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Reading Ireland Month 2025

March is Reading Ireland month, an initiative created by Cathy at 746 Books and it is simply a way of being in community, while reading anything written by Irish authors or that relates to Ireland, there are no fixed rules, just the intention to Read Ireland, whatever that means to you! There’s even a Spotify playlist if you’re interested in a bit of musical culture.

Getting a Jump Start

For me that means reading more Irish authors from my bookshelves. I did read two in January, in fact my first read of 2025 was Donal Ryan’s Irish Book Award 2024 winning, heart, be at peace, a novel about multiple characters in a rural town in County Tipperary facing the different issues that face them a decade or so on from his debut novel The Spinning Heart.

Then I picked up a beautiful second hand hardback Water by John Boyne on holiday, and read it on my flight home. It is the first of four novellas in his The Elements series and now I want to read the next three, Earth, Fire and the final one Air due out in May 2025. But not yet, I’m prioritising what I already have!

Reading From the Shelves

A selection of books to read during Reading Ireland month of March

So here is the pile from my bookshelves, from which I will be choosing what to read in March 2025.

There are also three titles languishing on my kindle, which doesn’t get as much attention as it should, because out of sight is out of mind when it comes to reading. So I’m jogging my memory and will try to read at least one of these e-books.

On the kindle I have Listening Still by Anne Griffin, The Quiet Whispers Never Stop by Olivia Fitzsimons and Quickly, While They Still Have Horses by Jan Carson. In physical print I have another Carson The Raptures, that I picked up at the annual Ansouis vide grenier in September 2024.

Audrey Magee’s The Colony (2022) was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Novel award, so it gained a lot of attention and I have been keen to read it.

When Fiction Reminds Us of Those Who’ve Passed

I really enjoyed Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time (2023) and want to read more of his work, so I chose his Dunne Family trio of books, Annie Dunne (2002), A Long Long Way (2005) and On Canaan’s Side (2011) to delve more into his storytelling. I am part way through reading these now.

I love that this collection of novels and the play that was the first in the series, were all inspired by characters from his own ancestral lineage. That inspired me too.

After reading A Long Long Way, I became curious, as I too have an ancestor, born in the same year as his character Willie Dunne (1896), who like Willie, went to France in World War I, was in an Irish regiment and did not return. My ancestor Edmund Costley died on 9 April 1916, in Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium at the age of 19. I’ll be writing a post about him in April.

Historical Re-Imaginings, True Crime, Women’s Lot

I have read two novels by Mary Morrissey, Mother of Pearl (1995) and Penelope Unbound (2023). Morrissey tends to take historical stories and/or characters and re-imagine their lives. Mother of Pearl was inspired by a notorious baby-snatching case in 1950’s Ireland, that she chose to fictionalise, having said that the truth would have come across to readers as unbelievable; while Penelope Unbound re-imagines the life of Nora Barnacle, if in Trieste, Italy, when James Joyce made her wait all day outside a train station for him, she decides to leave.

This year I’m going to read her imagined autobiography, The Rising of Bella Casey (2013); she was the sister of the acclaimed playwright Sean O’Casey, and it is set at the turn of the century Dublin, a social commentary on the lives of women in that era.

Then there is Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (2022), another historical re-imagining, this time of the short life of Lucrezia de’ Medici, a sixteenth century member of the renowned aristocratic House of Medici in Italy. I enjoyed O’Farrell’s riveting memoir I Am, I Am, I Am – Seventeen Brushes With Death (2017), the first of her works I read, and then the multiple award-winning, Hamnet (2020) and The Hand That First Held Mine (2010), so I’m looking forward to immersing in this one.

Irish Non-Fiction

missing persons or my grandmothers secrets unmarried mothers in ireland nonfiction memoir that excavates the truth about silence

There are two non-fiction titles on my pile, Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Claire Wills, author, critic and cultural historian, winner of the Irish Book Award for non-fiction, who has written a family history that blends memoir with social history. She explores the gaps in that history, brought about by Ireland’s brutal treatment of unmarried mother’s and their babies, and a culture of not caring, not looking into or asking questions, rolling back a dark period of its history of loss and forgetting.

The second non-fiction title is the candid Fierce Appetites – lessons from my year of untamed thinking, also subtitled, Loving, Losing and Living to Excess in my Present and in the Writings of the Past by medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle.

The title is a reference to Vivian Gornick’s memoir Fierce Attachments, which is part of what intrigued me, but also the uniqueness of someone finding sense of three dramatic events in their life through medieval literature.

Every day a beloved father dies. Every day a lover departs. Every day a woman turns forty.All three happening together brings a moment of reckoning.

Boyle writes on grief, addiction, family breakdown, the complexities of motherhood, love and sex, memory, class, education, travel (and staying put), with unflinching honesty,deep compassion and occasional dark humour.

Remembering Edna O’Brien (15 December 1930 – 27 July 2024)

Edna O'Brien The Country Girls The House of Splendid Isolation

I couldn’t read Ireland without adding a title from Edna O’Brien, who died in 2024 at the age of 93. In 2023, I read The Country Girls trilogy, made up of three stories The Country Girls (1960), The Lonely Girl (1962), and Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964) released in 1986 in a convenient single volume.

Credited with breaking the silence on issues young girls faced growing up in Ireland, it was a subject she would often return to. She was punished for it, but lead the way for others to eventually follow.

O’Brien described her work in this way:

I have depicted women in lonely, desperate, and often humiliated situations, very often the butt of men and almost always searching for an emotional catharsis that does not come. This is my territory and one that I know from hard-earned experience. Edna O’Brien (Roth, 1984, p. 6)

Cathy at 746 Books and Kim at Reading Matters are spending a year reading Edna O’Brien and are reading Country Girls in February, you can see their reading schedule for the year if you go to their blog.

