Website of Aiden O'Reilly

A fascinating debut novel I had the pleasure to review for The Dublin Review of books.

Speculative novels from Ireland are as rare as hens’ teeth, despite the towering examples bequeathed to us by Jonathan Swift and Flann O’Brien. In more recent decades we have Mike McCormack’s fictions, and a YA novel by Sarah Maria Griffin. That’s about it as regards novels that meet Margaret Atwood’s tighter definition of speculative fiction as extrapolating the latent possibilities of current trends.

So I was immediately hooked when I heard of the premise of Bourke’s novel: a line of people queuing for generations, not sure what they are waiting for, but utterly convinced of the importance of keeping one’s place in the line. And ready to torture those who transgress.

The book twists between adventure and satire and existential questions – it’s Waiting for Godot crossed with Gulliver’s Travels. Seriously, that fits best.

Not surprising that it’s from Tramp Press. They brought out A Brilliant Void a couple of years ago – a collection of classic science fiction from Ireland. It’s like a window into a different era. There was a time when Ireland – or Dublin at least – was home to several sci-fi and horror writers: Dorothy McArdle, James Fitz-Maurice O’Brien, Jane Barlow, and many others.

I’ve been looking forward to Elaine Chiew’s collection of short stories for a couple of years ever since I read a few in the Unthology anthology brought out by Unthank Press. Elaine is ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, educated in the USA and now lives in the UK. A very modern spread of identities.

Well at last it’s here and I pitched a review to Litro Magazine.

I was attracted to Chiew’s writing by its sheer brilliance and by how it captures the giddy sense of living in a world where everyone is guessing the rules. As I mention in the review, one takeaway point from the stories is that the clash between the older generation’s values and the newer is greater than east-west divide.

Easily the best collection I’ve read this year.

I see Rob Doyle has a regular column in the Irish Times where he introduces his best-loved books.

Doyle is the author of Here Are the Young Men and the short story collection this is the ritual – link is to to a few notes I made on it. His fictions generally zoom in on the anxieties, manias and apostates of these strange days we live in.

Here’s a list of the columns so far. There are a couple of my own favourites in there too.
And below is how he introduces the series

I read for delight and fascination, even when these demand a toll, opening old wounds or inflicting new ones. The books I’m going to recommend are eclectic. What they’ve got in common, aside from the fact that they were written prior to the 21st century, is that they have all made this human lifespan I find myself undergoing deeper, stranger, grander, and full of amazement.