Sculpting Meaning: Adrian Duncan’s The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth

In the fifth episode of The Irish Books Podcast, host Dr Chris Murray and guest Associate Professor Lucy Collins meet on a misty morning at University College Dublin to explore Adrian Duncan’s latest novel, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth.

The discussion centres on John Molloy, a restorative sculptor whose life is defined by a deep investment in stone and a profound incapacity for emotional articulation.

[Photographed here by Miriam Guterland, Michael Klein's statue Bettina and Achim von Arnim is among Duncan's inspirations for this novel]

A Life Built in Stone

John’s journey takes him from an Irish childhood to Eastern Europe, the US, and finally Italy, where he finds a settled life with Bernadette, an Italian sociologist. Their early connection is forged through a shared passion for stone, a bond that ties their relationship to material reality rather than conventional romance.

• A Character of Repression: John is described as a "strange," "repressed," and "tentative" figure who lives largely in his head, occupied by endless observation of the material world.

• A Crisis of Detachment: The novel’s second half, set when John is in his mid-fifties, follows a single day in Bologna. Triggered by news of a friend’s terminal illness, John undergoes a "crisis of faith" as he struggles to process grief through the traditional act of prayer something he ultimately finds has only done damage.

Against the Easy Metaphor

One of the most striking aspects of Duncan’s prose is its deliberate avoidance of literary clichés. The experts discuss how the novel warns us off metaphor, refusing to allow John’s work in restoration to serve as a simple allegory for his own fragmented past.

[Duncan refers to the statue Kritios Boy repeatedly during the novel]

• Intense Materiality: The book is intensely descriptive, focusing on the weight, texture, and color of rocks, and the specific ways they fragment under pressure.

• The Power of Touch: A pivotal scene involving a fallen hot air balloon highlights John’s sensory engagement with the world, a "tactility" that reappears later when he touches a forbidden statue of the Virgin Mary.

• A Sculptural Page: The physical layout of the book itself reflects its themes, using vast amounts of white space or negative space to create natural pauses between John's observations and memories.

The Shadow of the Apparition

The discussion delves into John’s complicated relationship with Irish Catholicism, rooted in a childhood trauma. His mother once witnessed a Marian apparition, an event rejected by her community and the institutional Church, leading to her institutionalisation.

• Institutional Policing: The experts analyse the "authoritarian quality" of institutional religion in the novel, which polices the boundaries of personal faith and shuts down idiosyncratic spiritual experiences.

• A Transnational Identity: Despite these Irish roots, the novel feels firmly in the tradition of the European novel, focused more on philosophical ideas and individual subjectivities than on community or "people-centered" drama.

Listen to the Full Discussion

Does John eventually find meaning in human love, or does he remain "marooned in his own stasis"? Join Chris and Lucy as they navigate this novel of ideas and its unique exploration of art, faith, and the human bond that sustains us.

Listen to Episode 5: Adrian Duncan’s The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth wherever you get your podcasts.

The Irish Books Podcast is proudly produced by East Coast Studio with support from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Embassy of Ireland Australia, and Monash University.

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Homecomings and Hidden Scandals: Dissecting Colm Tóibín’s Long Island

 

In the fourth episode of the Irish Books Podcast, host Dr Chris Murray and guest Matthew Ryan delve into the highly anticipated sequel to Brooklyn: Colm Tóibín’s Long Island.

Returning to the character of Eilis Lacey a quarter of a century after the events of the first novel, Tóibín picks up the thread in 1976. The discussion explores how a successful immigrant life in America is suddenly dismantled by a domestic crisis that forces a return to Enniscorthy.

A Crisis on the Doorstep

The novel opens with a shocking confrontation: an Irishman arrives at Eilis’s home in a quiet Long Island cul-de-sac, claiming her husband, Tony, has made his wife pregnant and threatening to leave the baby on Eilis’s doorstep.

• The Weight of Silence: Eilis is notably reticent about her unhappiness, a characteristic that defines the novel's tension.

• The "Cul-de-Sac" Surveillance: Despite being thousands of miles from Ireland, Eilis is surrounded by her Italian-American in-laws, whose patriarchal structure offers little room for her own autonomy.

• The Flight to Wexford: To gain space while the crisis unfolds, Eilis uses her mother’s 80th birthday as a reason to return to Ireland, hoping the situation will be resolved before she comes back.

The Myth of the Glamorous Return

When Eilis arrives in Enniscorthy, she is no longer the passive girl seen in ‘Brooklyn’. She carries the glamour of America - symbolised by her rented car and high-end handbags but this transformation makes her a threatening figure to the locals.

