Top 30 books

We set ourselves a daunting task when we decided to select the 30 best Irish novels of the past 30 years. How do you compare the work of John McGahern with the crime fiction of Alex Barclay, Ken Bruen or Paul Charles? How do you rate Roddy Doyle’s guitar-slinging, epoch-making first shot, The Commitments, against a novel as subtle and ambitious as Keith Ridgway’s The Parts?
So we decided not to go from 1 to 30, but instead to select the Irish novels of the last 30 years that you simply have to read before you die. But you’d better get on with it – there’s a plethora of great stuff being written at the moment, so you don’t want to have to do too much catching up!
As nominations were put forward by the assembled throngs of HP staffers, and the panel deliberated, five books clearly stood out, establishing what we call here The Big Five – a handful of modern Irish classics of such power and brilliance that they will certainly still be read 30 years from now.
Doubtless people will cavil – and with some justification – about the absence of Edna O’Brien, Dermot Healey, Neil Jordan, Colum McCann and Niall Williams, amongst others. A case might well be made for Eoin Colfer’s brilliant ‘children’s book’ Artemis Fowl. Or for a single representative at least from the chick-lit menageries – whether via the literary shadings of the late Clare Boylan or the energetic story-telling of Marian Keyes.
But this is our selection and we’re sticking to it! It is in the nature of lists like this to inspire debate. So, all we can definitively say is that you won’t go far wrong with any of these – in the best sense – weighty tomes. Happy reading…

Fiction: 1977 – 2007
Ireland’s 30 Greatest Novels
THE BIG FIVE
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe (1993)
Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)
The Book Of Evidence by John Banville (1989)
Star Of The Sea by Joseph O’Connor (2003)
Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle (2006)

And the next in line…

Shadows On Our Skin – Jennifer Johnston (1977)
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch (1978)
The Commitments – Roddy Doyle (1987)
The Dead School – Patrick McCabe (1995)
Ripley Bogle – Robert McLiam Wilson
Crowe’s Requiem – Mike McCormack
Breakfast in Babylon – Emer Martin
The Parts - Keith Ridgeway
Love And Sleep – Sean O’Reilly (2002)
The Commitments – Roddy Doyle (1987)
The Long Journey Home – Dermot Bolger
The Untouchables – John Banville (1997)
Good Behaviour – Molly Keane (1981)
Lies Of Silence – Brian Moore (1990)
Seamus Deane – Reading In The Dark (1996)
The Rooms – Declan Lynch (2005)
Hellfire – Mia Gallagher (2006)
The Master – Colm Toibin
The Midnight Choir – Gene Kerrigan (2006)
The Gathering – Anne Enright (2007)
Cal – Bernard MacLaverty (1983)
Resurrection Man – Eoin McNamee (1994)
Getting It In The Head – Mike McCormack (1996)
Slammerkin – Emma Donoghue (2000)
Nocturnes – John Connolly (2004)
Havoc, In Its Third Year – Ronan Bennett (2004)

The Hot Press Adjudicators: Jackie Hayden, Tom Mathews, Peter Murphy, Mairin Sheehy, Niall Stokes and Olaf Tyaransen.