Books by Deirdre Madden

All Over Ireland, edited by Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox's Birthday, Time Present and Time Past), continues the tradition of featuring the work of both new and established writers, including Colm Toibin, Mary Morrissy and Eoin McNamee. These diverse and accomplished stories, by turns dazzling, thoughtful and startling, bring new ideas and energy to the form and richly enhance the tradition of Irish fiction.

For Theresa and her student friends, Belfast can seem an urban nightmare - a city where violence can erupt at any moment, where secrecy and bitterness are nursed behind closed doors, and where Theresa's twin brother, Francis, has been murdered, Deirdre Madden carefully and movingly reveals the crisis of faith that confronts Theresa when her devout Catholicism provides no explanation for the tragedy. Hidden Symptoms was originally published in Faber's First Fictions anthology where it was highly praised and was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1987.

Nothing is Black is a beautifully told story of three women who find themselves in a remote part of Donegal at a defining moment in their lives.Wealthy and successful, Nuala has everything except the peace of mind she so desperately needs. She has come to stay with her cousin Claire, who leads a solitary life as a painter. Anna, Claire's neighbour, longs for a reconciliation with her estranged daughter.Through their stories, Deirdre Madden explores the themes of friendship, family and the nature of creativity, confirming her reputation as one of Ireland's most talented writers.

Dublin. Midsummer. While absent in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend, who is struggling to write a new work. Over the course of this, the longest day of the year, the playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly's, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, whom she has known since university. Why does Molly never celebrate her own birthday, which falls upon this day? What does it mean to be a playwright or an actor? How have their relationships evolved over the course of many years? Molly Fox's Birthday calls into question the ideas that we hold about who we are; and shows how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined.

When James proposes, it seems like an opportunity for Jane to leave her lonely past behind and become part of a family. But the presence of a woman in the cottage near their remote farmhouse threatens Jane's new-found happiness.This compelling novel by one of Ireland's finest writers won a Somerset Maugham Award.'Madden's achievement is to make partial revelations about obscure lives as gripping as a thriller. Her style is passionate, emotional, but never obvious and does not admit a single cliche or badly written sentence.' Observer

Fintan Buckley is a pleasant, rather conventional and unimaginative man, who works as a legal adviser in an import/export firm in Dublin. He lives in Howth and is married to Colette. They have two sons who are at university, and a small daughter. As he goes about his life, working and spending time with his family, Fintan begins to experience states of altered consciousness and auditory hallucinations, which seem to take him out of a linear experience of time. He becomes interested in how we remember or imagine the past, an interest trigged by becoming aware of early photography, particularly early colour photography. He also finds himself thinking more about his own past, including time spent holidaying in the north of Ireland as a child with his father's family. Over the years he has become distanced from them, and in the course of the novel this link is re-established and helps to bring him understanding and peace, although in a most unexpected way. Time Present and Time Past, Deirdre Madden's eighth novel for adults, is about time: about how not just daily life and one's own, or one's family's past, intersect with each other.