First Thoughts
Gill & Macmillan, €16; Ebook pending
Review: Terry Prone
Take one happy, healthy baby, just a few months old. Administer, among others, the old whooping cough vaccine. Watch the child turn from a cheery babbling little sprout into a silent, withdrawn infant incapable of response, relationships or independent action. Take care of the child until it becomes impossible. Visit the withered, skeletal teenager until he dies at the age of twenty two.
That’s the story of Vera Duffy’s book. Or one side of the story. The State says Alan Duffy was abnormal from birth and that vaccination had nothing to do with his decline and death, even though, as his mother points out, a safer pertussis vaccine was introduced after she brought controversy to the issue, alongside a screening process.
Vera Duffy’s account of the impact on a mother and family of a son’s disability and her search for acknowledgment and apology is passionate, personal and infinitely sad.
Rachel JoyceDoubleday, €8.82; Kindle £6.79
Review: Natalie Bowen
Six months into his retirement the shy, quiet Harold Fry receives an unexpected letter from a former co-worker, Queenie Hennessy, telling him she is dying from cancer.
He sets off to post a letter of consolation, then decides to walk from Devon to her hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed in the belief that if he can reach her she will live.
Rachel Joyce’s debut novel is an unassuming yet gripping work, as the typically English everyman meets dozens of characters on his long journey north, each sharing a glimpse of their burdens and struggles.
The story is deftly told through Harold’s leaps in recollection and it’s darkly humorous yet heartbreakingly sad in its observations of family life and the numerous ways it can break down.
We slowly learn about a mysterious devastation 20 years previously, and while the unassuming Harold seems just an observer, his own humdrum story is the most intriguing of all.
Nora Roberts Piatkus, €8.82; Kindle, £9.49
Review: Sandra Mangan
Nora Roberts has been described as “the most successful novelist on planet Earth”, and The Witness, her 200th book, will do nothing to halt that run of best-sellers.
It is classic Roberts fare, with a complex, slightly off-the-wall heroine, a hunky hero — and a storyline that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
At 16, Elizabeth Fitch is destined for greatness. Her consultant surgeon mother has a master plan for her only daughter — and nothing is going to stand in its way.
Until, that is, Elizabeth rebels. And that one night of teenage rebellion is destined to change her life forever.
Every Nora Roberts fan knows that romance is at the heart of her novels — but here she skilfully interweaves a plot worthy of a top thriller writer.
It’s a winning combination — but keep a tissue handy.
Andrew Motion
Jonathan Cape, €33.50; ebook, €16.66
Review: Scott Dougal
If writing a sequel to another author’s much-loved book is a risky venture, then offering a what-happened-next to a classic like Treasure Island is hazardous indeed.
But, with Silver: Return To Treasure Island, Andrew Motion pulls off his high-wire act — delivering a fine work which the Robert Louis Stevenson of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde would admire.
Motion finds Jim Hawkins a disillusioned pub landlord and the action, therefore, settles on his son, also Jim.
The younger Hawkins is persuaded by Long John Silver’s daughter Natty to return to the island where their fathers found fortune and where things have taken a turn for the decidedly nasty. This is not a children’s book.
Familiarity with the original is not essential, although anyone who has not read it is denying themselves a treat.
And, if Motion lacks Stevenson’s narrative flair, he uses a poet’s touch to bring the island to life.
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