Hi guys
Welcome back to Book Break
I'm Aoife from BookTube channel Fred Weasley Died Laughing
And I'm here to talk about some amazing Irish writers that I think everyone should be reading
to help celebrate St Patrick's Day.
I have a bunch of amazing Irish writers here to talk about, and I'm really excited to let
you guys know about some of these amazing books.
So the first Irish writer I want to talk about is someone who is very very well known, someone
who I studied myself in school.
And that is the poet W.B. Yeats.
And I've got a beautiful edition here of the collected poetry of W.B. Yeats, and a few
of these are some of my favourite poems I've ever read.
A few more I still have yet to read.
He has just such an amazing collection of work, and there's some poetry here that is
just so beautiful and really really speaks to me.
And I feel like there's probably a poem in here for everyone.
One of the things I love about Yeats is the fact that he is able to write poetry about
so many different situations.
He has written poetry about Irish history, he has poems about some Irish heroes, some
Irish leaders, he has poetry about the first world war.
And then he also has poetry just about love and family life.
and he also has written a beautiful poetry around fairies and changelings.
One of my favourite poems is The Stolen Child, which I think has just one of the most beautiful
lines in poetry, which is
Come away, oh human child To the waters wild
With a fairy hand in hand Cause the world's more full of weeping than
you can understand
And I just adore those lines and that is probably my favourite poem of W.B. Yeats.
But as I said I think he has just such an amazing collection of work
And I think everyone, there's a poem here for everyone
Another Irish writer I want to talk about is Emma Donoghue
And most people will know Emma Donoghue from Room, which was made into a movie which won
an Academy Award.
Brie Larson won the Academy Award for Best Actress when she was the Mother in Room.
And Room is more kind of, there's some thriller aspects to it, there's some mystery around
it, but one of the most amazing things about Room and one of the most unusual things is
that the entire book is told through the voice of a five year old child.
Makes it for a really really interesting read.
And it's not one I've seen repeated in other books.
And I just feel that Emma Donoghue just did so well on this book and really kept my attention
throughout the book.
One of my favourite things about Emma Donoghue's writing is the fact that every single book
I've picked up from her has been a little bit different.
So one of my all time favourite books is also an Emma Donoghue book, and that is Frog Music.
And Frog Music is based in San Francisco, in 1876, and it is through a point in time
when the smallpox epidemic has kind of taken control of the city.
This book follows the relationship between these two women who meet, one of them is an
ex circus star.
And it is just a very very interesting look into the relationship.
The time when this is set, which is this really interesting point within this city.
There is this smallpox epidemic going on
There is this kind of heightened fear among all the characters that they could contract
it
Yet at the same time, they're just living every day kind of to their full, and you know,
some things were pretty hard at the time if you did not have much money
And we're just seeing how these characters live, we're seeing the relationships they
form.
It is probably my favourite Emma Donoghue book.
But I did also recently read Kissing the Witch, which is a bunch of short stories, all centred
around fairytale retellings that Emma Donoghue also wrote.
Probably one of my favourite short story collections I have read.
And I just found these really really interesting, really really original reimaginings of fairytales.
A lot of them show the woman herself that is the main character in this fairytale kind
of becoming her own hero in a way.
There was no kind of waiting around for the knight in shining armour in these stories.
In these stories I feel like the woman all kind of take control of their own destiny.
And each story kind of is, there's a line in between each story where they all kind
of run into each other.
And there is connections between all the stories and all the characters.
Another Irish writer that most people will probably have heard of but I don't know if
a lot of people have read is John Banville.
John Banville has written quite a collection of work.
This one, Doctor Copernicus, is about a scientist.
And this is kind of a novelised version of this scientist's life, which I absolutely
love.
I love reading novels about real people in history.
I just love an author kind of being able to have a little bit of fun re-imagining these
people's lives, especially when they're, you know, centuries before our time.
And I love historical fiction anyway, but I just love historical fiction based around
real people.
John Banville also writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black where he writes a crime series
based around this detective called Quirke.
So a lot of people might have heard of him through that as well, as that was adapted
into a TV show with Gabriel Byrne.
I myself have gone to talk with John Banville and he is just a really really interesting
person.
If anyone ever has a chance of hearing him talk about his writing processes and how he
comes up with ideas and his characters, I would 100% urge you to do so, because he is
a very interesting writer.
He's a very talented person.
And just hearing about how he's able to come up with the stories, how he imagines his characters.
The characters he most identifies with is really interesting.
Another Irish writer a lot of people have probably heard of is Colm Toibin who wrote
Brooklyn, which was also an Oscar-nominated movie with Saoirse Ronan, the Irish actress
Saoirse Ronan.
As you can see this is the movie cover of the book.
I really really enjoy Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is quite a quiet story, and I think this is what Colm Toibin really excels at.
He writes these amazing stories about these small lives, with a lot of meaning behind
them.
He writes a lot about characters who might be going on a journey, or kind of trying to
discover who they are.
Such as in The South, which is about a woman who travels to Spain and enters a romantic
relationship.
And then he also writes about these smaller journeys as well, with people like Nora Webster
who is a widow.
She has to kind of find a way of starting over after she loses her husband and needs
to continue to look after her family.
They're just ordinary people in ordinary lives, but the tales themselves are extremely beautiful,
and are just really really nice to be able to read and connect with the characters.
Another fabulous Irish writer is Louise O'Neill who excels at writing about real issues in
society.
As she has done with both Asking for It and Almost Love.
Louise O'Neill is excellent at being able to take some really tough topics and bring
them into a book and make them the main focus of a book.
It's a way of writing that makes these topics really accessible to a lot of people.
So she has kind of taken on toxic relationships in Almost Love, and then in Asking For It
she takes on rape culture and victim blaming.
And they're very tough books to read, because she makes these characters, a lot of her characters
are extremely dislikeable characters, which I find really interesting about her writing.
But at the same time, the reader's able to see themselves in these characters, even though
these characters are not nice, you're able to see yourself in the characters.
And able to see yourself whether it is in the action or things they're going through.
And I have known a lot of people who have identified with a lot of things Louise O'Neill
has written about, and it's really helped people understand things that they themselves
have gone through.
And as I said, it's just a really powerful way of writing where she's able to bring these
really really tough subjects to life, and she's able to bring them in a way that's very
accessible for a lot of people to read.
And the last writer I want to talk about today is Liz Nugent who has written some amazing
thrillers.
She's written Skin Deep, Lying in Wait, and she also has another book called Unravelling
Oliver.
And one of the things I love about Liz Nugent is she makes these despicable characters that
you just love to hate.
Her thrillers are, they seem almost domestic based, but they kind of also end up reaching
outside of the home at some points as well.
And with some characters you do end up going on quite a journey, such as in Cordelia in
Skin Deep.
Liz Nugent has a really great way of writing books where you're immediately just drawn
in to the story, and you need to know about these characters.
You need to know what makes them so despicable.
And she has this really great way of just bringing you on a journey with these characters.
Her books are quite intense, but at the same time, one of the reasons they're intense is
not because of any action scenes that happen in them.
But it's the slow reveal of the character's minds, and how you start figuring out how
they think, and what they're going to do next.
I love her writing.
I love waiting to see what next she's going to come out with, because Liz Nugent is definitely
going to be someone who's always going to end up on my bookshelf.
So those are some of my favourite Irish writers that I hope people will be encouraged to pick
up after watching this video.
I hope you enjoy all your books.
And happy St Patrick's Day.
Bye!