In his book Out of Sheer Rage, Geoff Dyer, among other things, visits a number of places that were significant to the poet DH Lawrence. Often, Dyer fails to feel any sweeping emotional response upon reaching these locations, and a sense of anticlimax runs through these experiences. At one point, however, Dyer revisits a place where he himself had been before, and captures the unique feeling of revisiting a location from your own past:
“Strange, the pleasure derived from revisiting a place. It has nothing to do with getting to know an area better or more thoroughly; all that counts is the simple physical fact of having been in the same spot before. I have stood here before, I thought to myself as I stood there surrounded by the same stripes of colour, the same silence, am once again filling the space that has remained empty throughout the long years of my absence. It was as if a meeting had taken place, a rendezvous.”
While visiting and revisiting physical locations allows you to rendezvous with your past self, so too does visiting locations you have read about in books. Within the reading process, you invest something of yourself in each literary location, and in visiting the real places these books describe, you are also revisiting a former version of yourself. When I sat down to write this article, however, I found that I was a bit tired of most of Dublin’s literary locations. I frequently feel that I have visited every version and past version of myself in every nook and cranny of the city that Dublin has to offer. I have walked down every Joycean street, immersed myself in every Beckettian image. The city is only so big, and there are only so many times you can stand in a place where your past self once stood without beginning to grow bored. Instead, the books recommended here bring different sides of Dublin to life, allowing their readers access to a view of the city which usually remains unknown. If you, too, have grown weary of the Dublin you have come to know, these books might help to remedy that.
Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary
This book draws you into the subcultures of 1980s Dublin, following the compelling Juno and Legs from their early childhood into their teenage years. Geary interweaves the all-powerful influence of the Catholic Church with the excitement of the burgeoning Temple Bar artistic scene. While the city of Dublin plays an important role within the narrative of the novel, the titular characters are what make this book so special. Juno and Legs are as expertly crafted, as is their constantly shifting relationship with one another, complex and opaque, while also managing to be totally transparent to each other. Each of the scenes within this book is brimming with emotion, full of tension and anticipation. Especially towards the second half of the book, I found it nearly impossible to put down, totally absorbed in the world of the text. This book made Dublin totally new to me, transformed through the lives of Juno and Legs.
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
I read this book towards the end of 2024 and it is by far my favourite book I read that year. I ended up purchasing both the paperback and ebook editions to avoid lugging the 600+ page tome around with me everywhere. Despite its length, however, I could not pick a single word from the book that could be removed. Every sentence is so carefully crafted and expertly constructed that I often found myself reading them more than once in order to fully appreciate every nuance Murray had to offer. Skippy Dies brings you into the mysterious world of the Dublin all-boys private school, a Dublin I certainly have not experienced off the page! While Geary’s characters remain somewhat inscrutable, even to themselves, Murray allows you unfettered access to the minds of the many characters this book follows. Each character is fully realised regardless of how briefly they appear in the narrative, giving the sense that there is an expansive world which exists beyond the boundaries of the text. If Dublin feels small to you, Murray’s microscopic analysis of the world will magnify the intricacies of the city. There are not enough good things I can say about this book.
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
While this novella technically starts with the main character leaving Dublin city, it offers a meditation on the mentality of the modern Irish man that defies geographical location. In stark contrast to Murray’s novel, Keegan’s work clocks in at only 43 pages, and is best consumed in one sitting. So Late in the Day packs a powerful punch within the space it takes up, the meandering thoughts of its main character driving the narrative. In this novella, as well as in Small Things Like These, Keegan manages to pace the progression of the narrative brilliantly. There is a constant sense of tension and a building feeling of suspense, all while things seem to stay in the same place. The balance between movement and stasis has been excellently struck here, so much so that you turn the pages almost without realising it, reaching the last page before you can fully absorb what you’ve read. By the end of the story, something has changed, but it is difficult to articulate exactly what. This is the beauty of Keegan’s storytelling.
None of This is Serious by Catherine Prasifka
Prasifka’s debut novel brings the city of Dublin into the online world, tracking the flow of information back and forth from the internet to “real” life. Increasingly in this text, though, these boundaries are blurred, and Prasifka creatively highlights the life of a young Irish person today as one that is totally defined by the internet. Perhaps realised more fully in her second novel, This Is How You Remember It, this discussion of the influence of the internet on daily life is nonetheless thought provoking. Prasifka manages to construct what feels like a true representation of modern Irish life, capturing the uncertainty and paranoia that comes from online influence. While I didn’t find the characters in this book to be particularly compelling, the subject matter of the book is inherently intriguing. Prasifka’s Dublin is one that is becoming more and more prominent off the page, expertly distilled and denoted on the page.
