Tempers flared, late night debates reigned and unruly scenes threatened to break out in the Hot Press literary salon – but we’ve finally settled on our choices for the best books of the year.

IRISH FICTION OF THE YEAR:

1. Milkman

Anna Burns, Faber & Faber

Anna Burns’ story about an unnamed 18-year-old woman who is doggedly pursued by a paramilitary leader in north Belfast seemed to slip quietly onto bookshelves at the start of the summer. However, it became an international hit after being awarded the Man Booker Prize in October. None of the main characters are given their names in this book. Indeed, the city isn’t even given its name, and there are no ‘nationalists’, ‘unionists’, ‘IRAs’ or ‘British Armies’. This is prose stripped of any significant, easy, and – most importantly – betraying identifiers. It rips away all of the myths that come with looking back at this complex period of conflict. It’s a novel about the absurd ways communities structure themselves; the baffling logic that follows on from a breakdown of law and order; and the overlooked way in which women have to navigate this horrific arena of war and power. No one will ever be able to write honestly about the Troubles again without first consulting this book.

2. Normal People

Sally Rooney, Faber & Faber

Having been lauded for 2017’s Conversation With Friends, Sally Rooney followed up her debut novel with a book which, if anything, is even more emotionally relatable and potent in what it has to say about relationships, sex, and love. The narrative interchanges between two characters from the west of Ireland, Connell and Marianne, who grew up together in different social circles, but who go to Trinity College and drift in and out of each others’ lives. The book is flawlessly narrated. It can be deliberately ambiguous or disarmingly blunt. It can map out a character’s internal monologue with so much attention to detail and articulation that you’ll read it wondering if Rooney has laid out your life on the page. She tackles complex emotions and makes the whole process look straightforward. She’s well on the way to becoming one of Ireland’s greatest novelists.

3. From A Low And Quiet Sea

Donal Ryan, Penguin

With novel after bestselling novel, Donal Ryan has proved himself adept at pulling on your heartstrings in ways you didn’t think were possible. He’s subtle too – so subtle that an earthquake of a revelation will hit you in the form of a simple look. Or a poignant moment of filial understanding will come from an overheard conversation – a half remembered thought – and you’ll still be left in bits. Superlatives wouldn’t do for describing From A Low And Quiet Sea, the tri-part story of a Syrian refugee, a lovesick young dreamer, and a penitent old man with a disturbing past, whose lives are all sewn together in the most blunt and brutal of ways. It’s brief – too brief – understated, and gloriously heartrending.

4. Orchid & The Wasp

Caoilinn Hughes, One Word

The debut novel from acclaimed Irish poet Caolinn Hughes, Orchid & The Wasp follows a compelling female protagonist trying to navigate social upheaval in Ireland, London and New York in the wake of the 2007/08 financial crisis. Beginning the novel with the lead character, Gael Foess, encouraging her fellow 11-year-old school friends to break their own hymens so that they can be in control of their early sexual growth, Hughes completely upended the Irish female coming-of-age story. This is a novel about a character with dubious motives trying to keep a family together in a morally bankrupt world.

5. Almost Love

Louise O’Neill, Quercus

Set in contemporary Dublin, and told in a series of flashbacks, Louise O’Neill’s story follows a twenty-something art teacher named Sarah, who gets involved in an illicit relationship with a rich and successful divorcee 20 years her senior. While Matthew seems content to have Sarah as his bit on the side, her infatuation with him becomes so intense that she winds up sacrificing work, friendships, family and relationships just to be with him.   O’Neill paces the story well, painting a believable portrait of an all-consuming relationship gone toxic, and exploring just how painful, addictive and unhealthy ‘love’ can be.

INTERNATIONAL FICTION:

1. The Only Story

Julian Barnes, Jonathan cape

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.” So begins Julian Barnes’ 13th novel, which sees the Booker-winning author returning yet again to the subject of doomed relationships. Told in three sections, The Only Story opens in the mid-1960s at a rural English tennis club, where 19-year-old Paul meets an unhappily married woman named Susan at a dinner. Although Susan is 48 and the mother of two daughters around Paul’s age, they begin an affair which results in their expulsion from the club. Paul is proud of their unconventional relationship, but as he grows older, the demands placed on him by the traumatised and alcoholic Susan become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen. Tender, wise and beautifully written, this is sad and deeply moving stuff from Barnes.

