Cloud 9: Some Of The Best Books Of The Year So Far

One of the most enjoyable books I’ve read so far in 2025 is Swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s THE SISTERS (Sceptre, €23.20). This is a must-read for fans of Jonathan Franzen or Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting. It tells the story of the Mikkolas sisters, three Swedish-Tunisian siblings, and the mysterious curse they believe hangs over their family. Even at over 600 pages, the book feels like a page-turner, due in part to Khemiri’s use of in-built mystery and short pacy chapters normally found in a thriller, but mostly due to the captivating characters which populate this epic family drama. Khemiri is a literary superstar in his native Sweden – this is his first novel that he has written in English. If you are looking for one to put aside for long winter nights, this is it.

A new wave of Irish writers continues to make a literary splash. This month, it’s Sligo writer Caragh Maxwell’s turn with her impressive debut novel, SUGARTOWN (One World, €12.99). Sugartown tells the story of Saoirse, who has moved home to Ireland from London after splitting up with her boyfriend. Her mother has a new husband with whom she has three much younger daughters, a new home, and a new life. Saoirse moves into the guest room of the new house, takes a job at the local hardware store and fills the gaps in her life by partying and taking drugs with a childhood friend. Maxwell’s sophisticated tone, her dark humour and her ability to show us Saoirse’s struggle in the grip of her past traumas and her future hopes, are enthralling.

While the new wave may wow, the masters continue to impress and excel. In his latest book, VENETIAN VESPERS (Faber, €17.99) John Banville is in playful and mischievous form, entertaining the reader with wonderfully snarky asides while showing off with literary pyrotechnics as only he can. Set in Venice at the turn of the 19th century, the book tells the story of English hack-writer Evelyn Dolman, one of the most striking and unforgettable characters Banville has ever created. Dolman has surpassed his own expectations by marrying Laura Rensselaer, the mysterious daughter of a wealthy American. When they travel to Venice together for a long-postponed honeymoon, Dolman has a sense that there is more going on than he is aware of. The sophisticated humour had me chuckling.

Hugo Hamilton’s latest novel, CONVERSATION WITH THE SEA (Hachette Ireland, €19.99) tells the story of Lukas, who returns to the west of Ireland after the breakdown of his marriage. He tries to make sense of his life while his family is disintegrating – his former wife is being cancelled at work and his daughter is arrested at a street protest. When he meets a refugee from a war zone, he is forced to address his own inherited memory of the holocaust.

Elizabeth Day returns to fiction this month with ONE OF US (4th Estate, €15.99), a sequel to her 2017 book, The Party. That novel saw the young boy Martin enter the privileged world of wealthy Ben Fitzmaurice via a school scholarship. The pair became best friends, bonded by a secret until a bust-up at Ben’s 40th birthday party ended their connection. One Of Us rejoins the story seven years on. Martin has been frozen out of the Fitzmaurice family since the 40th party but tragic events bring him back into Ben’s orbit. As always, Day is sharply observant, clever and highly readable.

CLEANER (Bedford Square Publishers, €14.99) is the debut novel from young Birmingham writer Jess Shannon. A young artist, overqualified but unemployable, starts working as a cleaner in an art gallery. There she meets Isabella and they begin an affair. Isabella is living with her rich boyfriend Paul but sneaks the cleaner into their home by hiring her to clean her boyfriend’s apartment. But when Isabella leaves the apartment one day and doesn’t come back, the cleaner is left with a dilemma – should she go back to her old life, or should she take Isabella’s?

Irish writer Julia Kelly has carved out a reputation as a chronicler of extraordinary emotional integrity, whether writing about her relationship with her late partner, the artist Charlie Whisker in Matchstick Man, or this new account STILL (New Island, €13.99), about her mother’s untimely death by drowning. Kelly finds new pathways into the human heart with her sideways approach to the maternal relationship, her mother’s life as an individual, as a mother to Julia and her siblings, and as a politician’s wife (Kelly’s father was the late Fine Gael politician and Attorney General John Kelly). A beautifully written book.

Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her beautiful novel The God Of Small Things. Now she publishes her first work of memoir, MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME (Hamish Hamilton, €16.99), the story of her life from childhood to the present day, taking in her complex relationship with her mother, whom she describes as “my shelter and my storm”. Fascinating and wide-ranging, it covers her personal life, her work, her political activism and how The God Of Small Things insisted on being written.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, ALL THE WAY TO THE RIVER (Bloomsbury, €17.99) tells the story of her relationship with her late partner, Rayya Elias, who she met in 2000. The pair became a romantic couple around the time of Rayya’s terminal cancer diagnosis (she died in 2018). Gilbert says she wrote the book in an attempt to understand her love story with Elias in particular, but also all her relationships in general.

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