The top 10 books of 2024, from Intermezzo to Wild Houses

Last week, we gave you 10 outstanding books you may have missed in 2024.

This week, it’s the big one... our top 10 books of 2024, across prose, poetry and non-fiction.

Colin Barrett – Wild Houses

By now Barrett’s reputation is so well-established that to point out the quality of his prose is almost cliché. Yet, for all the plaudits he has received for his short fiction over the years, it may surprise you to learn that Wild Houses is his first novel; so remarkably self-assured and full of the author’s trademark wit that it was the only Irish entry to make it onto this year’s Booker longlist.

For fans of: Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies and Colin Walsh’s Kala

Kevin Barry – The Heart in Winter

According to Barry, before publication The Heart in Winter had been in the making for almost twenty-five-years. Not that it bears any hallmarks of such a tortuous process. Barry’s latest novel is nimble, sharp and at just 224 pages in length, refreshingly short. Try to imagine Deadwood as narrated by Blindboy Boatclub and you’ll have a sense of the wild ride you’re in for.

For fans of: James M Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and Charles Portis’ True Grit

Samantha Harvey – Orbital

It’s rare for such an optimistic book to triumph at the Booker, much less one so short, but something about Samantha Harvey’s poetic observation about life on earth—as viewed from the International Space Station—seemed to capture the popular imagination. Not so much speculative science fiction as realist sci-fi, Orbital is a timely and polyphonic reminder that life on our planet is fragile and needs protecting at all costs.

For fans of: Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, Emily St John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquillity and Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart

Rachael Allen – God Complex

To marry a poetics of ecology with the confessional lyric is a certainly a bold choice, but on the evidence of Rachael Allen's second collection God Complex it seems to be a good one. Something about the lingering sense of dread that hangs over everything as a result of the climate crisis lends itself well to considerations about the meaning of love, partnership, and what we’re willing to endure in the name of normalcy. Allen demonstrates that the ordinary can be a prison, and in more ways than one, can actively contribute to the worsening of the world.

For fans of: Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist, Daisy LaFarge’s Life Without Air and Ada Limón’s The Carrying

Mary Costello – Barcelona

A book which easily could have made it onto last week’s list of underappreciated gems, Barcelona has received criminally little attention since it was published earlier this year. Nevertheless, Costello’s newest collection seems a more appropriate fit for this list, simply because of how good it is. The author is a master of mapping the subtle power dynamics that live between people, especially couples, and here the tone is one of quiet resignation; a series of lessons from someone wise enough to teach them and a welcome intervention into the sometimes staid world of literature.

For fans of: Anton Chekhov’s Collected Stories, Claire Keegan’s Antarctica and Danielle McLaughlin’s Dinosaurs on Other Planets

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Gboyega Odubanjo – Adam

The death of promising young poet Gboyega Odubanjo sent shockwaves through the literary world, not least because he seemed to be on the cusp of releasing his debut collection. A year later, when Adam eventually was published posthumously, the real tragedy turned out to be that the book crackled with so much life and pure energy. His poems are tender, hopeful missives to Black youth and culture, and make the plea to remain present in the world, even as society conspires to make the lives of young Black men in particular untenable.

For fans of: Caleb Femi’s POOR, Rachel Long’s My Darling from the Lions and Sean O’Brien’s The Drowned Book

Sally Rooney – Intermezzo

Complex millennial relationship dynamics are Rooney's stock-in-trade, though by now she is so practiced in teasing them apart that each new novel reveals hidden depths to the modern human experience. Intermezzo is an expert interrogation of grief, family dynamics, class and Ireland’s urban/rural divide. It’s a novel whose popularity belies its own intricacy and after the global hype surrounding Normal People and Beautiful World Where Are You?, it’s good to have Rooney back on her heavyweight pedestal.

For fans of: Sara Baume’s A Line Made by Walking, Anne Enright’s The Gathering and Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn

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Gustav Parker Hibbett – High Jump as Icarus Story

This year’s sole Irish entry on the TS Eliot Prize shortlist is more than deserving of its place as one of the most remarkable poetry debuts of 2024, as Hibbett takes their reader on a journey from New Mexico to Cork, Dublin, Europe and back again. High Jump is a beautiful document exploring the movement of Black and Queer bodies through the world, negotiating the speaker’s position in occasionally hostile environments and still coming out the other side with courage and love still intact.

For fans of: WH Auden’s Another Time, Harry Josephine Giles’ Them! and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me be Lonely

Annie Jacobson – Nuclear War: A Scenario

As much a Dystopian novel as a book of non-fiction, Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War is a terrifyingly accurate portrait about the potentially devastating effects of nuclear weapons and what their deployment might look like in real terms for civilians caught up on the ground.

For fans of: Kai Bird’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything and Norman Ohler’s Tripped: Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age

Scott McKendry – Gub

The poetry scene in Belfast has been perhaps the strongest on the island for a very long time now, but even in a crowded field Scott McKendry’s debut poetry collection stood out for its wit, colour and remarkable use of language. McKendry’s poems examine the locale of his native Belfast through the prism of class dynamics and the ongoing legacy of the Troubles. It could be said that no one since Scorsese has used swear words in a way that land so lyrically.

For fans of: Ciaran Carson’s Belfast Confetti, Ian Duhig’s The Lammas Hireling and Tom Paulin’s Fivemiletown

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