One to Watch: TANGERINE by Christine Mangan

Set in 1950’s Morocco, Christine Mangan’s debut TANGERINE (Little, Brown) is billed as a blend of Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier. To wit:

The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the horrific accident at Bennington, the two friends - once inseparable roommates - haven’t spoken in over a year. But Lucy is standing there, trying to make things right.
  Perhaps Alice should be happy. She has not adjusted to life in Morocco, too afraid to venture out into the bustling medinas and oppressive heat. Lucy, always fearless and independent, helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country.
  But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice - she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice’s husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her: her relationship with her enigmatic friend, her decision to ever come to Tangier, and her very own state of mind.

  According to Joyce Carol Oates, TANGERINE is ‘As if Donna Tartt, Gillian Flynn and Patricia Highsmith had collaborated in a screenplay to be filmed by Hitchcock.’ The movie rights have already been sold, with Scarlet Johansson slated to star, and George Clooney producing.
  TANGERINE will be published in March.

Review: LYING IN WAIT by Liz Nugent

Liz Nugent’s second novel, Lying in Wait (Penguin Ireland), opens with a shockingly provocative line: ‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.’ The speaker is the reclusive Lydia Fitzsimons; her husband, Andrew, is a respected Dublin judge. We quickly learn that Lydia, unable to have more children after the birth of her son Laurence, persuaded a reluctant Andrew to father a child with Annie. When Annie – a troubled teenager with addiction issues – first lies to Andrew about being pregnant, and then tries to blackmail him, the tragedy of the novel’s first line ensues.
  It’s an intriguing set-up, but Nugent, who employed multiple narrative voices in her award-winning debut Unravelling Oliver, again deploys conflicting perspectives in Lying in Wait. We hear from Laurence Fitzsimons, an overweight and bullied teen who becomes obsessed with the missing Annie Doyle, particularly when he realises that his father is lying about his whereabouts on the night Annie Doyle disappeared. Meanwhile, Karen Doyle, Annie’s younger sister, refuses to believe that Annie would simply run away. Determined though she is to get to the truth of Annie’s disappearance, there is very little Karen can do when the Garda detectives investigating the case wash their hands of the trouble-making Annie.
  The interwoven strands of Lydia, Laurence and Karen’s stories set all three on a collision course in this absorbing psychological thriller. Set in the 1980s, it’s more of a ‘whydunnit’ than a ‘whodunnit’, as Nugent, having initially established Lydia Fitzsimons as a pitiless sociopath, reveals the reasons why Lydia became a controlling, lethal monster. Unravelling Oliver was a brave novel in the way it gradually allowed for an understanding of why and how Oliver became a vicious domestic abuser. Similarly, Lying in Wait delves deep into the childhood of Lydia Fitzsimons to explore the extent to which she is a victim of circumstance, and how her young mind was poisoned by events over which she had no control.
  Indeed, one of the most striking ‘characters’ in the novel isn’t a person but Avalon, the stately mansion in south Co. Dublin that formed such an integral part of Lydia’s childhood, a house with much in common with Daphne du Maurier’s Manderley from the novel Rebecca. A brooding presence at the heart of the story, Avalon represents an idealised childhood for Lydia, but it also hides secrets of Lydia at her worst, a bricks-and-mortar manifestation of her malevolent personality that in turn exerts a malign gravity on Lydia’s motivations.
  Throughout the novel Lydia presides over her ramshackle, gloomy palace like some deranged wicked queen from an old fairytale, the gothic iconography emphasising the ever-darker twists of the tale as she plots and schemes against what appears to be an inevitable meeting of minds between her son Laurence and Annie Doyle’s sister Karen. Lying in Wait may be set in the 1980s, but it’s a story that feels rooted in a form hundreds of years old, and has all the elements of a precautionary fable found in the classic folktales of Charles Perrault et al.
  Liz Nugent’s winning of the Best Crime category at the Irish Book Awards for her debut novel was an impressive achievement, but Lying in Wait is an even more assured affair than Unravelling Oliver. A complex plot rich in subtext allows Nugent to explore female sexuality, the roots of childhood psychosis, and the unacknowledged but very real layers of class distinction in Ireland, all of it wrapped up in an emotionally nuanced tale of betrayal, murder and unbearable loss. It’s a novel that propels Liz Nugent to the first rank of Irish crime writing; where she goes from here will take us all on a very interesting journey. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Examiner.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. I love its tension and atmosphere and that so much more is going on than we are being told. Manderley is such a creepy place but also beautiful; I love when a setting is as much a part of the narrative as the people.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jane Eyre. She is so sure of herself despite her crappy childhood. I love her strength.

