Tony Bailie

Tony Bailie is an Irish novelist, poet, and journalist. His most recent collection Mountain Under Heaven won the James Tate Memorial Prize 2019. He has had two previous collections published, Coill and The Tranquillity of Stone. His novels include The Lost Chord, ecopunks, A Verse to Murder and Paws in Time. He works as a travel writer, environmental columnist, and a walking guide.

Book Reviews by Tony Bailie

Reviewed by: 

The world and our perception is no longer reliable as previously dark undercurrents bubble up to the surface and sweep away all that just a few pages earlier seemed normal.

Reviewed by: 

“Past and present, fact and fiction loop and intersect, echoes of history filter into modern life . . .”

Reviewed by: 

“Will Alexander’s cascade of images, esoteric musings, Egyptology, scientific contemplations, astronomy, biology, historical injustices, and contemporary African politics swirl in this free

Reviewed by: 

“at a single-word turning point the context shifts and all previous assumptions are cast aside . . .”

Reviewed by: 

“This is a short novel of subtle gear changes, where the seemingly obvious plot becomes a distraction to the true narrative that builds and builds and accelerates through a shifting geograp

Reviewed by: 

Muñoz Molina writes in the first person about his own life.

Reviewed by: 

“A steady undercurrent of tension runs through The Frightened Ones as Suleima’s relationship with her inner world and the one around her are constantly on the point of fracturing.”

Reviewed by: 

“Labbé deliberately distorts conventional narrative forms to create a challenging but engaging text.”

Reviewed by: 

“An undercurrent of slow dread seems to permeate the small, inconsequential details of daily routine, throwing into stark relief the paranoias that are lurking close to the surface.”

Author(s):
Reviewed by: 

The Nine Cloud Dream is inhabited by Buddhist philosophy—the world of dust is illusion and all the earthly scheming, deceptions, plots, and sensual pleasures are transient and ult

Reviewed by: 

"Civil wars, revolutions, invasions and fascist dictatorships formed the political backdrop that defined the works produced in Madrid over the centuries."

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

The weather is like a character in this novel, lingering in the background and occasionally being given a few lines.

Reviewed by: 

Nobody does Kafkaesque quite like Franz Kafka.

Reviewed by: 

An unfinished science fiction novel by Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz . . . sounds intriguing doesn’t it? Unfortunately the pitch is much stronger than the final product.

Author(s):
Translator(s):
Reviewed by: 

Falling under the category of “man drops out of society and goes off to desert to find himself,” this short novel loses direction midway through.

Reviewed by: 

“an homage to political cartoonists and their ability to define a moment or mood in a few pen strokes.”

Reviewed by: 

Overly graphic sex scenes, frayed emotions, language in translation, meditations on man’s relationship with nature and the cities or town spaces most people live in, modern Spain, government corrup

Translator(s):
Reviewed by: 

Anger and outrage drip from the pages of this short single-paragraph novel. It is a rant against a county, its people, and family.

Reviewed by: 

The psychological tortures that  Roberto Arlt puts his main protagonist through are on a par with those endured by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment or Dmitri Karamazov.

Reviewed by: 

If you are going to read this novel, make time to do so. There is no point in starting and then going off to do something else, for when you come back you will probably have to start again.

Reviewed by: 

“many of the stories have the feel of being a novel in gestation.”

Reviewed by: 

a stimulating read . . .”

Reviewed by: 

“a short, funny and rather disturbing novel . . .”

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Bolaño is not a writer who can be read at a purely literal level—or rather he can, but doing so would be like watching a color movie in black and white.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Javier Cercas is a seasoned polisher of Spain’s recent past, taking a single event or memory and rubbing at it and peeling away the dust of myth that has

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

“Often the prose often becomes functional, leaden—rhyming off lists, dates in history, naming streets—but this serves to accentuate the more lyrical passages, the flecks of gold glinting in

Reviewed by: 

Quite often it is what is not said in this novel that resonates more than what is said.

Reviewed by: 

“. . . for any true Roberto Bolaño devotee it is a must have.”

Reviewed by: 

“. . . challenging but hugely rewarding—and deeply unsettling.”

Reviewed by: 

“. . . an unsettling read . . .”

Reviewed by: 

“Beautiful prose, tangible emotion, and a constantly lingering sense of dread make what should be a fairly short reading experience an intense and disturbing experience.”

Reviewed by: 

“. . . a novel whose promise falls short.”

Reviewed by: 

“There are better Roberto Bolaño novels already out there, but The Third Reich stands up well and gives us an intriguing insight into how their author’s world view was informed by

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

“Sjón—deftly translated into English by Victoria Cribb—writes a rich layered prose that, like his protagonist, seems to spring from the extremes of Icelandic dark and light. . . .

Reviewed by: 

A series of prose vignettes, an extended verse poem and a sequence of short meditations form the three sections of this bilingual collection.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

“There are layers and depths to this short novel that only surface after the last page has been read, and it has been set aside and that leave you reaching for it to start reading again.”

Reviewed by: 

“Each poem reaches a moment when the mood changes, a moment of epiphany that jolts the reader out of his comfort zone and the everyday shimmers slightly as perspectives shift.”

Reviewed by: 

“Mr. Kershaw displays integrity in his journalism as well as a passion for music delivered from the heart—both of which lift this story well above the average celebrity bio.”

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

“This is an elegant novel, well-paced with dramatic twists, disturbing surprises and richly drawn characters whose actions and motives have a tangible psychological depth.”

Reviewed by: 

“Nemonymous Night is not an easy read; however—and here’s the rub—it’s entirely readable.”

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Reading this novel could leave you with a huge hangover—the amount of alcohol consumed by its narrator and his cronies is astounding and would have floored even Charles Bukowski.

Author(s):
Reviewed by: 

Reading Ezra Pound can be a demanding experience as he often slips into French, Spanish, Italian, or ancient Greek—using the Greek alphabet of course.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Even the most enthusiastic admirers of the late Roberto Bolaño must wonder sometimes if there is really a case for posthumously publishing everything that he ever wrote.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Dr. Zhivago is a big book, physically and in terms of its themes, multi-stranded storylines and historical backdrop.

Reviewed by: 

History seems to collide with the present and manifest itself physically in this novel. “Mountain Spirits” and even an occasional ghost also glide through the pages.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Jakob Sammelsohn hovers on the fringes of central European history, meeting real life figures and becoming caught up in landmark events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

The subtitle of this collection, Stories from a Village, is slightly misleading, for while some are set in the fictional Basque village of Obaba many of them are not.

Reviewed by: 

Emmanuel Carrère occasionally reaches Dostoyevskian heights of anguish in this memoir.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

Identity and the way people develop a persona to deal with the world is the main theme of this novel.

Author(s):
Genre(s):
Reviewed by: 

On page 66 of this slim novel, a character called Bolaño is quoted as saying: “Tell that stupid Arnold Bennet that all his rules about plot only apply to novels that are copies of other novels.” Pe