On… Belfast books
“This is going to be beautiful, so it is*”
“Freddy Firinne lit a cigarette and thought about dying young.”
The first line of my new book – what do you think?
Who fancies a new book about Belfast?
I’m doing another writing course next week, where I will be workshopping a book half-set in the capital of Northern Ireland / The North of Ireland (depending on your stance… not that they’re sensitive about that kind of thing…). It’s a tar-black noir, with a nod towards The Thin Man and Miller’s Crossing and hopefully a touch of the Raymond Chandler’s too. Black humour, femme fatales, sectarian slurs, terrorists and criminals who are crap at terror and crime, and newsrooms filled with nicotine stains and back-and-forth insults… you’ll love it, I promise.
One of the best things about writing the book has been the trips to Belfast and reading around and about the city. It’s a fascinating place, still split down the middle by an ugly wall but a tourist hotspot and a great place for bookshops. And it just ripples with drama… itching to be written for, and about.
I love the turns of phrase there: ‘even the dogs on the street’ being a personal favourite, and the jokes, like the little boy who didn’t know his family was in the ‘Ra until his dad told him to dunk his volunteers into his boiled egg. And if you’ve never seen Panda Hands at the Belfast Empire, or had a drink in The Crown, you’ve never lived.
Add the books… and, well, you’re in for a treat.
Here are five brilliant novels set in and around Belfast. Maybe they’ll get you in the mood for mine.
1) Close to Home by Michael Magee
Finally – an actual man on a page. As regular readers will know, I despair at the milksop-gets-dumped trope. My first novel, Delivery, was written specifically as an antidote to all those wannabe stand-up comedians moping, writing lists and moaning about ‘Thatcher’s Britain’ before finding new love or a new way forward in totally non-toxic, non-threatening (and utterly unrealistic) fashion. Agents and editors all loved my idea until they read the work, were horrified about what an actual normal, working-class man can be like, then decided even though it is good enough, there was no audience for it unless I sanitised it, which kind of defeated the object…
And then I read Close to Home. And I was amazed. Because here is a complicated man like us, with flaws that we can relate to. He’s skint, he’s had a punch-up, he likes a drink, and he’s split between family and future. He loves books and writing – because in the real world, straight, working-class men can like those things too. Will he stay close to his minimum-wage life, his friends, his wayward brother, the not-very-nice ‘banter’, and his class? Or will he try to fit in with the pretentious literary types that offer escape, get together with the (supposedly) promiscuous girl his pals disapprove of, and find a different way to express himself? What compromises will he have to make along the way?
Great book, and well worth a read for a more rounded version of a masculine man.
2) Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
God, Kennedy can write. Trespasses follows Cushla, a twenty-four-year-old Catholic woman managing two jobs and an alcoholic mother during the Troubles. She’s working the bar her brother runs one night when she meets Michael, a much older married Protestant, who steps in when some soldiers get a bit handsy. But Michael’s not the only male on her mind… she’s also helping to teach Davy, a tormented, impoverished young lad from a Protestant / Catholic family, popping out with her fellow teacher Gerry, and suffering school visits from a priest who preaches hate as well as the gospel.
What follows is a masterclass in well-drawn characters, split allegiances, and the slow-but-fast creep of love. Everyday humiliations, familial loyalty, class barriers, city issues that seep to the suburbs, and words that can slay you… it’s all in here… and that’s before the book breaks your heart.
3) For The Good Times by David Keenan
A lyrical novel about friendship, the fucked-up thinking of the average young assassin and the everyday obscenity of murder, you’ll be pulled along the pages by the beautiful rhythm of the first-person narration and the sort of sentence-level style you rarely see elsewhere.
The now incarcerated Sammy tells us about him and his pals committing to the cause, juggling killings with an obsession with Perry Como, exploring a world of comic books and women despite their borderline illiteracy, a story told in short paragraphs, with a scattering of typically Ardoyne phrases such as “I mind…” thrown in.
