Book reviews: Three stand-outs in a stellar year of releases

Alannah Hopkin selects her books of the year, among them Mary Morrisy’s ‘Penelope Unbound’; a large format photo book of Kinsale, and the immenselyreadable Booker Prize winner, ‘Prophet Song’

Mary Morrissy has done a great deal of research into the lives of Joyce and Nora for her novel 'Penelope Unbound'. Picture: Denis Scannell

A welcome addition to the scores of books written about James Joyce, and, more recently, his wife Nora Barnacle, was Penelope Unbound by Mary Morrissy (Banshee Press, €15). 

It is in a unique category of its own, which I suppose must be called speculative fiction, that is to say, fiction that plays games with the facts, and imagines an alternative reality.