Poignant tale of an American poet and Irish maid

Nuala O’Connor: latest novel should keep readers riveted

Fiction: Miss Emily

By Nuala O’Connor

Sandstone Press, €23

Reviewed by Sarah Gilmartin

The Dublin writer Nuala O’Connor should get the audience she deserves with her third novel Miss Emily. A beautifully written story about the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid Ada Concannon, O’Connor is overdue a larger audience for her carefully crafted fiction that gut-punches the reader with its honesty and emotion.

As with her previous novels, particularly The ...