TV3 Ireland AM Book Club

Ireland AM, the morning/breakfast time television show on TV3 has introduced a new feature, The Ireland AM Book Club.

Hosts Mark Cagney and Sinead Desmond will review one chosen book each month. Assisting them with the reviews will be Anita Notaro & George Hook which should lead to some very entertaining reviews. Anita Notaro is an accomplished novellist whilst George hosts a daily drivetime radio show with Newstalk. The book club slot on Ireland AM will also feature interviews with selected authors.

There is also a competition for Ireland AM viewers, a monthly prize from Hughes & Hughes of the winners 100 favourite books. To enter you need to write a 100 word review of the Ireland AM Book Club choice of the month and send it in to the show before the 25th of each month. See the TV3 website for details.

March 2009 TV3 book for review is The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kid

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

Author:
Sue Monk Kidd is the author of two widely acclaimed memoirs, THE DANCE OF THE DISSIDENT DAUGHTER and WHEN THE HEART WAITS. Her fiction has appeared in several literary journals. Her second novel, THE MERMAID CHAIR, is published by Review in March 2005. Sue Monk Kidd lives beside a salt marsh in Charleston, South Carolina with her husband.

February 2009 see the addition of A Thousand Splendid Suns to the IrelandAM book club list.



Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the troubled and bitter Rasheed, who is thirty years her senior.

Nearly two decades later, in a climate of growing unrest, tragedy strikes fifteen-year-old Laila, who must leave her home and join Mariam's unhappy household. Laila and Mariam are to find consolation in each other, their friendship to grow as deep as the bond between sisters, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter.

With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings.

Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction. A Thousand Splendid Suns is an unforgettable portrait of a wounded country and a deeply moving story of family and friendship. It is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond and an indestructible love. Available to buy on Amazon.co.uk

Author:
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and moved to the United States in 1980. His first novel, The Kite Runner , was an international bestseller, published in 34 countries.

IrelandAM book club picks American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld as the first review choice for January 2009.

In the year 2000, in the closest election in American history, Alice Blackwell's husband becomes president of the United States. Their time in the White House proves to be heady, tumultuous, and controversial.

But it is Alice's own story - that of a kind, bookish, only child born in the 1940s Midwest who comes to inhabit a life of dizzying wealth and power - that is itself remarkable. Alice candidly describes her small-town upbringing, and the tragedy that shaped her identity; she recalls her early adulthood as a librarian, and her surprising courtship with the man who swept her off her feet; she tells of the crisis that almost ended their marriage; and, she confides the privileges and difficulties of being first lady, a role that is uniquely cloistered and public, secretive and exposed.

In Alice Blackwell, Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. "American Wife" is not a novel about politics. It is a gorgeously written novel that weaves race, class, fate and wealth into a brilliant tapestry. It is a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

The Author: Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels Prep and The Man of My Dreams. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in St Louis with her husband.

The IrelandAM bookclub pick for December 2008 is The Deportees by Roddy Doyle.

For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for "Metro Eireann", a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories took a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in today's Ireland.

The stories range from 'Guess Who's Coming to the Dinner', where a father who prides himself on his open-mindedness when his daughters talk about sex, is forced to confront his feelings when one of them brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, 'The Pram', in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge's older sisters and decides - in a phrase she has learnt - to 'scare them shitless'.

Most of the stories are very funny - in '57 percent Irish' Ray Brady tries to devise a test of Irishness by measuring reactions to Robbie Keane's goal against Germany in the 2002 World Cup, Riverdance and 'Danny Boy' - others deeply moving. And best of all, in the title story itself, Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed The Commitments, decides it's time to find a new band, and this time no White Irish need apply. Multicultural to a fault, "The Deportees" specialise not in soul music this time, but the songs of Woody Guthrie.

The Author: Roddy Doyle was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of eight acclaimed novels and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

The TV3 Ireland AM book club book for November is Blood Runs Cold by Alex Barclay

Product Description
Kidnap and murder collide in Alex Barclay's heart-stopping new thriller featuring FBI Agent Ren Bryce. When an FBI agent is found dead on the white slopes of Quandary Peak in Colorado, a brilliant but volatile agent is drafted in from Denver to lead the investigation. Fighting personal demons, pressure from Washington and dwindling leads, the case stalls and a career falters But as summer comes, Quandary Peak has disturbing new secrets to give up. And as one agent fights failure and hopelessness, another has left behind a trail that leads to a man with a dark past and even darker intentions.

The Author:
Alex Barclay lives in County Cork Ireland. She is the writer of two other bestselling thrillers, Darkhouse and The Caller


The Ireland AM Book Club book for October 2008 is Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture

For September 2008 the bookclub book was The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller.

See the full list of books at TV3 Ireland AM book club

or have a look at the Tubridy BookClub list from Ryan Tubridys' radio show Tubridy bookclub list