I usually start each of these posts with a quick pen-portrait of the country, to reassure confused readers who may not be certain where they are, but this seems unnecessary for Ireland.
See here for the methodology of these posts, though NB that I am now also using numbers from StoryGraph. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in the internationally recognized borders of Ireland (though in fact this did not make a difference).
These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.
| TITLE | AUTHOR | GR RATERS | LT OWNERS | SG REVIEWS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal People | Sally Rooney | 2,011,832 | 11,193 | 303,072 |
| The Guest List | Lucy Foley | 1,368,081 | 7,916 | 185,610 |
| Angela’s Ashes | Frank McCourt | 670,711 | 23,908 | 35,071 |
| Conversations with Friends | Sally Rooney | 636,981 | 4,365 | 122,375 |
| In the Woods | Tana French | 456,919 | 11,959 | 50,221 |
| Small Things Like These | Claire Keegan | 524,206 | 4,647 | 95,901 |
| Beautiful World, Where Are You | Sally Rooney | 521,160 | 4,004 | 95,594 |
| Dubliners | James Joyce | 186,739 | 22,574 | 233,46 |
When I did this exercise in 2015, the runaway winner was Angela’s Ashes on both Goodreads and LibraryThing. Of the other books on the above list, only In the Woods and Dubliners were available then; the other five have all been published since.
The winner is one of three novels by Sally Rooney on the list. Normal People, in case you don’t know, is the story of two young people falling in and out and back in love with each other while students at Trinity College Dublin. I know that some sneer at it, but personally I loved it, and also lapped up the TV series. It wins overall and also on Goodreads and StoryGraph, though was only fifth on LibraryThing.
I haven’t read Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, which is apparently about two young women who become involved with an older (but not the much older) couple; I have read Beautiful World, Where Are You, which is about a novelist and her editor friend and their lovers, and I was not as impressed.
Sally Rooney’s books are not currently on sale in the UK, for reasons expertly unpacked by David Allen Green here. Two Chinese friends separately told me in the last few weeks that her books are becoming popular there, so she can probably take the hit of losing the UK market for the time being.
The Guest List is a murder mystery set on an island off the Irish coast. It sounds very similar to the classic Agatha Christie novel now known as …And Then There Were None.
Angela’s Ashes still wins LibraryThing and is third on Goodreads (though only sixth on StoryGraph). It is a heart-rending tale of grinding poverty in Limerick in the 1920s and 1930s.
In the Woods is the first in the very successful Dublin Murder Squad series of mysteries. It was published in 2007.
Small Things Like These is about the Magdalen laundries, specifically in County Wexford.
Dubliners is probably my favorite book on the list, the classic collection of short stories by James Joyce, every one of them a jewel.
The StoryGraph numbers kicked Joyce’s Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man off the list, in favour of Small Things Like These and Beautiful World, Where Are You.
The only book that came close to troubling my geographical criteria was Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, which is mainly set in Northern Ireland, but it was some way off on the numbers.
I normally list other books on my shelves set in or concerning the country of the week, but there are far too many of them this time.
Next up is New Zealand; then Costa Rica, Kuwait and Panama.
Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE | Tajikistan | Israel | Laos | Turkmenistan | Kyrgyzstan | Hong Kong | Singapore | Lebanon | Palestine | Oman
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Chile | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras | Cuba | Nicaragua | Paraguay | El Salvador
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan | Togo | Sierra Leone | Libya | Liberia | Mauritania
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium | Sweden | Czechia | Azerbaijan | Portugal | Greece | Hungary | Austria | Switzerland | Belarus | Bulgaria | Serbia | Denmark | Norway | Finland | Slovakia | Ireland
Oceania: Australia | Papua New Guinea