John Walshe | Business Post

John Walshe

johnwalshe

The New Life: Insight into the sadness and loneliness of being gay in Victorian times

Debut novel based on a true story features the struggles of a duo of authors trying to publish a sympathetic book about homosexuality around the time of the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde

A Dangerous Business: Whodunit’s light touch at odds with weightier theme of women’s struggles

Sex-worker sleuths stumble incredibly across clues and corpses in Jane Smiley’s enjoyable but underwhelming murder mystery

We All Want Impossible Things: Tale of heartbreak and humour with a side order of morphine

Catherine Newman’s debut novel is a candid tale of lifelong friendship amid a terminal cancer diagnosis that is both hilarious and crushingly powerful

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion: Tender story of growing up in a strict religious family in Queens

Bushra Rehman’s novel tells the story of a gay girl growing up in a conservative immigrant Pakistani family while being surrounded with western norms that clashed with those of her family

Succession, Oppenheimer, and Barbie: Looking forward to the cultural highlights of 2023

The highlights of the year to come as chosen by writers Ben Haugh, John Walshe, Andrea Cleary, Tony Clayton-Lea, Sara Keating and Jordan Mooney

The Light We Carry: Former first lady shares more details of an extraordinary life

Michelle Obama talks about her loving upbringing, the challenges of marriage, overcoming prejudice and glass ceilings, and the tools she uses to ‘keep moving forward’

Three Castles Burning: Entertaining stories from Dublin’s past allows hidden gems to shine

Based on the Three Castles Burning podcast, historian Donal Fallon picks 12 streets in the capital to paint a bigger picture of the city through the ages

The Whitethorn of the Dancing: Good yarn of a murder mystery with twists aplenty

Author and broadcaster Tom McCaughren’s debut novel for adults is very readable and beautifully descriptive – if a little overlong

Books of the year: the critics’ choice

The task of choosing from the bulging shelves of your favourite bookshop can be daunting, but our reviewers John Walshe, Andrew Lynch and Andrea Cleary are here to help – naming the books that stood out from the crowd in 2022, along with their overall favourite in each category

‘It’s almost like you’re hosting a dinner party, so that mix of guests is really important’

Angela Scanlon on how she’s much happier with the current series of her Saturday night chat show, why she’s a nightmare to watch TV with and how when she had the biggest job of her career, she was miserable

The Road to Riverdance: Entertaining account of the steps that led to a showbiz phenomenon

From a childhood in Limerick to working with Van Morrison, Paul McGuinness and Johnny Logan, Bill Whelan traces the road to creating the famous show that began life as an interval act in the Eurovision song contest

‘Seeing addiction and alcoholism through Shiv has been really eye-opening for me’ – Róisín Gallagher

Belfast actor Róisín Gallagher is due to hit Irish televisions screens in a break-out role as a recovering alcoholic in The Dry, a new comedy-drama that has already wowed audiences on BritBox for its honest portrayal of alcoholism

Life begins in Leitrim: memoir is a story of hope, acceptance and the power of sport

Trapped with his Kurdish family in a camp in Iraq, Zak Moradi little dreamed that he would end up playing senior hurling for Leitrim

Surrender: Insightful deep dive into the extraordinary life of Bono

Much more humble and self-aware than he’s often given credit for, the U2 frontman’s memoirs reveal his thoughts on class, religion and his activism while he’s candid about the difficult and challenging moments in his life

‘Am I part of the problem by writing about police as though they are the good guys?’ – Ian Rankin

Bestselling crime novelist Ian Rankin discusses police corruption, why Britain is becoming a ‘basket case’ and the real-life confrontation on the streets of Edinburgh that inspired a key scene in his 24th Rebus novel

Where I End: Sense of dread builds in wonderfully written horror tale

Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, Sophie White’s debut novel is an unsettling story full of tension and foreboding as the dark secrets and beliefs of the island’s inhabitants are slowly revealed

Colditz: Snobbery, anti-Semitism and heroism in a castle full of POWs

A fascinating account of life in Colditz, the German World War II prison camp, reveals that it wasn’t all derring-do and brave attempts to escape

Boyne delivers with sequel to Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Like John Boyne’s other great work, particularly The Heart’s Invisible Furies, the story crosses continents, and brings the reader along willingly for the ride

Shrines of Gaiety: Sprawling novel of 1920s London life beguiles and dazzles

Set in 1926, Kate Atkinson’s family saga is a rich tapestry of plots and sub-plots that will keep readers guessing till the end

Haven: A religious zealot takes his spiritual quest to the edge of the world

Following the journey of three monks to the uninhabited Skellig Michael in the early days of Christianity, Emma Donoghue’s latest novel is a study of fanaticism, hardship and the relationship between the men