LITERARYFICTION

FAST BY THE HORNS by Moses McKenzie (Wildfire €25, 256 pp)

THE Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, the son he agreed to sacrifice, casts a long shadow over this intense, propulsive novel by the highly acclaimed author of An Olive Grove In Ends.

It’s 1980 and in the vividly depicted neighbourhood of St Paul’s in Bristol, Rastafari community leader Ras Levi promises his followers he will guide them back to the motherland.

Not all agree, especially the feminists of the Mother Earth collective, but Jabari, 14, is nothing if not his father’s son, and every bit as hot-headed. However when Jabari decides to ‘rescue’ a young black girl from her white foster family, events spiral out of control.

It’s no secret that this is a tragedy — we first meet Jabari behind bars. But it’s also a novel of ideas, with religion and ideology pitted against family and harsh reality as Jabari is forced, painfully, to acknowledge his father’s failings. Written in Jamaican patois, it’s an impressive second outing.

ONE HOUR OF FERVOUR by Muriel Barbery (Gallic Books €21.75, 288 pp)

FRENCH author Barbery, best known for her 2006 hit The Elegance Of The Hedgehog, apparently spent time living in Japan, where this atmospheric latest is set. Told in poised and heightened prose that has an almost mythic resonance, it’s the story of successful art dealer Haru’s life.

In business, at least, he’s a success — in love, he knows himself a failure, despite his many affairs. But his deepest, most enduring relationship is with the daughter he never sees — born to a French woman who threatens to kill herself if he seeks contact, he can only observe her as she grows through the reports of a private detective.

It’s a beguiling and unusual tale that sweeps us through the years, marked for Haru by the friendships that sustain him and the tragedies that afflict his circle (unnervingly predicted by his clairvoyant housekeeper). If at times frustratingly elusive, it’s ultimately a not unmoving philosophical meditation on the nature of existence.

THIS IS HOW YOU REMEMBER IT by Catherine Prasifka (Canongate €14.99, 288 pp)

THERE’S a familiar, tortured will they/won’t they dynamic at the heart of this second novel by Irish bestseller Prasifka. Our troubled unnamed narrator’s life intertwines with that of handsome, rugby playing Lorcan as they progress through school and university while insisting they’re only friends.

The point of difference here is that our protagonist’s damage comes from the online porn she stumbled upon aged nine. Disgusted but fascinated, it soon became a shameful addiction, and one that shapes in toxic and distressing ways her relationships with boys. And there’s a further, speculative twist: the effects seem literally corrosive, as she apparently develops a hole in the centre of her body.

As a conceit it doesn’t quite come off, although elsewhere Prasifka’s writing rings horribly true.

Indeed, it’s fairly unremittingly grim — so much so that the redemptive ending, even if rushed, is welcome.