Podcast Corner: Irish Books does exactly what it says on the cover
Emma Donoghue's work featured in the first episode of the Irish Books podcast.
Hosted by Chris Murray, a lecturer in literary studies at Melbourne’s Monash University, features “intelligent discussion” about contemporary Irish writing.
Each episode explores a single book in detail, by authors ranging from prize-winners to those they say deserve more notice. They include Paul Lynch, Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín, and Sebastian Barry.
The first episode, released last week, saw an in-depth conversation between Murray and historian Dianne Hall into Emma Donoghue’s 2025 novel . Here’s what we learned from the opener.
Whether you’ve read or not — it went under the radar last year — Murray and Hall set up the plot and leave the listener ready to hear more. They say that from the outset, Donoghue signals that the train is “heading straight for disaster”. It's based on a historical disaster but the action remains tense because we don’t know exactly what form the disaster will take or how it will unfold.
Irish Books promises intelligent discussion rather than fawning praise. After Murray reads a section showing how the train itself is a character in the book, Hall says: “The thoughts of the machine are possibly the lesser-effective or successful devices that Donoghue uses.”
Murray offers: “It's like a modern computer that tells you something is wrong with this all the time.” Historical research From 2022’s Haven, about the early Irish church, to Room, adapted into an award-winning film, we’re told that Donoghue loves doing research for her books.
Hall says: “The novels that she's written which have historical detail that I, as a historian, know about, I find the least convincing, and the ones where she's writing about historical periods I don't know about, like this one, I find I'm really wrapped in it.. So I suspect I'm not the audience that she's writing these historical novels to.”
isn’t the only new book discussion podcast to start last week. ( ) kicked off It’s hosted by Dominic Sandbrook and producer Tabitha Syrett.
They did a mini series together last year on all things books and because they enjoyed it so much, they’ve decided to roll it out as its own show. Syrett says they’ll examine the historical context of some of the biggest books of all time, the people who wrote them, the unexpected stories around them — and, of course, the plots themselves.
The key thing, says Sandbrook, is that by the end of each episode you’ll be able to pretend to people that you’ve read the books. The first episode focuses on while upcoming episodes will feature and