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I read so much for work (reviews) as well as for pleasure that I don’t have time to waste on silly books. I read THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY when it came out and enjoyed it. Does that count?!

Most satisfying writing moment?
When the writing is all going along well and the world is the fictional world I’m in (as opposed to my real world of laundry woman/Tesco shopper/dinner maker).

The best Irish crime novel is …?
I loved THE BLUE TANGO by Eoin McNamee, based on the murder of Patricia Curran, a judge's daughter stabbed to death in 1952. A very compelling read.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Tana French’s IN THE WOODS – we need a nicely dark movie about Dublin crime, with a love story as side plot.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: lack of income. Best: travel – this year alone writing has brought me to Croatia, Arkansas, London, Nebraska, Waterford, Dingle ...

The pitch for your next book is …?
21-year-old Irish woman in love with a 51-year-old Scottish man gets into difficulties in the Scottish Highlands. There’s sex, lies and paperweights.

Who are you reading right now?
Sarah Hall’s short fiction collection THE BEAUTIFUL INDIFFERENCE. That girl can write.

God appears and says you can only write OR read. Which would it be?
That’s a horrible question!! Read. I could write my own stuff in my head but it would be death not to be able to read other people’s work.

The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Sensual, black, lyrical.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s MOTHER AMERICA is published by New Island.

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?”: Tom Phelan

Yep, it’s rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...

What crime novel would you most like to have written?
REBECCA by Daphne du Maurier. Written long before all the modern digital props became available to modern writers, this is a book to sink into a very soft mattress with and to be savoured for story, language, and ingenuity.

What fictional character would you most like to have been?
Jim Hawkins in TREASURE ISLAND [by Robert Louis Stevenson]. God, the excitement when I was twelve. Long John Silver, Billy Bones, Black Dog, Hispaniola, the sails, the wind in the rigging, pieces of eight, the map, all the very evil and terrifying pirates, the ever-present danger …

Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
Mystery novels. Once I begin one I do not put it down. They are a sinful distraction and should be banned. All mystery writers should be taken up in the Rapture along with their books.

Most satisfying writing moment?
Blocked, I decided to write out a joke I’d heard from a priest in an elevator in Mineola in New York. As I wrote, new characters appeared and the joke lasted for three chapters. By that time a story had taken shape, and it became my first published novel, IN THE SEASON OF THE DAISIES.

The best Irish crime novel is…?
I’ve spent my life being modest, supposedly because it’s a virtue. I’m 70 now and it’s time for me to commit the cardinal sin of pride. My latest novel, NAILER, of course, is the best Irish crime novel.

What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
Again, let me take pleasure in a terrible sin. NAILER would make a great movie. I’m waiting for Godot to call me from Hollywood but he’s probably waiting for something to happen first.

Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst is the self-doubt (who out there gives a damn?). Best is when I read back over what I have written and cannot remember having written some of it, and it’s good.

The pitch for your next book is…?
After many years, two emigrants return to their native Irish village, one from India, one from the U.S. Both are insufferable elitists. The village people, always divided along religious lines, come together to conceal what befalls the two interlopers. The novel is called LIES.

Who are you reading right now?
THE FOURTH BOOK OF RABELAIS and THE BURDEN OF PROOF by Scott Turow. Rabelais for the language, the analogies, and his wonderful scatology; Turow to give me a break from mining Rabelais’s now (generally) forgotten 16th-century references.

God appears and says you can only write or read. Which would it be?
Read. All those wonderful books and so little time, as some basketball player said about blondes. I could read dozens of books a year, but it takes me at least a year to write one.

The three best words to describe your own writing are…?
Leaving myself vulnerable and naked to critics, I immodestly and trepidatiously declare that my own writing is funny, poetic, and unflinching.

Tom Phelan’s NAILER is published by Glanvil Press.