• The Static Bachelor: Eilis reignites an affair with Jim Farrell, her love interest from the first novel. While Eilis has evolved, Jim has remained static in his family pub, seemingly unable to make his own choices.

• Transatlantic Gossip: The podcast highlights how surveillance and gossip connect New York to Wexford. Nancy Sheridan, now a widow and business owner, becomes Eilis’s rival, whose social manoeuvring protects her own interests.

The Sea: A Space of Freedom and Reveal

A recurring motif in Tóibín’s work, the sea serves as a pivotal setting where everything hidden finally becomes visible.

• Desire and Exposure: The hosts discuss a scene at the coast where Eilis and Jim are discovered by Nancy in a place where there is nowhere to hide.

• The Shoreline of Possibility: The sea represents the open possibility of leaving, and the unstable nature of desire. As the discussion notes, there is a naked honesty to the sea because everything - and everyone - is visible.

Listen to the Full Discussion

Is Eilis a wrecking ball destroying local lives, or is she finally asserting the autonomy she lacked as a young migrant? Join Chris and Matt as they debate the agonising tension of Tóibín’s prose and whether a return home is ever truly possible.

Listen to Episode 4: Colm Tóibín’s 'Long Island' wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Irish Books Podcast is proudly produced by East Coast Studio with support from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Embassy of Ireland Australia, and Monash University.

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Squalor, Style, and Subtext: Eimear McBride’s The City Changes its Face

In the third episode of The Irish Books Podcast, host Dr Chris Murray and guest Frances Devlin-Glass (Artistic Director of Bloomsday Melbourne & editor of Australasian Journal of Irish Studies and the online magazine, Tinteán) are discussing Eimear McBride’s sequel to The Lesser Bohemians: the visceral, ambitious The City Changes Its Face.

Set against the bohemian backdrop of mid-90s London, the novel explores a world of love after addiction, complex domestic dynamics, and unspeakable parts of the human psyche.

A Bohemian Triangle in Camden

The story follows Eily, an Irish teenager who has spent two years in a torrid relationship with Stephen, a much older actor. Their lives are upended by the arrival of Stephen’s estranged daughter, Grace, who is much the same age as Eily herself.

• A Vulnerable Domesticity: The trio navigates a cramped apartment in Camden where the walls are thin, heightening the tension between Eily’s sexual neediness and the awkward reality of Stephen as a father

• The Film as Apology: The narrative centres on a screening of an autobiographical film Stephen has made about his past as a drug addict - a work that serves as an apology to his daughter for the fallout of his childhood.

  

Experimental Style: Breaking the Sentence

True to McBride’s reputation as an "experimental" writer, the novel is defined by its linguistic gymnastics.

• Linguistic Virtuosity: McBride employs neologisms and inventive adverbs like "spoon-standingly" strong or "echoly puking"

• Visual Monologues: The text uses variations in font size to signify interior monologues, registering Eily’s uncertainty and lack of confidence in her relationship directly on the page

• The Power of Subtext: Drawing on her acting background, McBride requires the reader to "read for subtext," often using unfinished or broken sentences to explore the limits of intimacy.

Speaking the Unspeakable

The discussion moves into the darker themes of the novel, particularly McBride's fearless approach to the legacy of abuse.

• The Cycle of Trauma: The pair discuss how Stephen’s history of childhood abuse intersects with his vulnerability in the London drug scene, where he was often exploited

• Creativity as Catharsis: The podcast explores whether McBride suggests that "the catharsis of creativity" through Stephen’s film and perhaps Eily’s own writing - offers a way to put trauma behind them

• A "Grunge" Modernism: While McBride is often tagged as a modernist, Frances argues she is "very much of our times," using her work to speak back to power and address sexual excesses once hidden in Irish life.

Listen to the Full Discussion

Does fiction need to explain everything away, or is the mystery of Eily’s backstory more powerful left unsaid? 

Listen to Episode 3 on Eimear McBride’s The City Changes its Face wherever you get your podcasts.

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The City Changes its Face

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Ireland in Freefall: Unpacking Paul Lynch’s Booker-Winning Prophet Song

In a recognisable, middle-class Dublin, the unthinkable happens: a modern European state slides into an authoritarian nightmare. In his 2023 Booker Prize-winning novel, Prophet Song, Paul Lynch takes readers on a harrowing journey through a society where the rule of law collapses and "normality" becomes a memory.

