First Chapter: this week 'a debut novel that will make your head spin'

It’s a mixed bag this week. There’s a psychological thriller from a writer who’s got form in the genre, there’s a collection of essays about the animal world that is utterly beautiful, there’s a debut novel that will make your head spin, not least in awe of its author’s talent, and there’s a history of gardens and botany in Ireland which makes for a sleek, elegant book on any shelf.

The Only Suspect, Louise Candlish, Simon and Schuster, €13.99

In the leafy London suburb of Silver Vale, Beth and Alex live comfortable and uneventful lives. Alex is a keep-to-himself type and Beth is his gregarious opposite, always involved in community projects and neighbourhood activities. When the local council decide to clear a nearby overgrown track and make a proper walkway out of it, Beth is delighted. Years of persistence within the Silver Vale community group have paid off. Alex, however, is appalled, and extremely worried. The contractors are due to break ground in a fortnight. What if they dig up something incriminating?

Roll back to London in 1995 and Rick, a busy 20-something, is living in Camden. He embarks on a destructive relationship with the esoteric Marina, a temp who works in his office. Rick’s stalker-like behaviour becomes a bit unsavoury, but it ratchets up the tension. There’s been a murder. It happened in 1995. But what has Beth’s husband Alex got to do with all this? The author, known as the ‘queen of domestic noir’ has thrown plenty of bombshells in here, along with her usual can’t-see-it-coming twists. Vintage Candlish.

Running Feet, Sharp Noses, Various, PVA Books, €15

We’re not talking humans here – the feet and noses refer to our (often nobler) counterparts in the animal kingdom. Pets are remembered by some of the contributors to this exquisite anthology, while wild animals and birds are appreciated in striking prose from a gathering of Irish and non-Irish writers. There’s hardly a stray word in this collection and if your love for critters extends well beyond the Homo sapiens kind, you’ll find this little book a treasure.

All of the entries are beautifully wrought here and in most of the essays, the animals being observed are an entry gate into reflections on other topics. Sara Baume’s Dave and Darragh McCausland’s Light Thickens really sing. In the first, Baume reflects on her mother’s life and her own, following the death of her much-loved father. A rook has become quite friendly with her mother and she saves special food scraps for him. Baume thinks they should call him Dave, after her father. This is a contemplative piece on love and loss and, true to form, Baume makes writing simply look so deceptively easy. Rooks and ravens have got such bad press since Edgar Allen Poe, but Darragh McCausland possesses a similar soft spot for these wily birds in the rookery close to the treatment centre he finds himself in for alcoholism. As a paean to the wonder of recovery from addiction, McCausland’s essay is unrivalled. That said, every essay here has something special to offer the reader. It’s a beautiful anthology.

Perpetual Comedown, Declan Toohey, New Island, €15.99

Hallucinatory, confusing, sometimes garbled – or at least pretending to be – is how one could describe this debut. But it’s also bawl-out-loud funny. And moving and tragic, too, though ultimately hopeful. Reading it is like being suspended at great height from a dodgy zipline and whooshing along at the speed of sound. You don’t know if or when you’re going to fall off, or if young protagonist Darren Walton is going to fall off, or indeed who’s going to fall, but you sense there’s a fall on the way. And there is. A spectacular one. Toohey manages to encase what is essentially the story of a young man’s nervous breakdown into a madcap, drink-and drug-fuelled riff on alternative reality within an alternative state known as Camland. This alternative state is the opposite of Ireland, which is full of ire, and is instead a country full of calm.

Darren’s a PhD student in Trinity, disenchanted with his supervisors, his choice of subject (post-war American Literature) and his family in Kinnegad. He’s also mother-fixated, which is an unfortunate position for a young, gay man whose destructive mother suffers from severe bi-polar disorder. His need for a more stable mother figure underpins everything in this fine work, rattling with the ghosts of Myles na Gopaleen and Eimar O’Duffy and occasionally reading a bit like Oisín Fagan. That said, Toohey’s an original. A force to be reckoned with. A great new talent in Irish literature.

Botany and Gardens in Early Modern Ireland, ed by Elizabethanne Boran, E. Charles Nelson and Emer Lawlor, Four Courts Press, €63

Beautifully illustrated and lavishly presented, this book covers the history of all things botanical from the 17th century to the 17th century, with material drawn from lots of unexpected places and people, as well as from more traditional sources. No history of anything stands alone and this horticultural history is fascinating in how it weaves itself through the social mores of the centuries, covering colonialism, medicine, religion, politics, architecture and art, quite apart from the gardening trends, the importation of plants from around the world, and the many uses, medicinal and otherwise, for wild plants.

This is a work of huge scholarship, not necessarily one to read from cover to cover, but it’s peppered with lots of facts, stories, anecdotes and a comprehensive index. Also included is a history of Cork’s outstanding botanist Ellen Hutchins, about whose life Marianne Lee wrote her remarkable novel A Quiet Tide. It’s a pricey tome, this book, but the quality of presentation is second to none. And Mother’s Day is approaching. And if one happens to have a mother who’s a keen gardener and also a keen reader, well…

FOOTNOTES

The country’s biggest writing festival, Listowel Writers Week, is taking place from May 31 to June 4. Seems like a long time away, but not if you have to secure accommodation, so anyone planning on going needs to get cracking.

The One Dublin One Book festival runs throughout the month of April with some unmissable events, almost all of them free, though advance booking is essential. You can download the full programme at onedublinonebook.ie.