The Snapper

by Roddy Doyle (London: Martin Secker& Warburg, 1990)

“Sharon was pregnant and she’d just told her father that she thought she was. She’d told her mother earlier, before the dinner. –Oh –my Jaysis, said Jimmy Sr.”

The Snapper is the second book in Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy, about the poor working class Rabbitte family of Dublin. Twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant, unmarried, working in the local grocery store and still living at home. She eventually works up the courage to tell her family and friends about the baby but keeps the father’s identity a secret – much to the consternation of her own father, Jimmy Senior, who becomes obsessed with identifying the culprit. Doyle tells the story almost entirely in dialogue, making for an endearingly authentic read with a strong sense of place, and the distinctive Irish slang he uses (eejit, jacks, buke) will make you laugh out loud. This is a warm, funny book about the impact of a surprise pregnancy on a loving family.

Find more Irish literature here then brush up on your Irish slang here.

Man and Boy

by Tony Parsons (London: HarperCollins, 1999)

“I loved my wife and I loved our son. Together, the two of them made my world make sense. My life without them was unimaginable. I knew I was a lucky man. But I couldn’t help it, I just couldn’t help it – lately I found myself wondering when I had stopped being young.”

Harry Silver’s marriage ends just before his thirtieth birthday: his unhappy wife Gina leaves London for Japan and he is left to look after their four-year-old son Pat. Also finding himself suddenly unemployed, Harry must quickly get used to being a single parent and in doing so, becomes closer to his son and his own father that he has ever been before. But tragedy soon strikes at the heart of his family, and when Gina finally comes back for Pat, Harry has to make the hardest decision of his life. With its reflections on old-fashioned nuclear families and the guilt that comes with failing to provide your own children with that same stability, Man and Boy is a touching piece of domestic fiction, dealing with the complicated relationships that form after any divorce in an often amusing way.

Read an online interview with the author here.

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett (New York: Amy Einhorn Books, 2009)

“I am afraid I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or the time to portray.”

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel looks at the relationships between white women and their African-American maids in early 1960s Mississippi. The story is narrated in turn by Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young university graduate who has returned to her hometown to find a job as a  journalist; Aibileen Clark, a maid and nanny employed by one of Skeeter’s good friends; and Minny Jackson, Aibileen’s best friend who keeps losing jobs as a maid because of her sass. All three women must work to complete interviews for a secret book about the lives of “the help” and their role within the  families that employ them as the atmosphere of dangerous racial intolerance in Jackson heats up around them. Stockett uses plenty of convincing Southern vernacular (Law, sho’ nuff, y’all) to convey a strong sense of time and place, and the tone of this piece of historical fiction remains optimistic despite its serious themes.

Visit Kathryn Stockett’s official website here.