Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Putting the Ire in Ireland

The Drowned by John Banville

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Autumn is beginning to make its entry in rural Ireland. An expensive car stands in the middle of a field. An oddly-dressed man runs up, tells a passer-by and the inhabitants of a nearby house that his wife has left the car after a tiff and has jumped off a cliff, drowning herself into the chilly Irish sea. But something is off, and the man’s behaviour is suspicious. Days pass, and the woman is not found. It is unclear if she has ever even existed. […]

A Little Past Its Due Date

The Snapper (Barrytown #2) by Roddy Doyle

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In early nineties small-town Ireland, the Rabbitte family is met with an unwelcome surprise: daughter Sharon, aged 20, is pregnant. She will not reveal who the father is, much to the consternation of her friends and family. We see their ups and downs as Sharon’s pregnancy progresses.  Whoever buys English language books for my local library has struck again: for some reason it carries book 2, but not book 1 or 3, of the Barrytown Trilogy, and because I am an idiot and did not […]

I’m More Myself with You than Anyone Else

Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks

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I had a great time with this. FMC Lark Thompson moves to Ireland to escape the memories of her deceased husband and the way that his death affected other parts of her life in Texas. She thinks she’s moving next door to a bed ‘n breakfast because it’s called Willow Haven, but it turns out to be a funeral home run by MMC Callum Flannelly. The two characters meet when a box of body bags is mis-delivered to Lark. I’m not a “kick my feet […]

“My son, I loved my native land with energy and pride ‘Til a blight came over all my crops and my sheep and cattle died”

Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine by Padraic X. Scanlan

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In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by the pathogen phytophthora infestans. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million people dead and causing millions more to emigrate. It was not until 2020 that the population of Ireland hit pre-Famine levels again. Padraic X. Scanlan covers how Ireland got to the point of the majority of its inhabitants being solely dependent on the potato crop […]

But Now Am Found

The Hunter by Tana French

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Cal Hooper is a former Chicago detective. Grown weary of his job, he’s upended his life and moved into a run-down fixer-upper in the small town of Ardnakelty, in an unnamed part of the Irish countryside. He’s found his place in the community, and that includes his girlfriend Lena and unruly, stoic teenager Trey, whom he teaches carpentry in an attempt to get life back on track. It works right up until the point where Trey’s long-lost father Johnny makes his return from London, bringing […]

“Being boring is among Cal’s main goals. For most of his life, one or more elements always insisted on being interesting, to the point where dullness took on an unattainable end-of-the-rainbow glow. Ever since he finally got his hands on it, he’s savored every second.

The Hunter (Cal Hooper #2) by Tana French

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We return to rural Ireland with Cal in this second installment of a new Tana French series. Cal came here after retiring from the Chicago police and in the first book was reluctantly pulled into town drama and an unsolved mystery. As with many French books, the ending of that one wasn’t wrapped up in a bow, but we learned who Cal was going to be: a man who would like to keep to himself, but won’t let the disadvantaged or those in need of […]



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