Irish Counties Challenge

Aim: To read a contemporary novel by an author from each of the 32 counties in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Guidelines
  • All included works are preferably novels written after 1950.Failing that, short story collections from a similar time period. They may be set in older time periods, e.g. during the famine. (This is just personal preference for categories on my part.)
  • All authors were either born in, or raised in, the county they are associated with. For many authors, this means they are associated with more than one county. In most cases I choose authors born in a county, but if I am lacking choice or if the author moved from their birth county at a very young age I will go by where the author was raised.
  • Each author will only be listed once.In instances where I have read multiple books by one listed author, I will name my favourite. Where the author is as yet unread, or where there is only one author for a county, I may list additional novels for a bit of choice.
Legend

Green is read
Yellow is owned
Grey is not yet acquired
(A) The book has won an award

Reviews

***

Munster (3/6)
Clare ["Pretending" - Caroline Williams] ["The Country Girls" or "The Little Red Chairs" - Edna O'Brien]
Cork - ["Asking For It"(A) - Louise O'Neill] ["Spill Simmer Falter Wither"(A) - Sara Baume] ["The Story of Lucy Gault" - William Trevor] ["To School Through The Fields" - Alice Taylor] ["Distress Signals" - Catherine Ryan Howard]
Kerry - ["The Last Days Of Rabbit Hayes" - Anna McPartlin] ["The Field" - John B. Keane]
Limerick - ["Watermelon" or "Rachel's Holiday" - Marian Keyes] ["City of Bohane" or "Beatlebone" - Kevin Barry]
Tipperary - ["The Thing About December" or "The Spinning Heart" - Donal Ryan] ["One Day As A Tiger" - Anne Haverty]
Waterford - ["Darkest Truth" - Catherine Kirwan] ["After the Rising" - Orna Ross] ["The Sea & The Silence" - Peter Cunningham]

Connacht (1/5)
Galway - ["The Guards" - Ken Bruen] ["The China Factory" or "Academy Street" - Mary Costello] ["The Woman on the Bus" - Pauline McLynn] ["The Glorious Heresies" - Lisa McInerney]
Leitrim - [Undecided - John McGahern]
Mayo["Young Skins: Stories" or "Castaway" - Colin Barrett]
Roscommon - ["The Deposition of Father McGreevy" - Brian O'Doherty] ["Death and Plenty" - Brian Leyden]
Sligo - ["Mistaken"(A) - Neil Jordan] ["A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing" - Eimear McBride]

Leinster (8/12)
Carlow - ["Thy Tears Might Cease" - Michael Farrell] ["Moon Man" - David Donohue]
Dublin -  [undecided - John Boyne] ["The Green Road"(A) or "The Gathering"(A) - Anne Enright] ["The Dirty Dust" - Máirtín O Cadhain] ["The Star of the Sea" - Joseph O'Connor] ["Thirteen Ways of Looking" or "TransAtlantic" or "Dancer"(A) - Colum McCann] [Under The Hawthorn Tree - Marita Conlon-McKenna]
Kildare - ["Good Behaviour" - Molly Keane] ["Langrishe, Go Down" - Aidan Higgins] ["The Herbalist"(A) - Niamh Boyce]
Kilkenny - ["The Big Chapel" - Thomas Kilroy]
Laois - ["Seeds of Doubt" - James Ryan]
Longford - ["Solace"(A) - Belinda McKeon] ["Sisters and Lies" - Bernice Barrington]
Louth - ["The Magical Mystical, Marvelous Coat" - Catherine Ann Cullen] ["Nothing On Earth" - Conor O'Callaghan]
Meath - ["The Hidden Damage" - James Stern] ["Hunters" - Aoife Marie Sheridan]
Offaly - ["The Lie of the Land" - P. J. Cunningham]
Westmeath - ["Long Time, No See" - Dermot Healy] ["Damage" - Josephine Hart] ["Under The Eye of the Clock" - Christopher Nolan]
Wexford - ["Out Of Nowhere" - Gerard Whelan] [Undecided - Colm Toíbín] ["Beyond Belief" - Colm O'Gorman] ["The Book of Evidence" or "Christine Falls" (as Benjamin Black) - John Banville] ["The Convinctions of John Delahunt" - Andrew Hughes]
Wicklow - ["Foster" - Claire Keegan]

Ulster (5/9)
Antrim - ["Time Present and Time Past" - Deirdre Madden] ["Cal" - Bernard MacLaverty]
Armagh - ["Snapshots" - Jarlath Gregory] ["The Twelve" - Stuart Neville]
Cavan - ["Bird in the Snow" or "Staring at Lakes"(A) - Michael Harding]
Derry - ["The Misremembered Man" or "My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress" - Christina McKenna] ["Borderlands" - Brian McGilloway] ["Reading in the Dark" - Seamus Deane]
Donegal - ["Fox" - Matthew Sweeney] ["Bogmail" - Patrick McGinley] ["Lament in the Wind" - Hazel McIntyre] ["The Black Snow" - Paul Lynch] ["The Call" - Peadar O'Guilín]
Down - ["A Parachute in the Lime Tree" - Annemarie Neary] ["Mystery Man" - Colin Bateman] ["An Irish Country Doctor" - Patrick Taylor]
Fermanagh - ["The Little Hammer" or "From Out of the City" - John Kelly]
Monaghan - ["The Talk of the Town" - Ardal O'Hanlon] ["The Butcher Boy" or "Winterwood"(A) or "Breakfast on Pluto" - Patrick McCabe] ["Call My Brother Back" - Michael McLaverty]
Tyrone - ["The House Where it Happened" and "About Sisterland" - Martina Devlin] ["Singing Bird" - Roisin McAuley] ["The Third Policeman" - Flann O'Brien]

Total Counties: 18/32
Total books: 22

No comments: