Speed Reading - debut novels
In Elaine Feeney’s slyly humorous, dark and tender As You Were, Sinéad Hynes, a successful property developer, is confined in a run-down Galway hospital. She mulls over her brutal childhood as she avoids telling her husband, Alex, and three young sons, the truth behind her emergency admission. Her fellow inmate Margaret Rose reveals her own family’s secrets while trying to keep them in check via her mobile phone. In another bed, Jane has lost her mind but is frighteningly lucid about Ireland’s betrayal of her best friend.
Shahnaz
Ahsan’s Hashim and Family is a poignant exploration of migration, identity,
love and loss. In 1960, Hashim leaves East Pakistan to follow his
cousin Rofikul to Manchester. Hashim works gruelling hours in the
local factory so that his wife, Munira, can join him. They endure
hardship and racism as they build a life for themselves. Rofikul
marries his pregnant Irish girlfriend, Helen, but abandons her to
report on Bangladesh’s fight for independence.
Hashim and Munira are left to pick up the pieces and take in Helen and her son,
Adam.
