92 books like Autobiographies

Elizabeth Bowen once described the Ireland-England relationship as ‘a mixture of showing-off and suspicion, nearly as bad as sex’. Her 1928 novel demonstrates this beautifully, eviscerating the attitudes of  Anglo-Irish grandees in their Big House as the country around them crackles with guerilla war and showing the incomprehension between the Irish (at all social levels) and the British soldiers sent ostensibly to keep the peace.

Though it ends in tragedy, social comedy, as so often, shows the brutal realities beneath the surface. And the atmosphere of the Irish landscape, at once idyllic and brooding, comes alive in Bowen’s supercharged prose.

I first encountered this book as a series of lectures in Oxford in 1978 and was riveted.

Lyons faced head-on the themes of cultural and sectarian antagonism in Ireland from the death of the constitutionalist nationalist leader Parnell in 1891 to independent Ireland’s decision to remain neutral in World War II, using sources that were as much literary as political, and at the end projecting the divisions in Irish society forward to the then-current violence in the North. The tone was notably acerbic, even verging towards despair, but also employing bitter humour.

A great historian, he died prematurely a few years later when just embarking on his projected but unwritten biography of Yeats. He had written many books, but this is the one that left the loudest echoes–notably in nailing the psychological gulf of understanding between Ireland and Britain that became so apparent in the early twentieth century.

I love this novel so much that I named my son Phineas in homage.

Anthony Trollope might seem the ur-English novelist because of his much-loved series of Barhhester novels set among clerics in a provincial town, but he spent much of his working life in Ireland and wrote passionately about the country in many of his books.

Phineas Finn is a kind of alter ego, a young Irishman equipped with charm, good looks, and very little money. He becomes a Member of Parliament and sets out to find his way through the challenges and dilemmas of high society in Victorian London. His moral compass sometimes goes slightly awry, but it generally comes right in the end.

Trollope’s psychological subtlety draws out the ambiguities and prejudices that Phineas encounters and reminds us of the central part played by Ireland in the British Empire. He died long before Ireland’s separation from Britain,… show more.

This is a play that reads like the most hilarious novel, and the "Preface for Politicians" should be required reading for British diplomats and civil servants.

Shaw deals with the misunderstandings that arise when a rich Englishman arrives in Edwardian Ireland to develop a tourist opportunity. His approach is at once idealistic and exploitative, while his Irish colleagues are cynical, hardheaded, and privately contemptuous.

In the accompanying "Preface," Shaw uses the misunderstandings that arise from self-interest and wilful ignorance to illuminate and expose Britain’s misgovernment of Ireland. His perspective is socialist rather than nationalist, but few saw as far ahead as he did in 1904, and his devastating humour still takes your breath away.

William Butler Yeats was a truly great poet who lived during revolutionary times in Ireland. I am recommending his poetry collection because his poems reflect the revolutionary times he lived in, but also because Yeats himself lived a revolutionary life of change. One of the things I most admire about Yeats is that his poetry continues to change right until the end of his life. He was never satisfied with his own work, and he always looked coldly and critically at himself. His epitaph is, “Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by.”

In his poem ‘The Great Day,’ Yeats presents an image of two beggars, one on horseback whipping another on foot. After the revolution, the beggars changed places, but the whip went on. This is a remarkable image–unfortunately, one that my research shows to be close to the truth.

This play conveys the inner world of nationalism in both its romance and fanaticism.

Yeats’s play became a cult for young revolutionary nationalists in celebrating blood sacrifice for the nation. A young man joins an uprising on the eve of his wedding after meeting an old woman, Cathleen ni Houlihan (a folk name for Ireland), who pleads for his help to recover her green fields. By his sacrifice, Cathleen is transformed into a beautiful young woman with "the face of a queen." 

Yeats later agonised over this play and developed a more ambivalent attitude to nationalism. When young nationalists staged a sacrificial rebellion in 1916, he warned in his poem "Easter 1916" that "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart." He asked in a later poem, "Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?" 

Jewel thieves, undercover investigation, and - a fake engagement? I seriously could not predict the twists and turns aplenty in this book from Erin Swann which made me gasp several times, and then frantically keep reading.

I adored the clever descriptions that Erin crafted, and it became impossible not to fall in love with her characters. Grab it now.

Edna O’Brien’s work makes me laugh and cry at the same time!

The Country Girls is a rollicking tale of two girls from rural Ireland in the 1950s, convent-educated, who leave home after their secondary school graduation to seek freedom and fun in the big city of Dublin.

Not quite Sex in the City, but a reader will laugh with the girls and sympathize with their troubles with men and work. 

This is one of several excellent books that explores how nonhuman animals shaped cities (see also Andrew Robichaud’s Animal City, Frederick L. Brown’s The City is More Than Human, Dawn Day Biehler’s Pests in the City, and Hannah Velten’s Beastly London, for example). Cities are multispecies spaces and they have always been so, even as the history of a given city shifts and changes. When we walk through a city like Dublin today we may not immediately think about the many, many nonhuman animals who used to roam the same streets and pathways we walk on today. And yet, as Juliana Adelman explores in this book, there are hints and traces of this animal history if we know where to look.

No one does dialogue and atmospheric tension like Tana French. Faithful Place is my favorite of hers.

I felt like the characters were so alive that I could hear their voices in my head long after I had closed the book. This story is rife with a gritty, urban Irish atmosphere and thick with familial tension. French does a cross between literary fiction and procedural that is devastating, at times quite dark, and yet ringing with hope—one of my favorite qualities in a mystery.

Best read on a dark, rainy afternoon with a mug of rich coffee—or a Guinness.