And it’s brutal. And it’s funny. And it’s written with originality and verve. One early scene, involving an inter-generational attempt to discover the location of an arms stash, is comedy gold. Another involves an incident at the penny falls at the arcade. I think I read it in two sittings. Maybe you’ll do it even faster than that.
4) The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty
What did you have for breakfast this morning? Cornflakes? Or the insistent fear of a tilt bomb under your car?
From the first line: “The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now”, you know you’re in good hands here. We follow Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in a protestant-majority force, in the near-aftermath of Bobby Sands’ hunger strike death, with Belfast on the verge of all-out civil war. Duffy, a bombing victim and a bit of a bookworm, is called out to a dead body with a hand cut off, which may be some kind of symbolism about informing, or may not.
But the cut-off mitt is only part of the story. We’re in 1981 Northern Ireland and McKinty cranks up the tension; the pope’s been shot, the IRA has a bounty on Catholic coppers, the police are under-staffed and over-whelmed, and the Chinooks fly so low they’ll rearrange your front room with the downdrafts of their propellors… a situation so unsafe official advice says you’re better off not wearing your seatbelt less it hinder your escape.
Paranoia aplenty is juxtaposed with snappy dialogue, a likeable protagonist and a plot that takes you to places you really don’t see coming. Expect a story every bit as incendiary as the Molotov cocktails that seem to lurk on every other page.
5) The Benefactors by Wendy Erksine
My book of the year 2025 — and I read 75 books last year. The Benefactors follows the aftermath of a sexual assault and shows (not tells) how this affects the families – and wider networks - of all involved. Unsentimental, but with a message about the goodness of people at its core, it’s a book with nuance, style, humour, experimentation and originality, and it sticks the boot in on class. Erskine describes it as a ‘polyphonic novel’, told in ‘a bow-tie structure’, and she writes fifty voices to create an incredible whole. It pushes buttons and boundaries, and nobody, and I mean nobody, can hold a candle to the way Erskine weaves words and does dialogue.
Wendy Erskine has also written a couple of short story collections, which I haven’t read yet and am saving for ‘special’ – because The Benefactors was that good. I’ve been lucky enough to meet her briefly at a book launch and to grill her about her process on a Rough Trade Books online course. I cannot think of a more interesting person to talk about books with — full of insight and originality (and patience with my insistent questioning). Forget all those literary novels following the lives of the rich and ignorant set at and after the quad. The Benefactors is the real deal. It is the business. Read it as soon as you can.
A final word. If you don’t know about Belfast, do some research. Go see the city, explore both sides of the wall, read Say Nothing, take a trip up the beautiful coast and bounce your toes along the Giant’s Causeway. It’s a great city, and a great experience, up close, or on the page.
++ Have you read these books? What did you think? And what have I missed? No, I haven’t read Milkman yet, it is on the shelf…
*Subtitle taken from For The Good Times.
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Wish me luck…
As I say, I’m at the writing course next week.
My novel’s ambitious in structure and theme, and it is very nearly there. I think it’s smart, funny, it’s definitely got ‘voice’ and I reckon it’s got legs… but then again, I thought that about the last one. It will probably be a bit too much for everyone again – too cynical, not female-friendly enough. Fuck it, it’s worth a go, especially as I’ve had it on the shelf for the best part of a decade, improving it every so often, debating endlessly about making it two books instead of one, first person or third, and messing with the title, which refers to a literary motif that may, or may not work.
I was longlisted in a national competition for the first chapter last year, and plan to query it around September. I get to test pitch it to two agents next week. This course will hopefully help with the finishing touches and help me to start getting the word out. Wish me luck. And tell all your agent pals too.
Oh, and restack this post for me too, will you?
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Football and fiction every Friday
I want you to think about what I say, and tell people how I write. Some recent reviews:
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Can’t wait to see it on the shelves.
Thank you!!! This is lovely.