dlr Library Voices 2018

Sebastian Faulks is widely regarded as one of the finest novelists of his generation. His magnum opus, Birdsong, has sold over two million copies. His new novel Paris Echo follows Hannah, an American postdoctoral researcher studying the German Occupation of Paris in 1940-44; and Tariq, a Moroccan teenager who has run away from home. Faulks takes us back into the hidden Paris of the Dark Years, the Algerian war and the simmering discontents of the Banlieue, a haunted city of injustice and bad faith, of ghettos and betrayal.

 

Speeches of Note is a celebration of oratory old and new. From Shaun Usher, the author of the international bestseller, Letters of Note, comes an obsessively curated and sumptuously produced collection of speeches from throughout the ages. Some are surprising, inspiring, hilarious; others are moving, comforting, enlightening. Some of these speeches changed the course of history; others are all but unknown, and many of them are Irish. All are extraordinary.

 

John Boyne’s new novel is a seductive psychodrama about the boundless ambition of a brilliantly devious aspiring writer. Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for success. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent – but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Ladder to the Sky is at once a pacy thriller and a devastating satire on the contemporary literary landscape.

 

Becoming Belle is a witty, feminist novel set in Victorian London, based on the true story of a woman ahead of her time. In 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest of three daughters of a middle-class military family, growing up in a small garrison town. By 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty, dubbed "the peasant countess" by the press, and a member of the Irish aristocracy. Nuala O’Connor’s brilliant new novel is the story of the four years in between, of Belle's rapid ascent and the people that tried to tear her down. The novel serves as a reminder of the author’s uncanny knack for transmuting the lives of historical characters into urgently compelling fiction.

 

The Vogue is an unforgettable novel of ghosts, lies and the ways in which the past can return with a vengeance.  

Late 1944, and two teenagers dance the Vogue in silence on the projectionist’s floor of the Cranfield Aerodrome. Decades later, a ghost returns to the shifting sands. Names have long since been changed; children long since cast out; lies long thought forgotten. Set against an eerie landscape, awash with secrets, The Vogue is a grimly poetic dance through the intertwined stories of a deeply religious community, an abandoned military base, and a long-shuttered children’s Care Home.

 

Melmoth, Sarah Perry’s follow-up to her wildly-successful historical novel, The Essex Serpent, promises to be one of the most talked-about books of 2018. Helen Franklin is assailed with guilt for past misdeeds but her sheltered life is upended when a strange manuscript comes into her possession. Filled with testimonies from the darkest chapters of human history, it records sightings of a tall, silent woman in black - Melmoth, the loneliest being in the world. Everyone that Melmoth seeks out must make a choice: to live with what they've done, or be led into the darkness. As her past finally catches up with her, Helen too must choose which path to take.