In the second episode of The Irish Books Podcast, host Dr Chris Murray is joined by Professor Christopher Morash (Trinity College Dublin) to discuss why this "prophecy" of a novel has become one of the most "terrifying" reads of our time, as Morash puts it.

A World Slipping into Shadow

The novel follows Eilish Stack, an educated, professional woman living in the South Dublin suburbs. When her husband vanishes after a teacher's union protest, Eilish is left to navigate a country that is rapidly unravelling.

• The Illusion of Order: Even as a populist government takes hold, Eilish attempts to maintain her children's school routines and her father’s care.

• The Descent into Chaos: As the narrative progresses, the familiar streets of Dublin become a battlefield where the army is deployed against its own people.

• The Face of Radicalism: Eilish’s eldest son, Mark, goes on the run to join rebels in the south, while her younger son, Bailey, faces the horrific consequences of a state that no longer views children as off-limits.

A Metaphysical Magic Trick

While Prophet’s Song is praised for its realism, allowing readers to "map Dublin" through its pages - Professor Morash argues that the novel is actually a "metaphysical" sleight of hand.

Lynch uses "radical empathy" to strip away the distance we usually feel when watching global suffering on the news. By placing the reader inside the head of someone as familiar as Eilish Stack, a woman who drives a Volkswagen SUV and lives in a nice neighborhood - Lynch forces us to ask: What would I do if this were me?

The Erasure of the Self

As the social structures of Ireland disappear, Eilish undergoes a devastating process of erasure.

• Loss of Identity: She ceases to be a scientist, a citizen, and a wife, until her identity is stripped down to the raw core of motherhood.

• The Mirror of Dementia: This social collapse is mirrored by her father, Simon, whose dementia causes a similar erasure of memory and connection to the past.

• No Future: The discussion highlights a chilling neurological truth: when you lose the connection to your past, you lose the ability to imagine a future.

Listen to the Full Discussion

Is Prophet’s Song a literal warning about the future of Ireland, or a deeper study of the human spirit under pressure? How does Lynch use sinuous sentences to capture a world where the sea is the only remaining hope?.

Listen to Episode 2: Paul Lynch’s ‘Prophet’s Song’ wherever you get your podcasts.

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Emma Donoghue, The Paris Express

 

Disaster in 1895: Emma Donoghue’s The Paris Express is the Thriller We Need in 2026

In 1895, a passenger train hurtled toward Paris Montparnasse, destined for one of the most famous historical rail disasters in history. In her latest novel, The Paris Express, celebrated author Emma Donoghue (the mind behind Room and The Wonder) takes us inside that doomed journey.

In the debut episode of The Irish Books Podcast, host Dr Chris Murray and historian Professor Dianne Hall sit down to discuss why this Victorian-era thriller feels so remarkably contemporary.

A Powder Keg on Wheels

The novel is set chapter-by-chapter, following the train’s stops from the coast of Granville to Paris. While the "impending doom" is teased from the very first page, Donoghue masterfully builds tension through a cast of characters that represent a world on the brink of change.

Central to the tension is Mado Pelletier, an androgynous anarchist carrying a deadly secret: a bomb in a tin lunch bucket. As she sits opposite a pregnant woman and a child, Mado wrestles with her radicalism, justifying her potential violence as an act for "the people" against a rigid social hierarchy.

"Mado reflects that all she can think of to make of herself is a flaming spear to throw at the world."

History Reimagined

While The Paris Express zips along like a thriller, it is grounded in meticulous historical research. Donoghue weaves real historical figures into the fictionalised journey, including:

• John Millington Synge: The famed Irish playwright, captured here before his rise to greatness, on his way to a fateful meeting with W.B. Yeats.

• Blonska: A Russian emigrant and librarian based on a real historical figure who becomes Mado’s moral foil.

• Henry Ossawa Tanner: The real-life American painter who finds himself in second class because he feels like an outsider in first.

Why It Speaks to 2026

Professor Dianne Hall notes that Donoghue’s 1895 is more "multicultural and diverse" than we might expect, yet this diversity is historically grounded. The novel explores a "queer aesthetic" through the intimate relationships of the train staff and the non-conventional families formed by the passengers.

By highlighting the "relentless progress and collective anxiety" of the late 19th century, Donoghue holds a mirror to our own era of precarity and rapid technological shifts.

Listen to the Full Discussion

How does Donoghue manage to make a "spoiled" disaster ending feel like a shock? What does the "mind of the machine" tell us about Victorian society?

Listen to Episode 1: Emma Donoghue’s 'The Paris Express' wherever you get your podcasts

The Irish Books Podcast is proudly produced by East Coast Studio with support from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Monash University

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