AUTHOR PICKS 2010
Your favourite authors share their best read from this year's releases.
CLAUDIA CARROLL
2010
Oh, asking me to choose my favourite book from this year’s crop is a bit like asking me to pick my favourite flavour of Ben and Jerry’s; they’re all that good, it’s nearly impossible. However, with a gun pointed firmly at my temple, I’ll go for Her Fearful Symmetry, by the wonderful Audrey Niffenegger. It’s a modern day ghost story, centring around 21-year-old identical American twins; Julia and Valentina Poole. One minute they’re a right pair of mall-rats in Chicago, next thing their entire lives are flipped upside down when an aunt they didn't even know existed suddenly dies and wills to them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. The twins feel like they’ve won the Euro millions Lottery of Life and that at last their own lives can begin ... but have no idea that they've been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives. The characters are so well drawn they almost leap off the page at you, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt's handsome and elusive lover who lives below them. Even to their aunt herself, who never got over a bitter row she had with the twins' mother - and who still can’t quite bring herself to leave her flat ... I shouldn’t really go on or I’ll only ruin it for you! Suffice to say that it’s a gripping read right to the punch-in-the-solar-plexus finish line and certain to cement the author’s standing as one of the most incredible novelists around.
Claudia Carroll lives in Dublin and is a full-time author, the only job she reckons, where you can wear pyjamas, look out the window all day and still get paid. Her latest bestseller, Personally, I Blame My Fairy Godmother, has been published by HarperCollins and all of her books are widely translated.
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JANE GREEN
2010
I loved After You by Julie Buxbaum. It's an astute and moving story about a woman who moves in with the husband and child of her best friend after the friend is murdered. It was subtle, gentle, and rather lovely, and set in Notting Hill so filled with London references that made me feel as if I was home.
Jane Green is the author of 12 bestselling novels, including her latest Promises to Keep/The Love Verb. She is British but now lives in Connecticut with her family.