Books in brief: The Light of Evening by Kevin McManus; Grand by Nick Park; One Man and His Dog by Declan Murphy

Detailed summary

The Light of Evening by Kevin McManus (The Book Social. 288pp, £9.99) ...

In this delicate novel, poet Ciarán Devlin has just buried his father and is carer for his mother and his beloved wife Joan, herself ill with cancer. There is a keen sense of place and of nature: how the light is “already retreating, the days drawing tight like a closing hand”. The prose is evocative and richly rewarding. We follow Ciarán through the minutiae of a family death, his own health fears and what’s facing Joan, in an Ireland where rural health services for the very ill can leave people “drowning quietly in a place no one can reach”.

Grand: The Autobiography of Gromit by Nick Park (Ebury Spotlight, 272pp, £22)

After decades of communicating exclusively through knowing looks and eye-rolls, Gromit has finally found his voice. Having agreed to write his life story, Wallace is distracted by a new invention, and Gromit finds himself picking up the pieces once more with the deadline looming. Grand – as told to Nick Park – offers a revelatory perspective across the series, in which Gromit redefines the parameters of Wallace’s genius and the power dynamic of their relationship.

One Man and His Dog: On a Quest for Ireland’s Wild Orchids by Declan Murphy (Lilliput, 256pp, €24.95)

New Year’s Eve on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, and Declan Murphy has scrambled across the Burren limestone to watch the sunset – when his attention is taken by the microscopic: by the tracery of winter-withered plant stems inhabiting the rock crevices all around him. Wood sage, golden rod, blue moor grass – and something else: a ‘thin, leafless and almost twig-like stem, which seemed to emerge from the very heart of the Burren […] as though it was not just simply part of the flora but part of the landscape’. This is the dark-red helleborine orchid – and so begins a quest to understand a unique botanical and cultural universe.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Irish Times. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.