely here in "the back of beyond." Until a mysterious stranger rents a little cottage close to Tara’s. James Dunford, she learns, is Irish-born but lived in the USA. He spends his days fixing up his cottage and walking the beach with a stray dog. As time goes by, Tara learns from a local villager that James is not what he seems and that his motive for renting the cottage is far from conventional. She confronts him, and their two lives intertwine in an unexpected way, in a tale told with exceptional erudition.

Highly atmospheric, engaging and perceptive, Sunsets Never Wait plunges the reader into a bleak Connemara landscape and the tortured lives of two lost souls. It’s a page-turning exploration of the weight of secrets and the courage it sometimes takes to… show more.

A comprehensive history of the IRA from the 1916 Easter Uprising to the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles in the 1970s.

Bell did extensive research, interviewing many IRA veterans, and he offers insights on the organization’s high points and low points, of which there were many. What I liked best, though, was Bell’s writing – his words bring these people and events to life.

This is a master class in investigative journalism and in nonfiction storytelling. Radden Keefe is one of my journalistic role models, and this book about the troubles in Northern Ireland is gripping from page one as it investigates the 1972 murder and abduction of Jean McConville in a way that probably only a foreigner could do, given the sensitivity of the topic. It is a vital historical document, a gripping thriller, and an empathetic social observation all in one.