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  This is not a work of fiction, this is a memoir. This is truth, humanity, love and loss. Pain, anxiety, support, and empathy. Soul searching, risk, inaction and action. Identity, lies, hope and lust. Religion, translation, poetry and guilt, and all the while it is not fiction, and it will stay with you.

  The picture on the front of this book is a fairly accurate representation of what you can expect from the writing inside.  The tone is dark and carries the mental dust of difficult memories, and as I was reading, I just wanted someone to turn the lights on and open a window.   I pulled this off the New Books shelf in the library and a little way into the book I flipped back to the copyright page just to make sure this had actually been written recently, and sure enough, it was published in 2020.  It just felt older somehow.  Years back, I read and enjoyed The Gathering that won the Booker Prize for Enright in 2007, and the writing style in Actress carries much the same formality and intelligence, but even the pivotal moments in the plot are delivered without much enthusiasm. The reader is given the story of Irish theatre legend, Katherine O'Dell, as told by her daughter Norah, and although Katherine experienced early stardom in Hollywood then we...

  This one stirred my waters.  It rattled my tree and wibbled my wibbly thing.  I almost had flashbacks! It starts in a normal Strouty sort of way with nice conversations and people reminiscing about times past, but before I had time to get too settled, along came a teenager who, in the way that only teenagers seem to be able to do, did something so mindlessly stupid that everyone in the family got caught up in the fall-out. If you have not had occasion to try raising a teenager, you may not realise that they have a lot in common with unexploded bombs.  You think you know what you are doing as you navigate them towards the relative safety of adulthood (I mean, you know you need to try and keep them at a constant temperature and not hit them with heavy objects), but sometimes one of them will just blow!  If you are lucky it will just be the family car they take out, but they have potential for a lot of collateral damage. After the boy in the book has ca...

  For me, Elizabeth Strout's greatest strength lies in all the things she does not say. You journey with her through the whole panoramic human landscape of her stories, but you never once have to stop to wonder if the engine is working.  You don't have to read the signposts as you progress, because you always have confidence that she will bring you home and you will know more about being human than you ever did at the outset. With some writers, I can feel the mechanics of construction as I go along.  Sometimes there are actual, visible, engineering structures in books (give the reader a wave Lionel Shriver and raise your copy of Shall we go or shall we stay).  In other books the writer is so worried that we will miss the point that the narration is practically accompanied by flashing lights.  (Yes you, Isabelle Allende. Violetta was not your best work I'm afraid.)  Elizabeth Strout trusts the reader to quietly listen and allow the story to settle aroun...

  Well this looks like a good one doesn't it?  Pulitzer Prize winning author and now this one showing a sticker for the long-list for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022.  Bound to be a winner you would think?  Well, maybe, but maybe not. Stand by for me to embarrass myself by offering comments on a book written by Louise Erdrich. The first chapter was brilliant.  We meet Tookie, an American Indian with attitude and a firm belief in living life by her own rules. It's 2005 but she is partying like it was 1999.  She describes herself as an ugly woman who enjoys lying and her main talent is selling people useless things for prices they can't afford.  What's not to love?  The writing is witty and irreverent and I started to congratulate myself on finding another great book. Then I turn the page to chapter two.  Tookie is a changed woman (fair enough, a stint in prison can do that to a person) but Erdrich is crashing through major life events ...

  So. Booksta:  Patrick Freyne?  Never heard of him, so why would I want to read a collection of essays about his life? Me: It's very well written.  Funny even. Booksta: Maybe if I'd heard of him..... Me: He would be a great man to have sitting next to you on a long haul flight.  A wealth of amusing anecdotes about his childhood and mis-spent youth in a band. Booksta: In a band? Does he know Bono? Me: Probably not, but he mentions him once.  I bet he has a lovely speaking voice.  He comes from Cork you know.  Same place as Graham Norton. Booksta:  Oh, I've heard of Graham Norton.  Does Patrick know Graham? Me:  No.  Booksta:  You're not really selling this. Me: I know, but I liked it and now I like Patrick.  Sometimes it's just nice to spend some time with someone who tells a good tale.  I think that talent comes in the DNA if you're from Cork.  It's the home of the Blarney Stone after all. Booksta: Does he ...

  It's true what they say about improving with age.  By the time we get to the Third Age, we've been round the block a few times and we get to know where to pick our fights.  This is how it is with Olive Kitteridge.  The one-time obstructive, argumentative woman gradually settles down into someone who simply speaks her mind and has the courage to confront anyone's elephant in any room she might find it in.  We first meet Olive in Elizabeth Strout's earlier novel, Olive Kitteridge, and this book picks up the threads and continues to follow Olive with her friends and family as she grumbles her way into old age.  The writing is superb in both novels and knowing how much Olive rubbed everyone up the wrong way in the first book, I was pleasantly surprised at how much empathy I felt for her in this one. As I have entered the foothills of old age myself, there were several moments in the book where I had to stop and think about my own life spanning backwards and f...