In recent years, Irish novelists, and particularly Irish women novelists, have published some of the most compelling English-language literary fiction.
Not just Sally Rooney, whose three novels to date have sold millions of copies worldwide, but a whole host of women have written books which, taken together, suggest a new contemporary Irish literature that focuses on the precarity of modern working life, as well as intimacy and its failings.
Naoise Dolan, 31, Megan Nolan, 33, and Nicole Flattery, 33, are three of the better-known members of this cohort.
Dolan’s 2020 debut novel “Exciting Times” was the story of a love triangle set in Hong Kong; “Acts of Desperation,” from Nolan and published in 2021, charted the life of a young woman in an abject relationship; and Flattery also published her debut, “Show Them A Good Time,” a collection of deadpan and appealingly peculiar short stories, in 2020.
All three have also released a second book this year: Dolan’s is an acerbic comedy of errors about an impending wedding called “The Happy Couple,” Nolan’s “Ordinary Human Failings” follows an Irish family after one of its members is accused of a terrible crime, and “Nothing Special” is Flattery’s tale of a young woman who gets a job as a typist at Andy Warhol’s Factory.
Persons:
Sally Rooney, Naoise Dolan, Megan Nolan, Nicole, ”, Nolan, Andy Warhol’s Factory
Locations:
Hong Kong