Heart, Be At Peace by Donal Ryan
The financial crisis has passed and Ireland is licking its wounds. However, the trouble has only just started for this community in rural Tipperary.
Decades-old grievances remain fresh as their first day and, as organised crime moves in on the village, simmering tensions boil over into violence. The 21 characters of Ryan’s masterful The Spinning Heart return to lay bare the workings of their home town in a chorus of confessional-style vignettes.
Ryan really lets the characters shine in this superb follow-up. Fret not, Heart, Be at Peace excels as a standalone too. – Rohan
*Don’t miss our event with Donal Ryan on August 28th – click here for tickets!*
Climbing Days by Dorothy Pilley
This is a wonderfully energetic and recently rediscovered memoir from 1928 by one of the fiercest and most driven pioneers of women’s rock climbing.
This republished edition of the original memoirs cover years of exploration during times where women were considered a liability and too dangerous to climb with, leading to Pilley’s founding of the still-climbing Pinnacle Club, of female “trad” climbers, based in North Wales.
Pilley was a game changing member of the feminist movement at this time, with her memoir acting as a record of her determination both as a journalist and a sportswoman, portraying the ideals of the movement, purely by pioneering the history. – Charlie
The Time of Cherries by Montserrat Roig
It’s springtime of 1974 in Barcelona and Natalia is fresh off the plane from a self-imposed exile of twelve years.
As she catches up with various members of her extended family, she quickly realizes there’s no running away from history – personal or political. The ghost of the Civil War hangs heavy over a city where the younger generation is striving to be more European, more liberated, but no less hard and unbending in their views as those they claim to be leaving in the dust. In this rich family drama, everyone gets a voice: the hotshot brother, the sister-in-law burying her trauma under her husband’s excess, the father driven mad by heartbreak, and the steadfast nanny who witnessed it all.
Like vines reaching out in different directions, stretching back in time and across generations, the characters speak their truth and it isn’t always pretty. Out now in translation for the first time since its initial publication in the original Catalan in 1977, this beauty of a novel is a strong contender for my book of the year. – Laura