2. Washington Black

Esi Edugyan, Serpent’s Tail

Esi Edugyan’s Booker Prize-nominated novel tells the story of Washington Black, an 11-year-old slave in 1830s Barbados, chosen to be the personal servant of his plantation’s curious new British owners. When he discovers that one of the owners, Christopher Wilde, is in fact an abolitionist and aspiring inventor, the young Washington develops a unique friendship with him. But their friendship ultimately becomes tested by violence and power upheavals in the Caribbean. Edugyan doesn’t pull any punches in this tale, with decapitations, suicides and the horrific maiming of one of its central characters all in the mix. However, the story is all the better for its grittiness and the violence never feels cheap or throwaway. A rich, densely imagined historical novel, Washington Black is both an eye-opening insight into the personal and political machinations that allowed people to justify slavery for so long, as well as an eloquently told story about friendship, betrayal and survival.

3. Warlight

Michael Ondaatje, Jonathan Cape

Nathaniel and Rachel are seemingly abandoned by their parents in post-war London, left behind as their father’s work takes him abroad. Their lodger and caretaker, The Moth, introduces the duo to a strange cast of characters including The Darter, who takes the young Nathaniel under his wing. They smuggle greyhounds, and dodgy crockery, up and down the Thames. School is all but abandoned, and the young man falls in love in the wilds of a city still trying to get back to normal. But what of his mother? A violent incident brings things to a head. Ondaatje’s onion of a novel, his first since 2011’s The Cat’s Table, combines rich intrigue with a meditation on how we rewrite our memories by examining them, as the adult Nathaniel tries to piece together his mother’s past in order to illuminate his own. A truly fine tome.

4. FOREVER AND A DAY

Anthony Horrowitz, Jonathan Cape

“007 is dead.” Anthony Horowitz’s second run at the secret agent, after 2015’s marvellously monikered Trigger Mortis, has the perfect opening sentence to draw you into the latest James Bond adventure. Surprisingly enough, Bond survives the first page of this prequel to Ian Fleming’s debut novel, Casino Royale. Here, he is promoted to the Double-O section and packed off to Marseille on his first mission. There are fast cars, punch-ups, a bad guy called Scipio, a shady lady codenamed Sixtine, and, of course, a luxury yacht. Original Fleming material is reworked to deliver the harder, borderline misogynistic – you’re going to have to suspend your modern sensibilities – Bond of the early novels, rather than the more gadget-centric celluloid incarnation. As with his two Sherlock Holmes novels, Horowitz proves himself so adept at getting inside the iconic character, and Fleming’s writing style, that it’s difficult to see the join. Rip-roaringly recommended.

5. The Mars Room

Rachel Kushner, Scribner

Set in 2003, The Mars Room follows protagonist Romy Hall, who is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. Outside is the world she has been cut adrift from – the San Francisco of her childhood, and the comfort of her son, Jackson. Inside, she is confronted with a new life, alongside thousands of women trying to survive in an unforgiving institution. The power struggles, the casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners, the deadpan absurdities of institutional living – these are what Romy must contend with. Kushner’s writing is buoyant in its vividness and wit. The prose is electrifying, even as it tackles, with precision, complex issues like wealth and class disparities.

NON-FICTION:

1. Fire & Fury

Michael Wolff, Henry Holt

Following President Donald Trump’s failed legal attempts to suppress this tell-all book, Michael Wolff’s publishers rush-released Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House in early January. The bestselling author and journalist spent months inside Trump’s West Wing (often unsupervised), listening to senior officials pour out real-time accounts of their internal battles, manoeuvrings and frustrations. The result is a juicy portrait of a White House in chaos and of a clearly mentally unstable POTUS (described as “a fucking idiot” by Rupert Murdoch). Unless you’ve been living under a rock this year, you’ll already have read the most explosive sections.

2. Fear: Trump In The White House

Bob Woodward Simon & Schuster

Though written in Bob Woodward’s characteristically measured tone, the sheer madness of the world portrayed in Fear produces an unavoidable level of black comedy. Similarly to Fire And Fury, much of the book plays like an episode of Veep: jealous of Donald Trump’s Twitter presence, campaign chairman Paul Manafort – currently awaiting sentence for multiple offences including bank and tax fraud – joins up, only to immediately become the subject of a New York Daily News hit-job, when he starts following a Midtown bondage and swingers’ club called Decadence. More generally, Fear paints a now familiar picture of a shockingly dysfunctional administration.

