But, for me, when things are bustling and stressful, that’s exactly the time that I need to sit down with a good book – but oh, to find the right one.
A few good adjectives for reading during busy times: short, quick and interesting – and the books of Brendan O’Carroll’s Mrs. Browne trilogy fit all three. The series is a few years old now, but it’s still worth discovering. Agnes Browne is the mother of seven children, a widow and living in working-class Dublin in the 1960s. The series begins with The Mammy (with Agnes at the centre), follows through to The Chiselers (where the children’s stories gain more of a focus) and finish with The Granny (once again returning the main focus to Anges, now with her children grown).The books have moments of sadness and moments of hilarity, and come together to form a wonderful family saga; bringing you into lives of the characters, so that you variously grow up and grow old with them, celebrating their trials and their victories. If you like books with good characters that you feel you get to know, this would be a great series to try. If you’re interested in books set in Ireland, these also are worth a look as Dublin is described beautifully, becoming in a sense a character itself.
In The Castle of the Flynns by Michael Raleigh
44, Dublin Made Me by Peter Sheridan (memoir)
The Van by Roddy Doyle
The Young Wan by Brendan O’Carroll (a prequel to the Agnes Browne series that follows Agnes before she was a mother)
