Anna Heussaff on three recent books in Irish for teens—Éanna Corr, Oiread na Fríde, and Heartstopper
by Anna Heussaff
Lively, contemporary novels in Irish for teenagers used to be as scarce as snowflakes in May. A diligent searcher could find a handful but they certainly couldn’t be relied upon to appear year after year. Nowadays there are lots of brilliant picture books in Irish for young readers and a fairly steady supply of good books for older children. There are also excellent translations from English to Irish of best-selling series for youngsters who like to re-read their favourites in a different form. And these three recent publications can be added to the growing number of engaging novels for teenagers.
In Éanna Corr, we meet a teenager whose nickname could be translated as ‘Oddball Éanna’. He’s neglected at home and isolated at school, but this is no simple tale of bullying. Author Antain Mac Lochlainn skilfully packs a lot of plot twists and sensitive issues into a short novel.
Síomón arrives at Éanna’s school and immediately befriends him. He invites him to his home for weekends where his parents offer the kindness and the listening ear that Éanna sorely lacks at home. All seems rosy until we learn that Síomón is part of An Teampall Nua, a secretive group for which his mission is to recruit new members. As the story develops, Éanna is caught between his new and highly confident friend and his sister Brídín, who has moved to Dublin to become a journalist. She becomes alarmed at Éanna’s conversion to the group; when he tries to entice another lonely classmate to join them, events spiral out of control.
Éanna, Síomón and Brídín are credible young characters wrestling with friendship, freedom, parental authority, indoctrination, conspiracies and divided loyalties. The story is told from their different viewpoints and acute tension builds as the reader tries to guess whether and how they can escape the dangers entrapping them.
Jackie Mac Donncha takes on a different set of themes in Oiread na Fríde. Áine and her two teenage children, Naoise and Aoife, are coping with the loss of Brian, beloved husband and father who died almost two years earlier.
When Áine is asked out by Gearóid, all three react differently to this unexpected turn in their lives. Brian’s mother encourages Áine to embrace a new future but when the family’s terrier dog Leo seems hostile to the stranger, Aoife’s anxiety intensifies. Oiread na Fríde deals gently with these sensitive family issues, in a story that is at heart a lot simpler and more comforting in its ideas than Éanna Corr.
The original Heartstopper is a hugely successful series of graphic novels first published in English as a webcomic, then a crowd-funded self-published volume, followed by worldwide sales by Hachette of over a million copies of the current five volumes, along with a Netflix live-action series.
Now it’s been translated to Irish by Eoin McEvoy and is already in its second edition. A few brief words on the cover get us right into the story. Beirt bhuachaillí. Splanc an Ghrá. (Two boys. The spark of love.) In their study group at a boys-only school, Charlie and Nick are told to sit together. Within weeks Charlie has fallen in love but what does Nick want, and even if he’s attracted to Charlie, can he admit it to himself? What game is Ben playing? This is a most enjoyable romantic page-turner and I’m looking forward already to the next volume in Irish. The thrilling hopes and gnawing self-doubts of first love, the mixed judgements of friends and the stereotyping of LGBTQ+ teens as ‘not good at sport’ and ‘not looking gay’ are among the elements handled with great understanding, a lightness of touch and a lively visual style.
All three of these books can be enjoyed by adults and teenagers alike, by fluent or not-so-fluent readers who are keen to read short novels with a moderately limited language range. All are written in natural, accessible and yet rich Irish, which is no surprise at all as Antain Mac Lochlainn, Jackie Mac Donncha and Eoin McEvoy – who are from Co. Derry, Co. Galway’s Conamara Gaeltacht and Co. Offaly respectively – are already well-known and highly regarded as writers and translators. McEvoy is an actor too, for example in the hilarious comedy drama Grindr, Saghdar agus Cher he developed with other leading members of Aerach Aiteach Gaelach, the groundbreaking LGBTQ+ group of artists working through Irish.
To fill our our shelves with appealing, contemporary pre-teen and young adult fiction in Irish, we need both original work and high quality translations on themes not frequently covered already. It’s also worth mentioning some of the writers keeping company on the shelves with Mac Lochlainn, Mac Donncha and McEvoy. They include Áine Ní Ghlinn, Áine Uí Fhoghlú, Brian Ó Broin, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Máire Zepf, Meadhbh Ní Eadhra, Ógie Ó Céilleachair, Orna Ní Choileáin, Richie Conroy and Tristan Rosenstock.
by Úna Nic Cárthaigh
As I know from my own contributions to the genre, a crucial challenge is to tell a suitably complicated story in somewhat simplified but interesting language. Most teenage readers, even those growing up in Irish-speaking homes, are soaking up far more and far longer books in English than in Irish. That makes it all the more important that every new arrival is as welcome and worthwhile as these three books.
Anna Heussaff is an award-winning novelist writing in Irish for adults and for young teens. Her latest crime novel, Sa Pholl Báite (CIC 2023) was reviewed in Books Ireland as ‘a lively and intriguing who-done-it from start to finish’. Her third contemporary mystery for young teens is Sárú (CIC 2017). Find notes and class activities based on Sárú and on Antain Mac Lochlainn’s Éanna Corr here.