3. Leo Varadkar – A Very Modern Taoiseach

Philip Ryan & Niall O’Connor, Biteback

The first comprehensive biography of Ireland’s first gay Taoiseach, Ryan and O’Connor’s book charts the development of Leo Varadkar from awkward student to doctor to Fine Gael upstart, and – finally – leader of Ireland. There’s some telling revelations in this 340-page tome, and an interesting portrait is painted of Fine Gael’s internal workings, disputes and loyalties. It’s also well-researched, and the interviews with various politicians, friends, family members and colleagues paint a vivid, varied picture of the man. Thankfully, fears that this might be another PR exercise for Leo prove unfounded. However, this “varied picture” might be one of the drawbacks for those looking to understand who exactly Leo Varadkar is. Is he the PR-hungry politician? The right-wing Tory-by-another-name? The interviews hint at them all, but the authors never quite pin down their subject. Still, A Very Modern Taoiseach is one of the best insights into Varadkar that we’ve had yet.

4. Brave

Rose McGowan, Harper Collins

Everyone and their dog seems to have an opinion about the outspoken American actress Rose McGowan. To some, she’s the feisty feminist ‘shero’ of a generation, responsible for igniting the #metoo movement by standing up against Hollywood’s rampant culture of sexual assault and its main perpetrator, Harvey Weinstein, referred to in her memoir only as ‘The Monster’. To others, she’s a “shrill angry woman”, accused of being trans (women) exclusionary, and a target of both radical right and left wing activists. Brave is a raging two-fingered salute to oppressors, cults and the patriarchy, all of whom McGowan has first hand experience with.

5. The Terrible

Yrsa Daley-Ward, Penguin

She may only be in her late twenties, but spoken word poet, model and social media sensation Yrsa Daley-Ward has already lived an incredible life. Taking her carefully honed poetic voice, Yrsa explores her earlier sexual development and sexual exploration, her heavy drug use, her time as a sex worker in London, the tragedy of familial death, and the magic that comes with overcoming “terrible things”. The memoir is told in brief, evocative vignettes, ripe with imagery and emotion. And while the free verse style doesn’t always seem appropriate, or necessary, for every memory that she wants to recall, it can also be used to devastating effect.

ESSAYS:

Notes To Self

Emilie Pine, Tramp Press

In her short collection of essays, Emilie Pine reflects upon the most challenging moments in her life. She confronts the impact of sexual assault, alcoholism, and suffering a miscarriage. In one piece, she reflects upon her wild teenage years – detailing nights spent binge-drinking and partying, her education suffering as she disappeared from home for weeks on end. She also focuses on the ‘crime’ of bleeding and having body hair. Pine delivers a passionate and raw account of overcoming the shame she had internalised growing up. Her honesty is at times shocking, to the extent that she seems essentially vulnerable – yet never lacking agency. Her writing is strong, powerful, enchanting, and above all human.

Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know: The Fathers Of Wilde, Yeats And Joyce

Colm Tóibín penguin/viking

Originally a series of lectures, Tóibín’s enjoyable book examines the relationships between three literary giants and their fathers. After an entertaining Dublin literary stroll, we meet Wilde’s polymath father William, plagued by a sex scandal, just as his son would be. The impecunious painter John Butler Yeats, meanwhile, wasn’t above touching his son WB for a few quid. The poet despaired at his father’s inability to finish work, but the letters sent home from his exile in New York provided inspiration to the younger Yeats. Elsewhere, Tóibín argues that James Joyce went into exile to escape his father as much as Ireland, although he painted a sympathetic portrait in Ulysses.

FILM:

Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke And The Making Of A Masterpiece

Michael Benson, Simon & Schuster

2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s epic battle between man and a malevolent cybernetic system, is now half-a-century old, and artist/writer Michael Benson is here to remind us of its exalted place in film history. Just the right side of academic, he offers some fresh discourse on a film that has already been overanalysed. Thematically, Benson draws intriguing parallels between 2001 and Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses.

