17 must-read ireland books like How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

If you liked the ireland plot in How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney , here is a list of 17 books like this:

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Similar categories in Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-se immòbil, feliç i inútil"

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

"Per ell aquest era el sentit de la jubilació, de l'existència: estar-de immòbil, feliç i inútil"

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

"No one minds life as long as they are not trying to leave it. Nor death, as long as they are not dying."

-Sebastian Barry, Old God's Time

Similar categories in Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"It's not that I think about him constantly, he is my way of thinking. His mind is my compass, his eyes my only mirror."

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don’t walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

"We don't walk down the same street as the person walking beside us. All we can do is tell the other person what we see. We can point at things and try to name them. If we do this well, our friend can…"

-Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

Similar categories in John Boyne's Water book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• audiobook

"What does Whiteness feel like?... I imagine it's like walking barefoot…"

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

"Why don't stars make any sounds in the winter? What sounds? Ethan said."

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

"Every boy deserves to believe him father is good, but if each father were good, we’d be living in a different kind of world."

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

"I imagined I could have begged an old girlfriend from college to send money; enough of them had expressed ambivalence about their trust funds that this seemed a plausible path down which I might drag…"

-Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You

Similar categories in John Boyne's Earth book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

"Money's the sixth sense. If you don't have it, you can't make … the most of the other five."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

"I feel that when I travel I can change myself a little, and I return from a journey not quite the same self I was."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

"That night, side by side, we drifted among the galaxies of sea-stars, while far, far above us the asterisks of light marked out the footnotes on the page of eternity."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

"All of us will be forgotten eventually. Like a wave on the ocean, leaving no trace that it had once existed.' He shook his head. 'We will be remembered through our stories."

-Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

Similar categories in Claire Keegan's So Late in the Day book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀'s A Spell of Good Things book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered."

-Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, A Spell of Good Things

"He stared back at her, unconcerned. She had always marvelled at his calm assurance that everything good in his life would either remain the same or get better. He took good fortune for granted. As th…"

-Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, A Spell of Good Things

Similar categories in Paul Harding's This Other Eden book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• novels

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Similar categories in Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• coming of age
• mental health
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"To some, the world is filled with threats. To others, opportunities."

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

"That's dedication and if life's taught me anything, we go to what we love, eventually - we mightn't find it straight away, but we get there."

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

"...[W]hile language came readily to Tess when dealing with herself alone, having one-way conversations over all of her choices on her long walks in the woods, or on her way to school, now she no long…"

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

"How can I miss someone I have never met? Jamie said. Grief was profoundly different for both humans. One felt an intense anger he had never recovered from, the other knew something was missing, a vac…"

-Elaine Feeney, How to Build a Boat

Similar categories in Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow's All the Little Bird-Hearts book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• mental health
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Similar categories in Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"I laughed and then we were doing that thing again, our thing: laughing into one another's eyes. All that time I had thought I was jollying you along when all that time you were jollying along me."

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I tell my husband about my childhood and he tells me about his but it isn't the same. We can never know each other as we were then. But I know you. I will see the child you were in the man you will b…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"Hated cling film. Hated it more than I hated kinetic sand. Defeated by something that lacked a third dimension. While I'd been off tinkering on the cerebral plane, the smart money has been mastering …"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

"I knelt down to pick up the hatchling to . . . . what? Give it back to its mother? Here is your dying chick? Just before I made contact with it, she dive-bombed me. The mother actually dive-bombed me…"

-Claire Kilroy, Soldier Sailor

Similar categories in Megan Nolan's Ordinary Human Failings book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"She loved the feeling of doing something on her own, and doing it in a routine. It felt thrillingly adult and affirmed her most cherished hope, the hope that she might have an actual inner life of su…"

-Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings

"He had the sort of bland, agreeable, rosy face which could disappear into whatever context he wished it to. He was blond but not provocatively so. The naturally dull Kent accent could be clipped and …"

-Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings

Similar categories in Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"I try always to be good."

