95 Books Like Seek the Fair Land

I marveled at the human spirit expressed so vividly in this book when it became clear it would be impossible to survive when torture and death swirled about as if the prisoners were held in a wind tunnel when all that was left was to steal personal items off fellow fallen prisoners in order to barter and live another day, I prayed for the sun to rise just one more time for Lale and his love, Gita so that they would one day tear their tattered prison garb off and hold onto each other outside the gates of hell.

How sad, yet miraculous, having the job of tattooing the number on the arms of Jewish prisoners helped to ultimately liberate Lale. I burned through this novel at breakneck speed, all the while soaking in the simple yet utterly visceral prose. This book gave me hope that love will outlast hate… show more.

This book could almost be a study on psychology.

The writing itself is so stunning that I could get lost in the words themselves. But at its heart, the novel captures something about mistakes and ego and lifelong consequences that makes me want to cry. The progression over the course of the protagonist Briony’s life is painfully beautiful.

It’s one of those books that are so great that it’s hard for me to even describe how it makes me feel.

I first read this book in my teens and it profoundly affected me. The storyline is set in Dublin from 1907 to 1914, when a third of the city’s residents were destitute. Large families lived in single rooms in the dilapidated former homes of wealthy landlords. The author weaves the lives of his fictional characters into the workers’ revolt and great lockout of 1913, a tragic time for the ordinary people of Dublin. In spite of this, there are wonderful scenes of kindness and self-sacrifice that a close-knit community will often provide. I feel this book greatly influenced my own writing decades after first reading it. 

This is an eyewitness account of the Great Hunger in Ireland for the years 1847-1849, written by an American woman who felt pity for the poor Irish immigrants fleeing their native land. Her first trip to Ireland was just before the Great Hunger and although conditions were bad then, they were much worse on her second visit. Her accounts allow the reader to see what takes place through her eyes and they are harrowing at times. Not only does the author inform us of the dire situation of the poor but she also pays tribute to those who lost their lives in the struggle to help others. This was one of the books I used as a reference while writing my own series.

This fine introduction to both the Irish themselves, and their tortured history, was first published in 1947 by this respected commentator. The only way to really understand Ireland is to dissect the many distinctive population groups -- their peculiarities of religion, social outlook, political ambitions, and allegiances --  and then to see how the mixture of these complex streams determined the country's history, with positive but also calamitous results over many centuries. O'Faolain deals with the indigenous Celts, the interloping Normans, the increasingly acquisitive English, and how the tumultuous interactions between them produced the core of Irish society: its peasantry, the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, the clergy, politicians, rebels, writers, and dreamers. The only thing O'Faolain missed, because he didn't live to see it, was the emergent, and now dominant, middle class of the Celtic Tiger. A beautifully written book. 

In a Glass Darkly is a collection of unusual Gothic tales. The shorter stories provide the foreboding inevitability of the genre, with atmospheric hauntings and ghostly floating eyes. Fans of M. R. James or H. P Lovecraft will appreciate these.

In addition, the collection features two novella-length stories. Carmilla, an early and influential vampire story, and "The Room At The Dragon Volant", which is a romance horror. Carmilla inspired many of the elements Bram Stoker used in Dracula. Both these longer stories are atmospheric and wonderfully picturesque in their descriptions of the people and places.

I find so true this depiction of a family cruelly affected by their father’s grim past as an IRA commander, which has turned him into a strict, even cruel, disciplinarian.

I shuddered with empathy with the children and wife and rejoiced in the eventual escape of the sons he beat while still, in the end, feeling for him and his loss of their love.

I read it years ago, and it always stayed with me, so I recently recommended it to my reading group and read it again. I was no less moved.

This fictionalized account of the infamous Grace O’Malley’s life heavily impacted the creation of the main character of Windfall, Captain Liana Foley. I loved how Llywelyn wrote Grace/Grania as a leader, thief, lover, and mother, giving depth to the legendary pirate. She portrays her as equally powerful as she is human.

Notorious for its violence, the 17th century is also a time of sweeping change. Change ignites resistance. When I first started researching Irish history, I was well aware of Cromwell’s march, and soon discovered much more and perhaps worse. How could people survive under constant threat and fear? How could humans justify such cruelty? This book examines several horrific events, the people and the policies that allowed them to happen—in the interest of learning from history that which we should never repeat.

Elizabeth Bowen once described the Ireland-England relationship as ‘a mixture of showing-off and suspicion, nearly as bad as sex’. Her 1928 novel demonstrates this beautifully, eviscerating the attitudes of  Anglo-Irish grandees in their Big House as the country around them crackles with guerilla war and showing the incomprehension between the Irish (at all social levels) and the British soldiers sent ostensibly to keep the peace.

Though it ends in tragedy, social comedy, as so often, shows the brutal realities beneath the surface. And the atmosphere of the Irish landscape, at once idyllic and brooding, comes alive in Bowen’s supercharged prose.