For reasons of objectivity, OMG's book critic Danny Denton spread his forum out to well-read friends and colleagues, and tried to take into account the books everybody got for Christmas. The results (which, as you can see, couldn’t be whittled down to ten) weren’t too surprising, and yet were refreshingly Irish in flavour. It may also be noted that given the wide variety of genre this is a “best eleven” and not a “top eleven.” There are no league tables in art....

Brooklyn - Colm Toibín

Described by one critic as a “boringly obvious” choice for book of the year, Brooklyn is nonetheless a novel of fine emotional depth, with Toibín’s usual high standard of simple and spare, graceful and utterly captivating prose. It follows the story of a young Irish emigrant to America in the 1950s, and sees Toibín’s wonderfully rendered heroine enveloped by the adventure before being called home to Enniscorthy as a result of tragedy. The bumpy voyage across the Atlantic is one of the great comic scenes of the year.

Ship of Fools - Fintan O’ Toole

In a year of great economic sadness and impotent rage a glut of books on the economy emerged. This one is probably the best of the bunch, because O’ Toole has the capacity to give specific facts within a seamless bigger picture. With so much 'evidence' to draw on, it would have been easy to get bogged down and lost in corrupt detail after corrupt detail, but Ship Of Fools’ dreadful sense of perspective is unwavering. It exposes just what a corrupt government we have and have had, and sadly charts how we blew our chance to establish ourselves as a leading nation of the world, both ethically and economically. In the grim words of the Godspeed You! Black Emperor song: “We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death…”

Peace - Richard Bausch

An American this time, Peace covers the retreat of a group of American soldiers from Italy in the Second World War. The book takes on with originality the moral ambiguities and dilemmas of war, the inevitability of murder and the banal horror of being a soldier. The characters are inescapably real, paranoid and utterly enthralling. At 170 pages approx., it’s only a small book, but it packs a hard punch that will easily topple you.

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall is the superbly wrought historical novel about a period in the life of Thomas Cromwell. The first of a trilogy, the prose is infectious and compels you through the six hundred (odd) pages. Mantel’s ability to control the speed of time is masterful and draws the reader further and further into the story. The book’s winning of the Booker Prize may have drawn some negative press on the prize itself, but this is an issue of categorization and not a comment on the abundant quality of the novel itself.

Cork Rock - Mark McAvoy

From the vastly historical to the distinctly (and quirkily) local; Cork Rock is possibly the best book on music to come out this year, because it is completely charming, told with devotion, and interesting enough to get the attention of even the loosest fans of music (or Cork!). Much like Hanging From The Rafters, the great basketball book that narrowly missed out with this selection, Cork Rock brings to life an almost mythical time in a city’s life. If you were there, you’ll forever reminisce about it; if you weren’t there, you’ll forever wish you were. This book helps you pretend you were.

Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living - Declan Kiberd

If you’ve read the great book, you’ll no doubt be wondering what the hell it was all about. If you read it again, you’ll think you know what it was about, but change your mind if you read it a third time, and so on. The beauty of Declan Kiberd’s study of Joyce’s tome is that it kindly points out that Ulysses is, in fact, about everything. Ulysses has at last been revealed for its true nature, not as a book for elitists (though the story does go that Joyce had to explain it to the likes of Hemingway) but a one-day bible for common people. Kiberd’s achievement is in showing that the book can teach us all something; we, the common reader, complete the book. And, as readers have pointed out to this critic, it has a very real meaning in helping us through some of the tragedies we endure from year to year.

Inherent Vice - Thomas Pynchon

You probably have to be a fan, but this new novel from the elusive American is as strangely and incredibly composed, hilarious, daft, paranoid and utterly shambolic as some of his best work. Not much more needs to be said, although a “vice” pun could be proffered. But Pynchon would hate that. Wouldn’t he?

Love and Summer - William Trevor

One of the first books reviewed on this website, Love and Summer is typical of Trevor, in that it is so masterful that even as you try to criticise it you begin to believe that the esteemed author is making a mockery of your issues with the book. The story follows a summer in the fictional town of Rathmoye, a place where nothing much happens. Not too much happens in the book either. A town stalwart is mourned, a farmer buys a field, and a sad love affair, that of Ellie Dillihan, unravels. By the end of the summer, the story has passed with the season, but you’ve been utterly led away by Trevor. You’ve tasted the summer fruits and winced with the falling of the first Autumnal leaves, and the whole thing gives the memory of a gorgeous dream.

The Selected Works of TS Spivet - Reif Larsen

This anomaly of fiction tells the story of a twelve-year-old genius, a mapmaker who sets off from his parents’ Montana ranch in the dead of night to traverse America and accept a major scientific prize from the Smithsonian Institution. The book is truly the work of a genius, not only with strong prose but detailed with the delightful Spivet’s maps and illustrations, ponderings and aspirations. Larsen has produced a truly original work of fiction here, one of the fabled “crossover” novels that, we hope, will see the author rewarded for such creative and unconventional work.

The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1 (1929-1940), edited by Edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck

From an original fictional character to an original Irish great. Beckett remains one of our literary pioneers and these insights into his life are riveting, a must for anybody with an interest in Irish literature (or psychology, for that matter). Not only do the letters supply insight into Beckett, they are also a vibrant illustration of Western Europe in the thirties. It is possible also to trace the emergence of Beckett’s style and concerns in these letters, but, nevertheless, they are intriguing to read and inspiring for any writer-to-be. More!

Let The Great World Spin - Colum McCann
It is the year’s great success story: an Irishman has won the National Book Award in the U.S. As a footballing nation, we may not have made it to the World Cup, but one of our most interesting and (relatively) young literary talents has won the “world cup of literature.” No prize in world literature espouses as much quality as the National Book Award, and McCann is a hero now in a bleak time. The novel is set in New York in 1974 and uses Philippe Petit’s infamous tightrope walk between the Twin Towers as its narrative anchor. Around this, McCann weaves the various stories of disparate onlookers, the Irish link represented in the depiction of two Irish brothers, one a radical young monk working with prostitutes. Esquire went as far as to call it “the first great 9/11 novel,” and with this kind of praise behind him, McCann can only go on to more and better, in 2010 and beyond. It must surely be good for the Irish too…

Written by :

Danny Denton