Read It Then Watch It - Saint Patrick’s Day
According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, “Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick, is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.” Cool. It’s also a reason for drinking beer and wearing green to avoid getting pinched by leprechauns and jerks.
But if you’re like me and are more comfortable drinking that beer in green jammies on your couch rather than at an Irish Pub these days, this week would be a great time to escape to Ireland through fiction. Just grab your library card and the TV remote to check out these popular page-to-screen adaptations set in the Emerald Isle.
Normal People
Read it: Sally Rooney’s 2019 novel was a literary sensation. From the publisher: “At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers - one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.”
Watch it: The limited 12-episode series is streaming on Hulu.
In The Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1)
Read it: Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is now up to six books but began in 2007 with this mystery. From the publisher: “As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.”
Watch it: The series, with one 8-episode season to date, is streaming on Starz.
Tara Road
Read it: The late, great Maeve Binchy is the queen of modern Irish women’s fiction. From the publisher: "Tara Road shows her incomparable understanding of the human heart in the tale of two women, one from Ireland, one from America, who switch lives, and in doing so learn much about each other, as well as much about themselves. A moving story rendered with the deft touch of a master artisan, this is Binchy at her very best — utterly beautiful, hauntingly unforgettable, entirely original, and wholly enjoyable.”
Watch it: The film adaptation is streaming on Amazon Prime.
P.S. I Love You
Read it: Cecelia Ahern’s 2004 Dublin-set romance is so popular it now has 225 editions in print. From the publisher: “Holly couldn't live without her husband Gerry, until the day she had to. They were the kind of young couple who could finish each other's sentences. When Gerry succumbs to a terminal illness and dies, 30-year-old Holly is set adrift, unable to pick up the pieces. But with the help of a series of letters her husband left her before he died and a little nudging from an eccentric assortment of family and friends, she learns to laugh, overcome her fears, and discover a world she never knew existed. The kind of enchanting novel with cross-generational appeal that comes along once in a great while, PS, I Love You is a captivating love letter to the world!”
Watch it: The film adaptation is streaming on HBO Max.
Angela’s Ashes
Read it: This much-beloved 1996 memoir about Frank McCourt’s childhood in the slums of Limerick won him the Pulitzer Prize. From the publisher: “Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy - exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling - does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors - yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.”
Watch it: The film adaptation is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Brooklyn
Read it: Colm Tóibín's sixth (and most popular) novel is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s. From the publisher: “Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following WWII. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America - to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood ‘just like Ireland’ - she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.”
Watch it: The film adaptation is available for rent on services like VUDU, FandangoNOW, Amazon Prime, Google Play, etc.
Bonus Reads
Just looking for a novel with an Irish setting that doesn’t have an adaptation (yet)? I asked a group of fellow readers for their favorites, and here are a few titles that came up again and again. Is yours on the list? Any shocking omissions? Let me know in the comments!
I loved The Heart’s Invisible Furies, and I just wrote my 5-star review for What the Wind Knows today.
(You may have been surprised to see Maeve Binchy’s Tara Road featured instead of the more popular Circle of Friends. Well believe it or not, the film adaptation is not currently available to watch in the U.S. on any platform! If you have your own copy of the DVD, you’re lucky! Just like a four-leaf clover.)
