I Couldn't Love You More
Esther Freud
Bloomsbury, £16.99
Esther Freud's ninth novel is about loss, hope, and the patterns of experience that make up our world, weaving the stories of three generations of one family together. Aoife tells the story of their life to her dying husband in contemporary Cork; Rosaleen, pregnant and vulnerable in 1960s London, is in love with an older man; Kate, adopted at birth and now a mother, longs to know where she came from. Kate's longing burns at the heart of the novel. While the stories and experiences of each of the women are believable and compelling, Kate is the true protagonist. Through her, Freud explores the fragility of identity, the weight of history and our need as humans to leave our mark on the world. Freud writes convincingly and with a deep empathy about the traumas visited upon women in Ireland at the hands of religious and state institutions. While predictable at times, the novel's central strength is its characters, and in the intimate detail with which its author depicts their lives. BECKY LONG
Birdsong in a Time of Silence
Steven Lovatt
Particular Books, £12.99
This book is a tonic. It looks at how, when the world we were used to shut down in spring 2020, we awoke to a different world, one that was there all along but forgotten or ignored. It was a world filled with birdsong, which reawakened Steven Lovatt's passion for those little creatures producing "a rising choir of chirps, trills and warbles". He details his walks observing birds' behaviour and listening to their songs and, with the aid of poetry, folklore and science, he explores how significant birdsong has been in human life and culture. "It's part of our feeling of belonging in the world … we have birdsong in the blood." Skilfully summarising birds' personalities and their sounds, this is moving, informative, highly enjoyable and beautifully illustrated. BRIAN MAYE
Four Killings
Myles Dungan
Head of Zeus, £16.99
The titular killings all involved Myles Dungan's extended Clinton and McKenna families, who were victims of two of them and perpetrated the other two. Jack Clinton, a small farmer from Co Meath, was murdered in faraway Arizona during a dispute with a powerful rancher. During the War of Independence, Mark Clinton was killed by a secret agrarian gang over disputed land; his relatives, active in the Meath IRA, executed his killer, William Gordon, and also shot dead as an informer Patrick Keelan, a young, mentally challenged man. The story, told skilfully and coherently, holds the attention throughout and draws attention to an often-neglected aspect of the independence struggle – land hunger. The killings are treated sensitively, as are the consequences for all concerned. BRIAN MAYE
