94 Books Like Antarctica

This is one of my favorite novels and one that I can’t stop recommending. There isn’t a word wasted in this intimate and evocative novel which is based between Ireland and New York.

The protagonist, Tess Lohan, was born in Ireland in 1944. Through Tess, we are given a ringside view of Irish life in the 40s, the harshness and stoicism, the distance between family and that which is unsaid. Tess takes us from Ireland to New York City in 1962 and the challenges of loneliness and joy of an Irish immigrant.

We see her struggling as a single mother and an ironclad friendship with Willa, a person of color from Mississippi who shares her apartment block. We see tragedy during 9/11 and follow Tess into old age. I almost mourned when I finished this novel. 

This book is not a memoir per se, but it reads like a memoir.

Such a short book, but so packed with emotion and beautiful writing, as the protagonist attempts to find her place in the world. Although our family situations couldn’t have been more different in terms of the countries in which we grew up, and our family structure, I deeply identified with the protagonist’s feeling that she didn’t belong, wasn’t really part of the family situation in which she found herself. I read it months ago and it has remained with me.

The main character Ellie is strong and resilient. I loved that she went to America to make money for her injured husband’s sake, was flung into a world in New York City that was so unlike rural Ireland, met with temptations, and found her way out. Ultimately, it’s a love story (not romance per se) and I found myself rooting for Ellie throughout the whole book.

Colm Toibin is one of my favorite writers. The drama in his novels is found in quiet moments with portraits of ordinary characters that we get to know and love. Nora Webster is a 44-year-old woman living in a small town in Ireland. We meet her soon after her husband dies, as she grieves amid navigating her new life with four children and little income.  

Through Toibin’s exceptional character development, we become immersed in Nora’s journey: her realization of feeling confined by the well-meaning expectations of her neighbors; her relationship with her sons as she struggles to parent them through their grief; her growing self-reflection as she awakens to her hidden strength. We cheer her as she achieves her newfound independence.

This is my favourite book from my all-time favourite author. I will never forget reading this for the first time, in my then-boyfriend’s flat at the start of our relationship. I ignored him all day (it’s ok, we ended up married) until I’d read it cover to cover. Marian Keyes knows how to pack a devastating emotional punch within her witty, entertaining novels and this is one of the most brutal. It’s a crystal-clear insight into grief, a book that made me sob uncontrollably, and there is no one better at presenting the frustrations and comforting joy of family dynamics and friendships. I don’t think there is any other book that has wrought so many tears from me, both of sadness and laughter.  

Enright’s middle-aged main character is richly drawn and every bit as gorgeous as her beautiful and troubled adult daughter.

This is a story about mothers and adult daughters building each other up and tearing each other to pieces at the same time. I laughed, I cried, and I read it all over again.

Life Without Children is a collection of ten short stories by Irish author Roddy Doyle. Nearly all the stories are set in Dublin and feature characters who are middle-aged or older men who are struggling to find a sense of purpose in their lives while confined to their homes during lockdowns. Some men lash out in anger at their partners. Others make the best of things, finding moments of intimacy and connection and forging stronger relationships with their adult children and wives. One of the few stories to be written from the perspective of a woman features a nurse who is shattered by the deaths from COVID of her patients. The stories in this collection are often bleak, but there are many poignant and even droll moments.

Gill Paul’s Titanic Love Stories tells the fate of the thirteen honeymoon couples that boarded the doomed ship. It tells stories from society’s elite to third-class passengers from a small country Irish town. Beginning with JJ Astor, Paul tells the story of a man who risked everything for a woman he loved more than anything, showering her with flowers and books to win her favour. In Madeleine, Astor found a future that promised happiness – something he had not had in his previous marriage. Madeleine would love him in a way Astor had never been loved before, who had suffered through a contentious divorce brought by his ex-wife’s extramarital affair. The book finishes with Neal and Eileen McNamee, a newlywed couple that fell in love the moment they met, with Eileen teasing Neal about his moustache and “funny” accent. Eileen converted to Catholicism in order to marry the man she… show more.

To understand the history of Irish immigrants in America, you first need to study the country they left.

Breandán Mac Suibhne’s The End of Outrage examines traditions of rural violent protest in nineteenth-century Donegal, the county where many of the Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania originated. Intriguingly, MacSuibhne also uncovers a significant degree of reverse migration and cultural influence from Pennsylvania to Ireland.

His title contains a triple pun: the word “end” refers to the goal of Irish agrarian protest, the termination of that tradition by the famine and mass emigration, and the failure of subsequent generations to acknowledge what happened.

Perhaps no book has moved me more than Ireland by Frank Delaney. 

Through a series of tales told by an itinerant storyteller the author paints a series of haunting, vivid portraits of Irish history. Each story stands alone, but over the course of three nights of story-telling, the pieces of this mosaic come together, revealing a clearer history than most history books could hope to present. 

Delaney reaches deeper historical facts and allows a rare glimpse into how people felt and what they believed. I felt that I was listening to the storyteller, rather than reading words. This presents the Irish people in a unique and engaging light.