I have decided to read one my shelf, The House of Splendid Isolation (1991), the first book in her Modern Ireland trilogy, a political novel, depicting the relations of an Irish Republican Army terrorist and his hostage, an ageing Irish widow, in a house that represents the troubled nation.

Suggestions, Recommendations?

That’s the selection I have made, no guarantees on what I’ll get through, but I’m looking forward to the immersion. Have you read and enjoyed of the titles I mention above?

Are you going to read any Irish literature in March? Let me know in the comments below.

32 thoughts on “Reading Ireland Month 2025”

  1. Well, I’ve got two Irish reads under my belt this year so far: Colm Tóibín’s Long Island ( a little disappointing compared with Brooklyn), and Garrett Carr, The Boy from the Sea (fantastic. This will make it into my Top Ten for the year I think). I hope you enjoy The Colony as much as I did. And I too am waiting for Air. The other Elements have not disappointed.

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  2. Oh, interesting! I haven’t read anything by Irish writers lately, so I’ll look into these and perhaps participate in the event. I remember loving The Spinning Heart when it came out (wow, was it a decade ago now?!) and hadn’t heard about the follow-up, so I’ll go and read your post on that one now.

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  6. I loved The Colony, which I found very immersive. It’s so skillfully written, switching seamlessly from one character’s POV to another, sometimes mid-sentence. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. The Raptures sounds very interesting, too!

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    • My review of the Colony will be up tomorrow, I chose it as my first read for Reading Ireland. I thought it was very clever, but seamlessly, the dialogue was masterful, at first it takes you by surprise, but the humour as well before realising this jolly summer has much grander themes underpinning it. I really enjoyed the complexity of the French-Algerian character JP Masson as well, so much to think about regarding individual and nation motives.

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    • Yes, I checked the list wondering if you were reading it, I was intrigued by it, because it’s not the usual theme people apply to her, but one I’m interested in reading how she handles. I didn’t realise it is also a loose trilogy, although Modern Ireland does seem a very broad brush name.

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      • I’ll be intrigued to see how you get on with the House of Splendid Isolation. It’s one I attempted to read many many (at least 15) years ago but ended up abandoning. I’m more au fait with her work now, so I think I’d get on better with it, but at the time I remember finding her prose style challenging.

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  9. I love that you are going to read Sebastian Barry’s stuff – those three novels are A M A Z I N G. Annie Jones, in particularly, is just heartbreaking… there’s a little boy in the novel who is based on the author. I didn’t know it at the time; I only found out when I went to a Seb Barry reading at Foyles, possibly for Canaan’s Side, and he explained how he rescued his family’s history in his novels and that Annie Jones was his aunt and he was the naughty boy in the story!

    Thanks also for flagging “A Year with Edna O’Brien” — I’ve just reviewed The Country Girls and absolutely loved it. I’m looking forward to reading the rest in the trilogy now.

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    • Yes I have read an interview where Barry talks about being inspired by his ancestors, so I’ve been reading the trilogy with that in mind, though I wasn’t aware he was the little boy in Annie Dunne, poor wee thing!
      Reafing about Wille Dunne in Long Long Way made me go off on a whole other tangent, when I discovered he was born in the same year as my Great Grand Uncle who was also in an Irish regiment in WWI and died in Flanders 2 weeks before the Easter Rising. I’m reading On Canann’s Side now.

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  10. Pingback: It’s Reading Ireland Month 2025!

  11. Oh, Claire….such an inspirational post about Ireland Reading.

    I was “down in the dumps’ this morning after what I saw coming out of the White House yesterday. Living in NL for more than half my life but still my roots are in USA. Breaks my heart to see how many things have changed. So back to reading! You have presented a plethora of Irish books I can start, so many thanks. One this to add: I read Sebatian Barry’s play “Blueberry Hill”. It is EXCELLENT….funny, poignant enough conflict to keep the reader engaged and …and it is a 2 hr read tops. I had goosebumps when I finished the play!

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  12. Oh Nancy, I love that you have read another of his plays! I salute you 👏 turning to literature in the face of witnessing such turmoil elsewhere. It is impossible not to be affected, and yet we must also nourish our subconscious with other stories to take care of ourselves. Choose wisely, doses of uplift and humour recommended.

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    • Thanks Claire, ….I needed some “literature therapy ” this morning!

      Read 8 books in French last month…so I can concentrate now in Ireland in March! So many great authors and I have some unread Irish books in the bookcase. I’ll try to reduce TBR before purchasing other selections.

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  13. What a wonderful post, thank you! I have an appalling track record with community events, which is bad because I always want to take part very much and then life gets away from me. I do hope to read some Irish writers this month. I have Elaine Feeney’s How to Build a Boat, and a Donal Ryan title (I forget which) and John Boyne’s Water. I love the fact that you’ve included non-fiction in your list and will watch out for your thoughts on both Clair Wills and Elizabeth Boyle.

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  14. An ambitious list! I look forward to seeing which ones you get to. I’m interested to hear your views on the Sebastian Barry books. I’ve only read one of his, Days Without End – loved the writing, wasn’t so keen on the story. So I’m very much open to being tempted…

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    • Ambitious yes, but I did get a head start and began the trilogy ahead of time, so I will finish it and two will be reviewed this week! I think the one you read is part of another trilogy, I think I’d read them together, it definitely adds something to get the overview of the family connections. Maybe I’ll read that one next year!

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  15. Pingback: A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry – Word by Word

  17. Pingback: On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry – Word by Word

  18. Pingback: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – Word by Word

  19. Pingback: Nesting by Roísin O’Donnell – Word by Word

  20. Pingback: Fierce Appetites by Elizabeth Boyle – Word by Word

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