LITERARY FICTION
GLORIOUS EXPLOITS by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree €15.99, 288pp)
AMONG the hottest debuts of the year, this is indeed a glorious endeavour. The time is 412BC, the place Sicily, and our hero, Lampo, a 30-something unemployed potter who lives with his ma and whose Irish-accented banter is as hilarious as it is unlikely (or perhaps not — Lennon himself is Dublin-born). Following their unsuccessful invasion of the island, hoards of defeated Athenians have been consigned to a rat-infested quarry to rot under the merciless sun.
But Lampo’s poetry-mad bestie, Gelon, has a plan — to produce two of the greatest Greek tragedies with the prisoners in the starring roles.
What follows is a hugely entertaining yarn of ‘let’s do the show right here’ ups and downs, and, more seriously, a reminder of how both art and love keep humanity alive.
It’s brilliantly imagined, right down to the fishy fug of the taverns, and I promise you won’t walk away dry-eyed.
DAY by Michael Cunningham
(4th Estate €15.70, 273pp) THE relentless march of time, and its warping by the pandemic, is the principle concern of Pulitzer-winner Cunningham’s latest, which offers snapshots from three days across three momentous years.
In April 2019, arty Isabel and her goingto-seed hubby Dan are headed for divorce — something that Isabel’s brother, gay schoolteacher Robbie, can see even if they can’t. Despite being a beloved fixture, Robbie is about to be ejected from the family’s Brooklyn brownstone, and finds solace spinning a fictional life on Instagram.
But this isn’t a cautionary tale about social media — instead, Covid finds Robbie stranded in the remote splendour of Iceland, while back in the city, Isabel and Dan do their best to field their children’s fears.
Themes of nature and nurture, the tyranny of the marriage plot and the complex reality of family constellations — often shaped by accident and contingency — recur in a fluent, if slightly weightless, tale.
MY FRIENDS by Hisham Matar (Viking €21, 464pp)
MATAR’S 2016 memoir, The Return, was an account of the author’s journey back to his native Libya in an attempt to find out the truth behind the disappearance of his father, a prominent critic of the Gaddafi regime.
This new novel, like Matar’s previous fictions, also spins off from the facts of the dictator’s brutal reign, boldly but convincingly inserting our narrator into the 1984 Libyan embassy demonstration that left PC Yvonne Fletcher dead. Eighteen-year-old Libyan student Khaled is among those wounded that day and, at a stroke, severed from his family, country and former existence.
Thirty-odd years later, Khaled embarks on a night walk across London, the city in which he has built a fragile life, reflecting on exile, freedom, literature, the friendships that have sustained him, and the Arab Spring that has drawn his closest companions back.
Resisting an obviously redemptive arc, it’s a muted, moving accounting of the things that make and moor a life, and the precious meanings created with those dearest to us.