THEJOURNAL.IE

BEST IRISH-PUBLISHED BOOK OF THE YEAR:

Midwinter: A Journey Through a Season

By Michael Harding, (illustrated by Enagh Farrell)

On frosty nights, as he sits by a flickering fire, Michael Harding withdraws into the stillness of winter and begins to reckon with age and death.

As stories emerge from the shadows, we meet a young boy whose arrival brings hope, but whose journey will know winter's path. November is a rainstorm, December a bleak twilight, but as January dawns and the ice
thaws, the fragile light of love penetrates the dark, bringing beauty to the earth and making new beginnings possible.

In writing of shadowed beauty, Midwinter is a poignant exploration of a season of loss, and the glimpses of hope that can follow even the longest nights.

DUBRAY

BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR:

Still – A Memoir

By Julia Kelly

Julia Kelly's mother, Delphine, spent much of her life in the shadows as a politician's wife, tending selflessly to the needs of her husband, John, and five wild children. Rattling around in a draughty house, the siblings – though much-loved – are left largely to their own devices, tended to by a series of hapless au-pairs, dodging mouse invasions and forever in search of their exhausted mother's attention.

When John collapses of a heart attack at the age of fifty-nine, it is a sad liberation for his wife. Unshackled from her domestic duties, Delphine undergoes a transformation. She embraces sea-swimming and, along with a coterie of elderly ladies, sets out on adventures to far-flung places. Her final journey is to the Galapagos Islands where, hit by an unexpected wave, she loses her balance and is forced underwater. When her body surfaces she is no longer breathing. The book left on her bedside locker in the hotel is 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.

Mired in grief, the five siblings begin the long repatriation of their mother's body. But it is the post-mortem report that provides the key to Julia's healing and recovery: gradually, within the clinical descriptions of limbs and eyes, heart and toes, Julia finds solace. Taking inspiration from each body part, she breathes life into Delphine – finally still and fully present for the first time in her seventy-two years – in gorgeous, luminous prose.

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR:

Frogs for Watchdogs

by Seán Farrell

A wild child with a ferocious imagination will stop at nothing to protect his family.

After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience.

Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his ferocious imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell. It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry’s true nature insists on revealing itself.

Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: the bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.

WHSmith

Popular Fiction Book of the Year in association with Ireland AM

The In-Laws

Sinéad Moriarty

Family life is enough of a juggle without ... The In-Laws

Amanda. Katie. Melanie.

Three wildly different women with one big problem – their impossible mother-in-law, Nancy.

When an unexpected crisis hits the family business, the sisters-in-law find themselves navigating stormy waters. Amanda is back in town and ready to reclaim her spot at the top. Katie, the feisty outsider, knows she'll never earn Nancy’s approval – and has stopped caring. Melanie, ambitious and savvy, is more than capable of running the business, if only Nancy would loosen her iron grip.

Forced to confront messy truths about marriage, motherhood, succession and family loyalty, the three women soon realize their greatest strength might just be each other.

The In-Laws is a sharp, funny, and relatable novel about surviving the family you didn’t choose.

New Irish Writing

Best Short Story in association with the Irish Independent

A Constriction

By Eamon McGuinness

Eamon is from Dublin. His fiction has appeared in ‘The Best Short Stories 2023: The O Henry Prize Winners’, ‘The Stinging Fly’, ‘The Lonely Crowd’, ‘The Pig’s Back’ and ‘The Four Faced Liar’. He has won an O Henry Prize for fiction, the Michael McLaverty, Wild Atlantic Words and Maria Edgeworth short story competitions. His debut collection of poetry, ‘The Wrong Heroes’, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2021.