My Week in Books – 23rd February 2025

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On the blog last week

Tuesday – I went off-piste for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic with a list of Books Featuring Gardens. I also celebrated the announcement of the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Thursday – I shared my Q&A with George Alexander, author of historical thriller Twilight of Evil.

Friday – I published my review of The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway.

New on my shelves

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction longlist acquisition has begun!

The Catchers by Xan Brooks (Salt Publishing)

Spring 1927. The birth of popular music. John Coughlin is a song-catcher from New York who has been sent to Appalachia to source and record the local hill-country musicians. His assignment leads him to small-town Tennessee where he oversees the recording session that will establish his reputation. From here he ventures further south in search of glory. He is chasing what song-catchers call the big fish or the firefly; the song or performer which will make a man rich.

Waylaid at an old plantation house, Coughlin gets wind of a black teenage guitarist, Moss Evans, who runs bootleg liquor in the Mississippi Delta. The Mississippi has flooded, putting the country underwater, but Coughlin is able to locate the boy and bring him out. Coughlin views himself as a saviour. Others regard him as a thief and exploiter. Coughlin and Moss – the catcher and his catch – pick their way across a ruined, unstable Old South and then turn north through the mountains, heading for New York.

The Mare: A Novel by Angharad Hampshire (Northodox Press)

Hermine Braunsteiner was the first person to be extradited from the United States for Nazi war crimes. She was one of a few thousand women to work as a female concentration camp guard. Prisoners nicknamed her ‘the Mare’ because she kicked people to death. When the camps were liberated, Hermine escaped and fled back to Vienna.

Many years later, she met Russell Ryan, an American man holidaying in Austria. They fell in love, married, and moved to New York, where she lived a quiet life as an adoring suburban housewife, beloved friend and neighbour. No one, not even her husband, knew the truth of her past, until one day a New York Times journalist knocked on their door, blowing their lives apart.

The Mare tells Hermine and Russell’s story for the first time in fiction. It explores how an ordinary woman could descend so quickly into evil, examining the role played by government propaganda, ideology, fear and cognitive dissonance, and asks why her husband chose to stay with her despite discovering what she had done.

What I’m currently reading

Look out for…

  • Book Review: The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner
  • Book Review: Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton
  • Q&A: In My Boots by Amanda K. Jaros

Book Review – The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway @epoque_press

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About the Book

Front cover of The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway

Returning from Brazil with his wife and daughter, Oisín is looking to rebuild a life in Ireland and reconnect with his mother, Brigid, who has early onset Alzheimer’s. As her condition deteriorates she starts to speak Irish, the language of her youth, and reflect on her childhood dreams and aspirations.

Mother and son embark on a journey of personal discovery, and as past traumas are exposed they begin to understand what has shaped them and who they really are.

Format: Paperback (242 pages) Publisher: époque press
Publication date: 25th February 2025 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find The Language of Remembering on Goodreads

Purchase The Language of Remembering direct from époque press

My Review

The book moves between two timelines. In the present day, Oisín has returned to Ireland from Brazil along with his wife Nina and young daughter Ailish. The author deftly explores the conflict between Oisín’s sense of responsibility for the care of his mother and the disruption caused to the family by their move from Brazil, Nina’s native country. His struggles to find a job that will enable them to obtain a mortgage and move into a permanent home only add to his sense of guilt and frustration. His experiences are narrated in the second person which I found had the effect of giving immediacy to Oisín’s struggles, forcing me to place myself in his situation.

Brigid’s story starts in the 1970s, in rural Ireland. Whilst still a teenager, she discovers she is pregnant. Learning of her condition, her parents react with a mixture of anger and disappointment, well aware of the social stigma this will bring to Brigid and their family. Brigid and James, the father of her child, are pressurised into a hasty wedding by their respective families.

Brigid and James begin to realise their lives will have to take a very different trajectory, the responsibilities of parenthood putting paid to their personal ambitions. They also struggle to extricate themselves from the influence of James’s controlling family. But the birth of her son Oisín, albeit after a very difficult birth, brings Brigid unexpected joy.

With Brigid’s condition worsening, Oisín’s visits to his mother in her care home are often challenging. Sometimes she can recall events from her early life in detail, sharing things Oisín never knew, or remember vividly moments of their life when he was growing up. At other times, she seems in a world of her own, confused by her surroundings. There are heartbreaking moments that will be familiar to anyone who has cared for someone with Alzheimer’s such as when Brigid mistakes Oisín for her dead husband, James, or becomes distressed because of a misunderstanding.

As the title suggests, language and communication are key themes of the book. Along with Brigid’s declining memory is her increasing use of Gaelic, a language she spoke with her father but one Oisín does not understand, although he makes touching efforts to do so as the book progresses. The author includes the reader in this challenge by, from time to time, incorporating phrases in Gaelic without translation, placing us in the same position as Oisín in searching for clues as to their meaning.

Alongside the challenges of communication, I liked how the book explored the vibrancy of language. For example, Brigid’s mother, Kathleen, possesses an extensive vocabulary and interest in the etymology of words. Her speech is peppered with words such as ‘subjugated’, ‘euphemism’, ‘quandary’. And Oisín recalls time spent with his father learning the collective names for birds. However Oisín also knows the ability of words to wound.

The Language of Remembering is a moving and perceptive story about the role language plays in our interactions with others, and how it can be both a barrier and a pathway to understanding.

I received an advance digital copy courtesy of époque press.

In three words: Tender, insightful, emotional
Try something similar: Tiny Pieces of Enid by Tim Ewins

About the Author

Author Patrick Holloway

Patrick Holloway is an Irish writer of fiction and poetry and is an editor of the literary journal, The Four Faced Liar. He completed his Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow, before moving to Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he completed his PhD in Creative Writing.

He is the winner of the Bath Short Story Award, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Flash 500 Prize, the Allingham Fiction contest and he was the recipient of the Paul McVeigh Residency in 2023. His work appears in The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, Poetry Ireland, The Moth, Southword, The Ilanot Review, Carve, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. (Photo/bio: Publisher website)

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