Pulling on the Heart Strings

Ella Griffin has become the latest star writer in Irish women’s fiction. I caught up with the advertising executive in the Radisson Hotel in Dublin to discuss her breakthrough debut novel Postcards from the Heart.

Photograph by Brian Meade

Postcards from the Heart contains everything that’s right about good women’s romantic fiction and is a very impressive debut. At the heart of the book are two very different couples, Saffy and Greg and Conor and Jess and all of the people connected to them play vital parts in the story. The novel is in equal parts hilarious, gripping, a little bit weepy, and always engaging.

Book Review: The House on Willow Street by Cathy Kelly

Cathy Kelly is already a goddess among fans of women’s fiction in Ireland and further afield. For years now she has written bestseller after bestseller with a throng of fans waiting on her every release date. And, reading The House on Willow Street, you can see why. She has found just the right formula for the perfect chick lit novel with plenty of laughter and tears and characters with enough flaws for anyone to feel a familiarity with but also admire.

The story focuses on a group of women – and one man – who live or are deeply connected to Avalon, a picturesque village in Ireland, and specifically Willow Street and the big-house-gone-to-ruins Avalon House. Two of the central characters, sisters Tess and Suki, are the last descendants of a long line of De Paors who lived there and by the time they were born there was no old money left to keep it going but it remains a looming presence over the whole village.