Categories

Book of the Decade

Winner
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
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The first volume in Derek Landy's brilliant Skulduggery Pleasant series.

Nominated
Foolish Mortals by Jennifer Johnston
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This novel depicting festive family life at its worst is among her best.

The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
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Lucy’s story is as beautiful as anything the master storyteller has ever written.

Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor
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This brilliant Famine epic represents a timely reminder of an uncomfortably recent past.

Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
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Patrick McCabe's finest hour, Winterwood combines the creepy suspense of Psycho with the black humour of Irvine Welsh.

Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle
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The sequel to The Woman Who Walked into Doors and every bit as good.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
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John Boyne’s crossover Holocaust tale of innocence lost and humanity has achieved classic status.

Tenderwire by Claire Kilroy
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A spellbinding novel from one of a new generation of Irish writers which casts the Irish novel in a new and different light.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
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The story of centenarian mental hospital patient Roseanne McNulty is shocking and beautiful.

Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
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Maeve Binchy tells a story of family, friends, patients, and staff of a heart clinic in a community caught between the old and the new Ireland.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
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Precisely controlled and subtly-achieved, the story of Eilis Lacey’s odyssey rounded off a triumphant decade for one of our finest writers.

Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden
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This outstanding novel calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are and shows how the past informs the present.

Stepping Stones by Dennis O'Driscoll and Seamus Heaney
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Dennis O’Driscoll’s subtle questioning sheds a personal light on the artistic and ethical challenges faced by our greatest poet.

Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann
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If 9/11 was the great trauma of the decade, Colum McCann’s novel was one of the great fictional accounts of that terrible event.

The Builders by Frank McDonald and Kathy Sheridan
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A fascinating analysis of the construction boom which disproportionately powered the transformation of Ireland in the Celtic Tiger era.

This Charming Man by Marian Keyes
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Four very different women, one awfully charming man and the dark secret that binds them all in Marian Keyes’ finest novel to date.

The Speckled People by Hugo Hamilton
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The contradictions, pressures and dilemmas of an unusual upbringing provide the material for this powerful Irish memoir.

The New Policeman by Kate Thompson
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A fabulously rich tale of music, myth and magic with a hint of murder thrown in for good measure.

Memoir by John McGahern
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A fitting coda to John McGahern’s writing career which was one of exceptional brilliance.

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
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Evokes the camaraderie and humour and the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt as the Easter Rising broke out.

The Pope's Children by David McWilliams
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David McWilliams’ brilliant survey of boom-times Ireland celebrated the teeming diversity of an economy and a society on the move.

Back From The Brink by Paul McGrath
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The candid and searing autobiography of an iconic football presence and a great Irish soccer legend.

The Gathering by Anne Enright
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This is a stark and moving tale of an ordinary family blighted by a history of abuse and concealment.

Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
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Against the landscape of an Ireland wrestling with its past, these stories beautifully articulate the yearnings of the human heart.

Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade by Ross O'Carroll Kelly
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If any character epitomised the zeitgeist of Celtic Tiger Ireland then surely it was Paul Howard’s Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.

The Truth Commissioner by David Parks
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No writer has chronicled The Troubles better than David Park, and in this novel he brings together four men deeply implicated in the moral miasma of the past.

The Parish by Alice Taylor
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A profound and benign book which deals with the realisation that local community is precious and must be nurtured.

Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd
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Set during the Troubles in the North, Bog Child explores the sacrifices made in the name of peace, and the unflinching strength of the human spirit.

Lessons in Heartbreak by Cathy Kelly
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Cathy Kelly’s flair for creating warm, realistic and thoroughly likeable characters permeates this terrific novel.

Forgive and Forget by Patricia Scanlan
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Few weddings go as planned, especially when there is tension between families and the events that occur at this particular wedding will have far reaching repercussions.

The Lovers by John Connolly
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John Connolly's visionary brand of neo-noir written in fine, supple, sensuous prose.

It's a Long Way from Penny Apples by Bill Cullen
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Bill Cullen's wonderful account of coming of age in 1950's Dublin became one of the bestselling Irish memoirs ever.

The Stolen Village by Des Ekin
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Des Ekin’s extraordinary tale is popular history of the finest sort but reads like a historical thriller.

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
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Eoin Colfer’s wonderful series, begun in 2001, has become a classic of the genre.

Yours, Faithfully by Sheila O'Flanagan
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A dramatic and touching tale of a bigamist exposed in extraordinary circumstances.

The Sea by John Banville
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This masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected won the 2005 Booker Prize.

With My Lazy Eye by Julia Kelly
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A classic bildungsroman, Julia Kelly’s debut novel won the Irish Book Awards Best Newcomer of the Year Award in 2007.

Connemara: Listening to the Wind by Tim Robinson
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Tim Robinson's extraordinary engagement with the region, its folklore and its often terrible history produced a work as beautiful and surprising as its subject.

In the Woods by Tana French
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Tana French's stunnning debut novel kick-started her promising career as a crime writer.

Tatty by Christine Dwyer Hickey
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A devastating, yet hilarious, depiction of a Dublin family told through the charismatic voice of a little girl.

A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney
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Ed Moloney's book has become the classic analysis of the period known as The Troubles.

The Master by Colm Tóibín
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The Master is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.

There Are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry
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Kevin Barry's superb debut collection of sharply-observed and riotously entertaining stories.

In the Forest by Edna O'Brien
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Edna O’Brien tough uncompromising novel about a brutal murder on the west coast caused a major furore at the time of publication.

Keane by Roy Keane
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In 2002, no other public figure divided opinion like Keano.

Havoc in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett
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Ronan Bennett’s extraordinarily powerful novel is set in England in the 1630s.

Judging Dev by Diarmaid Ferriter
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Diarmaid Ferriter re-examines the extraordinary career of the most significant politician of modern Irish history.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
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Another great 9/11 novel by an Irish writer

That They May Face The Rising Sun by John McGahern
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Evokes McGahern's genius for transforming the simple rituals of country living into universal truths.

PS I Love You by Cecelia Ahern
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Cecelia Ahern’s stunning debut novel.


Bord Gais
  • National Book Tokens
  • Sunday Independent