Placeholders by James Roseman (Verve Books, £10.99)
Placeholders is set in Boston and follows the romance between Aaron, a Jewish-American mourning the loss of his brother, and Roisin, an Irish expat overstaying her visa. The characters are relatable, with Aaron and Roisin facing struggles many will recognise. Roseman adds a fresh perspective by exploring how religious differences can create distance in relationships.
The prose can feel deadening, with mundane activities described in a detached manner – “The map interface displayed on the screen [...] shows a blue dot representing her current location and a red pin representing her destination. The blue dot overlaps the red pin completely, indicating that she has arrived.”
The idea, I suppose, is to reflect the deadening effects of late-stage capitalism, a style that has become ubiquitous in contemporary fiction, for better or for worse. Elizabeth MacBride
The Long Look Back by Tom MacDonagh (Menma Books, €17.50)
The Long Look Back centres on that rare subject – working-class life. Beckett could not be read: “My own reality was so severe. Reading about it was a luxury I could not afford.” Childhood in New York, schooling at “Synger”, “cut knees, falls, terror, ignorance, the constant fear of not making the grade”. Teenage TB. Visiting the North – post the Nazi blitzkrieg. An encounter with Elizabeth Taylor, “a spoiled American lady”.
“I stare back down through the years,” writes MacDonagh. “There is no death. Family and friends are still alive.” Portobello was “a kip” but it was home. It evoked “love, before I realised what love was about”.
It deserves a place among the classics – The Outsiders, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, The Grass Arena. A work of literature. Rosita Sweetman
Leaning on Gates by Seamus O’Rourke (Gill Books, €18.99)
In this, his second memoir, O’Rourke resumes his story when he was 18, with the “gobshite” 1980s decade ahead and him in Leitrim of “no love or contraception – only ones coming out from Confession”.
“Rural Ireland only functioned on hard work and misery,” he declares but there’s little misery in evidence as he casts a wry, thoughtful, compassionate and humorous eye on the rollercoaster years of his young adulthood: being mortified seeing his parents dancing in public; playing football for Leitrim; the longings and sense of unfulfilment; the near-misses with women, and the adventures and mishaps in New York, Dublin and London. His parents, especially his father, figure largely in this story of all that was right and wrong about growing up in rural Ireland. Brian Maye
