Literary Dublin - Dublin - page 450

munity) in 21st century Dublin. Niamh Boyce won the Hennessy XO New Writer of the
Year Award in 2012 and has followed it with her first novel, The Herbalist (2013), about
an exotic stranger in a small Irish town whose presence uncovers the town's worst secrets.
And in one of the most successful examples of self-publishing, debut novelist Helen Sey-
mour's Beautiful Noise (2013) - about a fictional group of friends in 1980s Dublin - had
its movie rights bought by Irish director John Moore, whose latest film was A Good Day
to Die Hard (2013).
Finally, authors may hate the label and publishers profess to disregard it, but chick lit is
big business, and few have mastered it as well as the Irish. Doyenne of them all is Maeve
Binchy (1940-2012) whose mastery of the style saw her outsell most of the literary greats
- her last novel before she died was A Week in Winter (2012). Marian Keyes (1963-) is
another author with a long line of best-sellers, including her latest, The Mystery of Mercy
Close (2012). She's a terrific storyteller with a rare ability to tackle sensitive issues like
alcoholism and depression, issues that she herself has suffered from and is admirably hon-
est about. Former agony aunt Cathy Kelly turns out novels at the rate of one a year: a re-
cent topic is The Honey Queen (2013), about all not being well in the fictional town of
Redstone...
If you want more substance to your reading, Nuala O'Faolain (1940-2008), former
opinion columnist for the Irish Times, 'accidentally' wrote an autobiography when a small
publisher asked her to write an introduction to a collection of her columns. Her irreverent,
humorous and touching prose struck a chord with readers and the essay was re-published
as Are You Somebody? (1996), followed by Almost There - the Onward Journey of a
Dublin Woman (2003), both of which became international best-sellers.