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"How, I wondered, might a person, a people, take root, roots and rootlessness, the preservation of what little remains of the past, such were thoughts that blew through me on any given morning, standi…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"In taking a side, I thought uneasily, perhaps I ought to take the long view, the survival of the species as a whole. That was my problem, I thought, I was always thinking at the level of the individu…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

"I had hoped that here in the country I would experience the turn of the seasons differently, with less apprehension, I might come to see the form and plan of the world. Not to frame it within systems…"

-Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience

Similar categories in Chetna Maroo's Western Lane book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• coming of age
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

Similar categories in Martin MacInnes's In Ascension book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"I questioned what else I had already missed so far, in my own life, simply through the limits of my character."

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

"Once he had committed to this life, there was no way he could get out of it. He was angry at us, his daughters, because the financial demands of our existence bound him to it."

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

"I kind of love it. It's so macabre. The reason we haven't seen or heard from anything off-world is that reaching off-world status is a civilisational death knell. Life either gets stuck there or dest…"

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

"The air was thick with teeming life, just as the oceans and the rivers were. A spoonful of seawater or a pinch of soil between your fingers held billions of living things. We were blind to this out o…"

-Martin MacInnes, In Ascension

Similar categories in Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It can be intoxicating to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent's eyes."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It's a warmth that she'll feel again very few times in her life. It's almost like love, but it has a surer, less desperate edge to it."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

Similar categories in Colin Walsh's Kala book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

"Vapers are cunt wands,' Donna snaps."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"I just want to switch myself off. Disconnect from everything."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"So much of the night's vague. A film strip with half the frames missing."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"Who drinks a decaf cappuccino? Be honest with yourself and get a cup of warm milk."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

Similar categories in Siân Hughes's Pearl book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• mental health
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• ireland
• audiobook

Similar categories in Cathy Sweeney's Breakdown book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• mental health
• fiction
• contemporary
• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Sarah Perry's Enlightenment book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• audiobook
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary

"Thomas [Hart] lived where he'd been born, and where (so he often thought without rancor) he'd very likely die; and if he lived alone he was not lonely, that being a condition not of solitude but of l…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"So I told her this: that it's true I've only rarely been happy, and perhaps more often been sad. But I have been content. I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I've been faithless, de…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"I wish I could say, James, that we forgave each other in the end. I wish I could say: she put her head on my shoulder and I welcomed it and we laughed and said all was well. But in fact we were quiet…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"...in the ordinary way we love because we're loved, and give more or less what we're given. But to love without return is more strange and more wonderful, and not the humiliating thing I'd once taken…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

Similar categories in Samantha Harvey's Orbital book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult
• audiobook

"Maybe we're the new dinosaurs and need to watch out."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"The past comes, the future, the past, the future. It's always now, it's never now."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"That's all this great human endeavor of space exploration really is, he thinks, an animal migration, a bid for survival. A looping song sent into the open, a territorial animal song."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Similar categories in Katriona O'Sullivan's Poor: Grit, courage, and the life-changing value of self-belief book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• ireland
• irish literature
• audiobook

Similar categories in Hisham Matar's My Friends book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• novels
• fiction
• contemporary

"A vast distance exists between a protester and his slogan; the entire history of politics exists in that gap."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"For a writer, exile is prison, a severing from the source, and so, courageous or not, he dies in front of our eyes."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"She was older and all the more beautiful, had the weary tiredness of one who, in surrendering to her life, was ennobled by it."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"I walked off feeling an emptiness well up inside me. It seemed, for all the emptiness that it was, a presence. It made me want to run away, dive deeper into myself, into that cold desolation, to the …"

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

Similar categories in Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• audiobook

Similar categories in Anne Michaels's Held book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• audiobook

"Who can say what happens when we are remembered?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling."

-Anne Michaels, Held

Similar categories in Donal Ryan's Heart, Be at Peace book and Elaine Feeney's How to Build a Boat

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• ireland
• irish literature