One editor has called it the "Green Season," the time around St. Patrick's Day when books by and about the Irish take center stage in bookstores across the U.S. This year, the publication of 14 original novels and reprints by Irish-born novelists between February and July gives focus to the season. And in a sign of publishers' confidence in the maturity of the market for Irish fiction—established by such bestselling authors as Maeve Binchy and Roddy Doyle—Norton, HarperCollins and Penguin are each publishing two Irish novels within a period of a few months.
"Frank McCourt reminded everyone just how huge the audience is for all things Irish," said Clare Ferraro, president of Viking and Plume. "The market has always been there, in my opinion, but Angela's Ashes made publishers aware of it in the U.S. This awareness, coupled with Ireland's recent expansion—culturally as well as financially—has made Irish authors more available and appealing."
For many publishers, March is still the default month for Irish authors. "Despite mainstream appeal, St. Patrick's Day still provides the best opportunity to publicize Irish books. The media always seem more interested than usual at this time," Anchor Books editor Andrew Miller observed. The holiday also provides a hook for bookstores. Lisa Rogers, manager of After-Words bookshop in Chicago, said, "We certainly do usually see an upswing around St. Patrick's Day, which may have to do with our seasonal displays of books with Irish themes." Though St. Patrick's Day is not a gift-giving holiday that monopolizes front-of-store tables, related displays in cities with a major Irish population can still give a boost to new and mid-list authors who don't tour the U.S.
This year, three grande dames of Irish literature anchor the season—Edna O'Brien in hardcover, and Nuala O'Faolain and Maeve Binchy in paperback. O'Brien's latest, In the Forest (Houghton Mifflin, Mar.), is a psychological thriller based on a real triple homicide that shocked Ireland in 1994. Excerpted in the New Yorker in February, the book has been featured in Vogue, while O'Brien was the subject of a recent interview in the Washington Post Book World. A tour will take her to Los Angeles, Houston, Minneapolis and New York. Meanwhile, the trade paperback of O'Faolain's novel, My Dream of You (Riverhead, Feb.), is a Book Sense pick that has already hit both the Independent and Barnes and Noble bestseller lists. O'Faolain is supporting it with a 10-city tour leading up to St. Patrick's Day. Binchy, on the other hand, won't be touring for the mass market edition of Scarlet Feather (Signet, Mar.) or her next hardcover, Quentins (Nov.), though in the past she has had her own float in the Chicago St. Patrick's Day parade.
The first of the Irish novelists making their American debut this season is Martin Roper. Gone (Holt, Feb.); his tale of a young man whose gnawing disquietude erodes a series of brittle relationships, was excerpted in the New Yorker last November. Roper, who teaches writing at the University of Iowa's Irish Writing Program at Trinity College, Dublin, told PW that he considers Iowa to be a hotbed for Irish literature, a sentiment echoed by Paul Ingram, buyer of Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City: "There's a fairly large community in town that buys Irish books year-round. We have a staff that knows a good Irish book when they see it."
Next up is Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boys (Scribner, Mar.). With a title that's a clever play on the great Flann O'Brien novel At Swim, Two Birds, the novel centers on two gay boys who plan to make an epic swim to an island in Dublin Bay at the most pivotal moment in Irish history, the Easter Rebellion of 1916. "What struck me about it," said Scribner editor-in-chief Nan Graham, "is the sense of language as a treacherous weapon—both the spoken and the unsaid. It's a variation on the old notion that the Irish have the gift of the gab. I think readers respond to the repression in the Irish culture. Colm Toibin is a master at illuminating that secrecy and so is O'Neill."
Later in the spring, Norton will publish two novels by Belfast-born writers that are set amid the recent Troubles. The Anatomy School by Bernard MacLaverty (Apr.), probably best known in this country for his novel Cal, "represents a bit of a turn toward the comic," said Angela von der Lippe, senior editor at Norton. "It is an exquisitely told coming-of-age story, very personal with the political receding into the background." The other tale is No Bones by first novelist Anna Burns (May), published as a trade paperback original. "Anna is one of the few women writing about the violence in Ireland from a woman's perspective," Norton senior editor Amy Cherry said. "Through art, she traces what the culture of violence does to the families, particularly the girls, growing up during the Troubles, and she does it in an innovative, literary way."
HarperCollins is also set to deliver an Irish one-two punch this year. First comes the trade paperback reprint of Emerald Germs of Ireland (HarperPerennial, Mar.), an idiosyncratic, humorous tour of smalltown Irish life by Butcher Boy author Patrick McCabe, followed by the hardcover of Marian Keyes's Angels (Morrow, June), which introduces Margaret Walsh, sister of Rachel and Claire, who were featured in Keyes's previous books. "Angels is our fifth book with Marian, but it's especially exciting because it's her first novel set mainly in the United States," reported Morrow v-p and executive editor Jennifer Hershey. The house plans a 50,000 first printing and will issue repackaged editions of Keyes's previous paperbacks.
The season's other established authors include county Waterford native Annabel Davis-Goff, whose This Cold Country (Harcourt, May) focuses on the changing world of an Anglo-Irish family during World War II. Davis-Goff will support the 35,000-copy first printing with an East Coast reading tour. Veteran Irish writer John McGahern also returns—after 10 years—with By the Lake(Mar.), a tale of life in a contemporary Irish village that Knopf will launch with a 20,000-copy first printing.
In paperback, Penguin adds two Irish-born novelists to the roster: a reprint of last year's After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell (Mar.), which PW described as "a moving portrait of a young woman's journey toward a life-threatening crisis," and a paperback original, The Crooked Man by Philip Davison (July). As it happens, famed Dublin novelist Roddy Doyle introduced Viking senior editor Caroline White to Davison's work. "His three novels, which are literary thrillers, all feature the same protagonist," said White. "A British reviewer called Philip a cross between Henry Green and Graham Greene, which I think is great." The second novel in the series, McKenzie's Friend, will be published sometime next year.
The season's other reprints include Anchor's lead title for February, Under the Banyan Tree by Christopher Nolan, who won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award in 1987 for his bestselling memoir Under the Eye of the Clock. Crippled at birth when his oxygen supply was cut off, Nolan is confined to a wheelchair and writes on his computer with the help of his "magical unicorn," an attachment he wears on his head that allows him to punch out his books on a keyboard. In June, Plume will reprint Someone Like You by Cathy Kelly, a number one bestselling author in Ireland and the U.K. who probes the lives of three women who become friends at a critical juncture. "It's a book Maeve Binchy fans can give to their nieces," said Brant Janeway, director of marketing and publicity. "We've repackaged it for a younger audience with a hipper design, and we're very aggressively going after media and reviews."