ONE OF OUR OWN:

U2: Songs of Experience

Niall Stokes, Carlton Books

Where it might fit in any Top 10 Music Books of the year, we will leave it to others to adjudicate. However, we can confirm that there has been a fantastic reaction from fans to U2 Songs + Experience (Carlton Books) – a brand new book, which brings Niall Stokes original meisterwork, U2: The Stories Behind The Songs, fully up to date, in a superbly produced, visually stunning format. In this beautifully produced and lavishly presented work, Niall Stokes analyses the songs from all of U2’s studio albums, including Songs Of Innocence and Songs Of Experience. And he discusses the origins, influences, and inspiration behind their extraordinary catalogue of ground-breaking material, including b-sides and rarities. Packed with original insights and powerful descriptive passages, the text is accompanied by dozens of iconic and rare photographs, including many items of rock memorabilia, comprising posters, backstage passes, classic flyers and more. It is a superb book about U2. But it is also a thoroughly fascinating book about songs and songwriting. To complete a superb package for U2 fans, Hot Press readers and aficionados of great songwriting alike, the book is interspersed with additional material from Brian Boyd, feature writer with The Irish Times, who recounts the band’s incredible career and contributes special profiles of all four band members. • To purchase a signed copy of U2: Songs + Experience, go to hotpress.com

MUSIC BOOKS:

1. Beastie Boys Book

Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, Faber & Faber

As well as their profound impact on ’80s and ’90s alternative music, New York rap icons the Beastie Boys’ influence spread into art, fashion, film and publishing; a fact acknowledged by the contributions to this superb memoir from the likes of SNL star Amy Poehler and cult filmmakers Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze. Beautifully assembled by band members ADROCK and Mike D, the book tracks the group’s metamorphosis from bratty, tabloid-baiting punks to socially conscious outfit, with the 1997 Free Tibet concerts – organised by the sadly departed Adam Yauch – a virtual who’s who of the decade’s most vital rock and hip-hop acts. There are lovely details throughout, such as the revelation that Yauch became a massive Stiff Little Fingers fan on the back of the classic ‘Alternative Ulster’. A hugely compelling read.

2. Trouble Songs

Stuart Bailie, Bloomfield Press

Belfast-based journalist Stuart Bailie gives an encyclopaedic look at the wide variety of music that was shaped by the Troubles. His book explores how protest songs in the late ’60s led very quickly to reprisals from security forces. In the decades that followed, death threats from paramilitaries struck at the heart of live music entertainment. Notably, The Clash were forced to cancel an ambitious gig in Derry because of a threat from the Red Hand Commandos. And most tragically of all, the Miami Showband massacre proved that even musicians weren’t exempt from the violence of the time.

3. Inner City Pressure – The Story of Grime

Dan Hancox, William Collins

Eventually, we may look at the New Labour period – where the government oversaw an economic meltdown – through the lens of grime. In the depths of social depravation, artists like Wiley, Skepta, Dizzee Rascal and Stormzy helped propel a completely original art form into the cultural mainstream. With hundreds of insightful interviews and some truly powerful analysis, Hancox’s tome might just become the definitive handbook on the genre. You’ll have a tough time putting it down.

4. The Death Archives: MAYHEM 1984 – 94

Jorn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud, Ecstastic Peace

True, the lead singer killing himself and the guitarist being murdered shortly afterwards by a member of a rival group isn’t your typical rock ‘n’ roll career trajectory, but like so many bands before them, Norwegian death metallers Mayhem started making music as an antidote to their boring commuter town existences. What’s striking, looking through this photo essay by their bassist, is just how faux the supposed ‘evil’ seems with blurry photos of the quartet sat on Ikea sofas. The afterword is supplied by Thurston Moore, a somewhat unlikely fan whose Ecstatic Peace imprint are the publishers.

5. The Secret DJ

Faber & Faber

The premise: a globally renowned British DJ goes completely anonymous and takes us through the dark, murky world of club life, going beyond the sweaty dancefloors of Ibiza, London, Berlin, Vegas, and into the heart of rave culture – warts and all. The result: an unnerving, eye-opening look at what happens when music fans embrace EDM, MDMA and a concoction of other acronyms, and DJs find themselves playing in front of thousands of people, giving-in to unfettered hedonism.