Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: No Prompt

Since there is still no prompt this week, I will be featuring works of Irish literature. This is in line with my ongoing reading motif: European literature. Due to their lyrical and descriptive prose, Irish writers have earned a fan in me. Without ado, here are more works of Irish literature I am looking forward to.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you choose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: Nora Webster
Author: Colm Tóibín
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2015
No. of Pages: 311

Synopsis: 

Nora Webster is recently widowed. Unmoored by her sudden loss and the needs of her children whom she now must raise alone, she faces a future that was never meant to be. But within Nora is a strength – a quiet resolve not to succumb to others’ expectations – and through the discovery of music and gift of friendship, she may just find a way to live again.

Title: Ancient Light
Author: John Banville
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2012
No. of Pages: 245

Synopsis: 

In a small town in 1950s Ireland a fifteen-year-old boy has illicit meetings with a thirty-five-year-old woman – in the back of her car on sunny mornings, and in a rundown cottage in the country on rain-soaked afternoons. Unsure why she has chosen him, he becomes obsessed and tormented by this first love. Half a century later, actor Alexander Cleave – grieving for the recent loss of his daughter – recalls these trysts, trying to make sense of the boy he was and of the needs and frailties of the human heart.

Title: Old God’s Time
Author: Sebastian Barry
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2024 (2023)
No. of Pages: 261

Synopsis: 

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family: his beloved wife, June, and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one that Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. A beautiful, haunting novel in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God’s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.

Title: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Author: John Boyne
Publisher: Ember
Publishing Date: 2016 (2006)
No. of Pages: 216

Synopsis: 

Berlin, 1942

When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovered that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move to a new house far, far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people in the distance.

But Bruno decides that there must be more to this desolate place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets a boy whose life and circumstances are very different from his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

Since its first publication ten years ago, this powerful and unforgettable story has touched millions of readers around the world.

Title: TransAtlantic
Author: Colum McCann
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publishing Date: 2013
No. of Pages: 298

Synopsis: 

1919. Emily Ehrlich watches as two young airmen, Alcock and Brown, emerge from the carnage of the First World War to pilot the very first non-stop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to the west of Ireland. Among the letters being carried on the aircraft is one which will not be opened for almost a hundred years.

1845. Frederick Douglass, a black American slave, lands in Ireland to champion ideas of democracy and freedom, only to find a famine unfurling at his feet. On his travels he inspires a young maid to go to New York to embrace a free world, but America does not always fulfill its promises for her. From the fierce battlefields of the Civil War to the ice lakes of northern Missouri, it is her youngest daughter Emily who eventually finds her way back to Ireland.

1998. Senator George Mitchell criss-crosses the ocean in search of an elusive Irish peace. How many more bereaved mothers and grandmothers must he meet before an agreement can be reached?

Elegantly stitching these stories together, National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann explores the fine line between what is real and what is imagined, between fiction and non-fiction, between promise and memory. Can we pass from the new world to the old? How does the past shape the future? How does even the most unassuming moment of grace have a ripple effect on our lives? Intricately crafted, poetic and deeply affecting, TransAtlantic is an outstanding act of literary bravura.