Looking Through You
by Gerald Dawe
Merrion Press, €16.95
Poet Gerard Dawe lived his first 21 years in a liberal Protestant family in north Belfast and this beautifully written and evocative memoir traces the musical, poetic and artistic influences that inspired and formed him in the 1950s and 1960s. For Dawe, the "combined brilliance" of John Lennon and Paul McCartney "outlived the decade of its making and survives as fresh and undaunted as the day it was first made and heard". The American poets Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath greatly influenced him, as did the "democratic and liberal energy" at the New University of Ulster, and his move to Galway where he lived from 1974 to 1994. The north Belfast "landscapes and interiors" slowly asserted themselves in his poetry the farther away he went from them, drawn back as by a magnet. Brian Maye
Luckenbooth
by Jenni Fagan
William Heinemann, £16.99
Jenni Fagan's much anticipated third novel tells the story of 10 Luckenbooth Close, a tenement building in Edinburgh, and the souls and stories buried there over nine decades. Charting the turbulence of the 20th century through the eyes of a witch, a coal miner, a madam, and more, as they each become entwined in the gothic horror of their home, Luckenbooth is a compulsive study of our entanglement with place and each other. Brimming with character, subversion and decadence, Fagan builds a striking portrait of the Scottish city's deep-seated repression and toxicity and the grand strength of its inhabitants as they push the city into a modern age. An exhilarating, courageous story of the need to expose the evils of our communal past, Luckenbooth is nothing short of a masterpiece. Christiana Spens
Dusty Bluebells
by Angeline King
Self-published (supported by ACNI) £10
You could imagine Dusty Bluebells as a period drama on the BBC, with its fascinating setting of Larne, Co Antrim in the 1940s where Angeline King brings a rich, cultural history to life in a family saga spanning 50 years. Maisie lives on Waterloo Road, a tight community where children run barefoot and the linen factory is a common denominator. Sally lives in the grand, isolated Dalriada house. Their longing for a child unites both; Maisie takes in a little boy on Halloween night, and Sally's troubled mind and peculiar visions follow her path of sorrow and redemption. Pithy with Ulster Scots, old rhymes, cures and sayings, there is a sense of magic to it all. A book to warm your heart on a cold winter's night. Ruth McKee
