please recommend some good irish fiction for my mum

[krisskross]

she likes john mcgahern, gerard stembridge and stories with references to dublin in the 50s / 60s- no misery memoirs though!

thanks

she might like Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (pen name for John Banville as a crime writer).

I love roddy doyles "the van".

I really love it.....it's a story about male friendships I guess, and about families, and it's set in a town not far from Dublin.

Edna O'Brien's novels. I loved The Country Girls and the sequels.

many of William Trevor's short stories are based in Ireland and are incerdibly well written and poignant. JG Farrell's book Troubles about a mouldering Irish Villa is good but set earlier than the 50's

Colm Toibin's The Blackwater Lightship or The Heather Blazing. Irish but not much in Dublin, more Wexford.

thanks everyone- might try more william trevor and JG Farrell.

Unfortuantely for my present buying she has read all of Roddy Doyle and Colm Toibin, but good suggestions.

Any more please?

Thanks!

anymore suggestions? thanks

Cathy Kelly sets some of hers in Ireland - they're modern day not 50s or 60s though. I love her earlier ones, I can re-read them and enjoy them just as much all over again. I don't like her later ones though, for some unknown reason she completely changed her style and the new one sucks big time :(
I like "What She Wants", "Just Between Us", "She's the One" the best, but anything that came before "Past Secrets" is good - they almost all have at least one Irish character or part of the setting in Ireland, and some of them are completely Irish.

Jennifer Johnston - she has a new novel (November 2011) called Shadowstory which is set in the 40s and 50s still in hardback and lots of previous ones. I read a book called The House of Slamming Doors about a dysfunctional posh Anglo Irish family last year. Another Anglo Irish writer of big house stories is Molly Keane.

Has she read Deirdre Madden?

Belinda McKeon's 'Solace' is very good - in the vein of John McGahern, but a much less depressing read, strangely, despite pretty hard-hitting subject matter. She's won awards for it; I though it was great.

Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

There was an interview with the author on last weekend's Radio 4 Bookclub and it made me want to read it!

guardian review here , that I haven't read - so it might say it's rubbish!

buy here, although there do seem to be different cover versions available

I was just about to suggest Sebastian Barry.

A Long Long Way is set around the time of the first world war, and is excellent. If she likes it there's a kind of sequel to it, Annie Dunne, which is about the sister of the protagonist of Long Long Way. It's set in the 50's between Dublin and Wicklow, I think. Haven't read that one, though.

Secret Scripture is not set in Dublin, it's mainly Sligo (rural west coast)

Room for a single lady is set in Dublin in the 1950s
It is well written - gentle but not saccharine
www.amazon.co.uk/Room-Single-Lady-Clare-Boylan/dp/034910901X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323621338&sr=8-1

Or Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.
Maybe some stories by William Trevor. A bit bleak though.

Clare Boylan (Room for a Single Lady) is a great suggestion.

great thanks everyone- lots of new ones here i had not thought of. Great!

I agree Roddy Doyle's books are great. How about James Joyce's short story collection "The Dubliners". Powerful stuff.

Any Roddy Doyle or Sean O'Casey-both have the perfect balance of side-splitting humour and stark reality without being misery memoirs. Highly recommended.

Niall Williams. Everything he's written is beautiful

What about Maeve Binchy? Second Cathy Kelly and also Sheila O'Flanagan - not 60s Ireland, but present day.