In Top Reads of 2023 – Part 1 I shared my One Super Outstanding Read of the Year and my Top 7 Fiction titles. I also provide a brief look into what I read overall, the 23 countries, the mix of fiction and non-fiction of works in translation.

Top 5 Non-Fiction, An Irish Scoop

In 2023, I read 19 works of non-fiction, from 9 countries, ranging from climate change memoirs like Ugandan author Vanessa Nakate’s A Bigger Picture and Doreen Cunningham’s Soundings to fragmentary slices of life by French nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux in Simple Passion and Shame and Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon and the true crime adventures of David Grann’s The Wager.

Everything I read was good, but the standouts were:

Poor, Grit, courage and the life-changing value of self-belief by Katriona O’Sullivan (2023) (Ireland) (Memoir)

– Poor is the incredible story of Katriona O’Sullivan, a university Professor in Dublin, who overcame incredible odds to rise up through the education system, having been raised by heroin addicts in a chaotic household, dropping out of school and becoming pregnant at 15.

She charts the turning points in her life, the people and the opportunities that allowed her to change the trajectory of her life and become a major influencer in advocating for access to higher education for working class girls from poor backgrounds.

She won two Irish Book Awards (Best Biography + Listener’s Choice Award). Totally Inspirational.

All My Wild Mothers, Motherhood, Loss and an Apothecary Garden by Victoria Bennett (2023) (UK) (Memoir/Nature Writing/Grief)

– This was one of the first books I read in 2023, a beautiful memoir that shares a mother’s journey of homeschooling her son while dealing with the grief of having lost a close sibling. Much like Helen MacDonald’s H is For Hawk, the author plunges into a creative project, to help move through the emotional challenges. Here it was to create an apothecary garden in a social housing estate in rural Cumbria, built over what was an industrial site, a barren, rubble-filled, now rule-restricted, wasteland.

Each chapter began with a different plant, starting with an intriguing medieval, magical perception of it, including stunning black & white woodcut illustrations, the medicinal properties, a bit of folklore and where it might be found. The real star of the book and source of comfort though is her inquisitive son.

A quiet book that celebrates the wisdom of small children and a tribute to sisters and mothers.

Cacophony of Bone by Kerri ní Dochartaigh (2023) (Ireland) (Creative Nonfiction)

– This memoir is a delightful sequel to the author’s more bleak, but exceptional, memoir Thin Places. That debut memoir was a mix of memoir and a reckoning with the after effect of a fractured childhood in a Northern Irish town.

In Cacophony of Bones, she has moved to a rural cottage in the middle of Ireland and while still in the process of healing, there is more light and poetry and inspiration from a multitude of nonfiction writers here. Written in the form of a 12 month journal, it is a book of reflection, poetic expression and of noticing, of planting, growing, of collecting objects, abandoned nests, bone remnants…

I find myself searching for the words of others as a means to fill the holes that the actions of (other) others have left in me.

In my review, I mention a number of the authors she quotes from; I spent a lot of pleasurable time looking up the many references and finding new sources of creative nonfiction to read. A great book and an extremely well-read author.

My Fourth Time We Drowned by Sally Hayden (2022) (Ireland) (Political Nonfiction)

– Though it is a challenging read, this is an incredible book and tribute to the endless support, research and investigative journalism, Sally Hayden has contributed. Winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Irish Book Awards Book of the Year 2022, it tells the story of how she was contacted by refugees incarcerated in Libyan migrant detention centres, who were using hidden phones to appeal for help.

Abandoned by everyone, these people were being held in terrible conditions, treated inhumanely and often being extorted for huge sums of money in order to attempt the deadliest migrant rote of all, across the Mediterranean. While the rules of her profession prevented her from assisting them, she began to share their stories and investigate the different centres and discovered the complicity of the EU, in their policies that magnified the humanitarian crisis.

An extraordinary, detailed and condemnatory read. Highly Recommended.

Redemption Ground, Essays & Adventures by Lorna Goodison (2018) (Jamaica)

– A mix of memoir, poetry, life adventure and epiphanies, I loved this collection, that stops in and visits different periods in the life of the poet/writer Jamaican author Lorna Goodison (poet laureate of Jamaica from 2017 – 2020), including first time visits to London, New York, tributes to her mother and grandmother in poetry, to her mentor, the great poet and playwright, Derek Walcott, influential theatre and film experiences and inspirational women writers and poets.

Special Mentions, The Other Two Stand Outs

These two 5 star reads are very slim volumes, featuring one essay or lecture, they are literally half hour reads, but very worthwhile and not difficult to access and read.

I Will Write to Avenge My People by Annie Ernaux (2022) (France) translated by Tanya Leslie (French) (Essay + Bio)

– Annie Ernaux won the Nobel prize for literature in 2022 and this is the lecture she gave to the committee, in it she shares her motivation for writing and an explanation of how she came to write in her very particular style.

Indignez-vous! (Time For Outrage) by Stéphane Hessel (2010) (France) (Essay)

– Very well known in France, this is the essay written by 93 year old Stéphane Hessel, since translated into numerous languages and sold 4.5 million copies worldwide. He wrote it 3 years before passing away and it is a message for youth of today, inviting them to find their cause and take action. It became a huge bestseller and long lines of young people lined up to have him sign their copy, much respect did they have for a man who had lived through it all, the war, the resistance, the concentration camp and a participant in the creation of the declaration of human rights.

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That’s it for nonfiction, let me know if you have any good recommendations for 2024!
Let us know your favourite non-fiction title from 2023 in the comments below.