Jennifer Johnston made her superb debut with The Captains and The Kings in 1972 at the age of 42. I don’t know what impact it had on her life but it made a huge impact on mine, when I read it in 1974, aged 15. I loved its sparse intensity and intimacy and how the simplicity of the writing belied the complexity of her characters. In an remarkable literary odyssey, Johnston has quietly got on with the business of producing a distinctive oeuvre of tightly controlled novels ever since, short in size and huge in emotional impact. To the delight of her readers, she betrays no signs of stopping, flagging or writing one unnecessarily long sentence. Her novels don’t always receive the attention they deserve, because consistent novelists who quietly get on with refining their craft are not newsworthy. But Johnston continues to brilliantly conjure up domestic interiors, where a lifelong relationship is often revealed through a taut exchange of seemingly inconsequential dialogue, illuminating like a blinding chink of light in a dark corner. Every three years our bookshops graced with another of her precise, pared and intensely crafted novels; subtle, masterly explorations of the human condition, treasured by lovers of good writing.

Other favourites: Paula Meehan and Maeve Brennan

Dermot Bolger is a novelist, poet and playwright.