First Chapter: Plethora of great new books on way for 2022
There’s plenty to be looking forward to in the plethora of new publications on the way. Here’s a whistle-stop tour around some of the big highlights in early 2022.
February Fiction
The Maid by Nita Prose (Harper Collins). An excellent thriller about a chambermaid in the Regency Grand Hotel who finds the dead body of an infamous wealthy guest in his room. Anthem by Noah Hawley (Hodder & Stoughton) is set in contemporary America, a country in shreds. It’s up to the teenagers to save the world, or at least their country. Topical and ominous. Breaking Point by Edel Coffey (Sphere) is the story of a successful career mother who suffers a moment of distraction and makes a terrible mistake – she leaves her baby in a sweltering car. A new Isabelle Allende novel is always an occasion and her latest Violeta (Faber) is out this month, telling the story of Violeta’s hundred-year-long life, as told in letters to her grandson.
February really is bumper month for Irish women writers, with new books from Catherine Kirwan, Marian Keyes, Rachael English, Eithne Shortall and several others. Catherine Kirwan’s Cruel Deeds (Hachette), is about a high profile lawyer, very successful in her career, who’s found beaten to death in Cork (sounds familiar). Eithne Shortall’s It Could Never Happen Here (Atlantic) describes the hilarious lengths an obsessed mother will go to, in order to ensure her child gets the starring role in the annual school concert. Rachael English’s The Letter Home (Hachette) connects famine-stricken Ireland with contemporary Chicago, through the character of Brigid Moloney. Marian Keyes’ Again, Rachel (Penguin) revisits Rachel 25 years after her time in a treatment centre. What’s she been up to since? Has she stayed clean and sober? Whatever’s happened, it’s bound to be a hoot.
February Nonfiction
The Betrayal of Anne Frank by Rosemary Sullivan (William Collins) uses modern investigation techniques to reveal who precisely betrayed Anne Frank’s family to the Nazis – and why. Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey by Daniel Mulhall (Little Island) is a timely companion to the great novel itself, this being the centenary year of Joyce’s most renowned work (which was banned immediately in Ireland of course, though also in the US and the UK). How to be Perfect by Michael Schur (Quercus) will be of interest to the millions of fans of the excellent Netflix comedy The Good Place, as this reflection on two millennia of ethical philosophy is written by the series creator. Journalist and podcaster Emma Gannon takes a long, hard look at the internet and social media in Disconnected (Hodder & Stoughton)
The shocking state of the Irish sex trade is uncovered in Mia Doring’s explosive memoir Any Girl (Hachette). Katherine Harkup’s Death by Shakespeare (Bloomsbury) examines all of the murders in Shakespeare’s plays from a modern, forensic perspective, ending up with some surprising and often amusing conclusions. No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy by Mark Hodkinson (Canongate) is a memoir by the author and journalist of being a working class kid who fell in love with books, growing up in a house where there was only one. All My Friends Are Invisible by Jonathan Joly (Quercus) is a painful childhood memoir of growing up ‘different’ in Ireland in the 1980s.
March Fiction
James Runcie’s The Great Passion (Faber) is an homage to J.S. Bach in the form of a novel, told by a young boy chorister in Leipzig Cathedral whom Bach takes into his chaotic, crowded family home. Not to be missed. Sara Vaughan’s Reputation (Simon & Schuster) is about an MP who finds herself accused of the murder of a tabloid journalist.
Alan Titchmarsh, TV personality and novelist, has a new novel The Gift (Hodder and Stoughton) out this month, about a reluctant faith healer who ends up needing his unwanted gift more than ever, in order to save the people he loves. Dolly Parton’s Run Rose Run (Penguin) written in collaboration with James Patterson (who’s collaborating with everyone lately, I’m waiting on the first novel written by a Chihuahua in collaboration with James Patterson any day now, but I digress…) is a thriller about a young country singer Rose, rising in the music charts and yet she’s on the run. Holy God Almighty.
March Nonfiction
Ed O’Loughlin’s The Last Good Funeral of the Year (Riverrun) is a memoir inspired by the funeral of a friend which took place in February 2020, just before Covid changed funeral rituals completely, and not for the better. My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden (Harper Collins) exposes gross negligence within NGOs and corruption within the UN, causing untold suffering to migrants in the worst migrant crisis the world has ever known, with Europe turning its back on the suffering of so many. How to Solve a Crime by Professor Angela Gallup (Hodder & Stoughton) examines real crime cases and reveals the various methods forensic scientists use in order to reach their conclusions.
April Fiction
Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes (Faber) is the story of Professor Finch’s former student who unpacks her notebooks and decides to continue her good work after her death in a novel about life, love and philosophy by one of my favourite living authors. The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan (Lilliput) tells the story of a young Russian mathematician surveying the Bord na Móna boglands, who decides not to return to the USSR when he’s abruptly summoned home.
April Nonfiction
You’re Doing it Wrong by Kevin Power (Lilliput), whose novel White City should have won the Novel of the Year this year (he was robbed!), is a collection of Power’s literary criticism for the newspapers from 2008 to date. Bessborough by Deirdre Finnerty (Hachette) follows the lives of three Bessborough women over three harrowing decades.
This is merely a teeny tiny sample of books to watch out for in the coming months. Visit your local indie bookshop to see the full, glittering array – and happy reading.
You can email Anne at anne.cunningham@meathchronicle.ie