Deirdre Madden

Barney and Jasper are both millionaires living in the town of Woodford. There any similarity ends. Barney has returned to his hometown after a very successful career as a musician. Jasper is a 'specialist in the area of material supplies for international conflict resolution'. Furthermore, Jasper doesn't at all like the idea of someone moving into the neighbourhood who might be even richer than he is. When Barney outbids Jasper at an auction for a famous painting, things really do start to get out of hand.

Jasper has just been released from Woodford Jail, where he served a long sentence for some very naughty goings on involving a famous painting. And now he's looking for trouble once again. Ideally he would like a job such as a sofa tester or a food taster. But all he can see in the local paper is advertisements for jobs which seem to require actual work. He is about to discard the ad for a gardener at Haverford-Snuffly Hall when he learns that there is a story attached to this great house, a story concerning a priceless treasure. And so, despite knowing nothing at all about gardening, he gets the job. He has some help from his pet rats Toe-rag and Scum-bag, but even they can't tell him how to mow a lawn. Well, Jasper isn't interested in grass and flowers, he's interested in the Green Marvel, and he's determined to find it!

Gillnacurry was famous for being full of old and beautiful and remarkable things. It had an ancient holey stone, a fine castle, an amazing clock tower with angels that danced when the clock struck the hour, and the most celebrated fruit trees for miles around. But the most remarkable thing of all about Gillnacurry was this: every single house, be it large or small, had a pet animal of some kind, and all because of Emily’s pet shop!

Mulvey the cat, Bubbles the dog and Captain Cockles the parrot have a wonderful life in Emily’s pet shop. Over the years she has got so fond of them that she always seems to talk customers out of buying them. Emily is no ordinary pet shop owner. Some people think she’s a little batty because she talks to the animals, but she knows they understand her. And it’s not just the pets that adore Emily – Finbarr of Finbarr’s Feeds is rather fond of her too, only he’s too shy to say. When Katie comes to help out at her Aunty Emily’s shop for the holidays it seems that they all, humans and animals alike, have a wonderful summer ahead of them. But they hadn’t banked on the arrival of Henrietta Fysshe-Pye, a woman who won’t take no for an answer. Mulvey, Bubbles and Captain Cockles now find themselves at Henrietta’s castle, and it seems that the summer has turned sour. But the animals have plans of their own, and Henrietta ends up with a little more animal than she bargained for!

To all appearances, Fintan Buckley is part of a conventional middle class family in contemporary Dublin. But strange states of altered consciousness and auditory hallucinations begin to take him out of a linear experience of time, as does a developing interest in old autochrome photographs. Meanwhile, Fintan’s sister Martina also finds herself unearthing memories from the past.

As the Buckley family begin to delve into their memories, so too must they renegotiate their history and the decisions that have brought them to this place in the present.

TIME PRESENT AND TIME PAST, Deirdre Madden’s eighth novel, is an exquisite and extraordinary dissection of the life of an ordinary family.

Molly Fox is an actor. She insists on ‘actor’ rather than ‘actress’. Over the years she has triumphed on stages around the world, notably in Shakespeare. She lives in Dublin, in a charming terraced house. Her best friend, the unnamed narrator of MOLLY FOX'S BIRTHDAY, lives in a flat in London, and sometimes she and Molly swap homes. It is on just such an occasion, which happens to coincide with midsummer and Molly’s birthday, that Molly’s friend finds herself not only in Molly’s house but mistaken for her by visitors. In the course of this long day she reflects on Molly’s career, and on what it means to be an actor and an artist. And she finds that the characters and concerns of Molly’s life intertwine in very unexpected ways with those of her own. In MOLLY FOX'S BIRTHDAY Deirdre Madden has achieved a culmination of the themes she has explored in her earlier work, including the Orange Prize-shortlisted ONE BY ONE IN THE DARKNESS and AUTHENTICITY. The result is a beautifully realised novel, one which will surely bring Madden to a wide readership.

Julia’s chance encounter in St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, with William, a middle-aged businessman who is contemplating suicide, leads to consequences neither can foresee. Julia is a painter, a young, free-spirited woman in love with Roderic, also a painter, but a man burdened by his past. In an earlier novel, NOTHING IS BLACK, Deirdre Madden wrote about art and artists; in AUTHENTICITY, she goes well beyond, exploring the well-springs of the artistic impulse in fascinating ways, and reflecting on the relationship between art and life, the artist and society.