Bernard MacLaverty Books In Order

Novels

  1. Man in Search of a Pet (1978)
  2. Lamb (1980)
  3. Cal (1983)
  4. Andrew McAndrew (1988)
  5. Grace Notes (1997)
  6. The Anatomy School (2001)
  7. Midwinter Break (2017)

Collections

  1. Secrets (1977)
  2. A Time to Dance (1982)
  3. The Great Profundo (1987)
  4. Best of Bernard MacLaverty (1990)
  5. The Bernard MacLaverty Collection (1991)
  6. Walking the Dog (1994)
  7. Matters of Life and Death (2006)
  8. Collected Stories (2013)
  9. Blank Pages and Other Stories (2021)

Non fiction

  1. Colomba: Iona and the Spread of Christianity (1997)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Bernard MacLaverty Books Overview

Lamb

Now back in print the masterful and moving first novel by the acclaimed author of Cal. When Brother Sebastian, ne Michael Lamb, runs away from a bleak reformatory, taking with him twelve year old Owen Kane, the media and the police call it a kidnapping. For Lamb, though, it is a rescue of a formerly abused boy from a place of no hope, a last grasp at an elusive happiness. But as the outside world closes in, as time and money run out, Lamb finds himself moving towards a solution that is as shocking as it is loving. Lamb was produced as a widely praised film starring Liam Neeson Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in the title role.

Cal

‘Bernard MacLaverty’s powerful novel is a love story as affecting and tragic as you could want.’ USA TodayWhen it was first published, Bernard MacLaverty’s fiction masterpiece was hailed by Michael Gorra in the New York Times Book Review as ‘a marvel of technical perfection…
. Cal is a most moving novel whose emotional impact is grounded in a complete avoidance of sentimentality…
. It will become the Passage to India of the Troubles.’For Cal, a Belfast teenager who, against his will, is involved in the terrible war between Catholics and Protestants, some of the choices are devastatingly simple: he can work in the slaughterhouse that nauseates him or join the dole queue; he can brood on his past or plan a future with the beautiful, widowed Marcella for whose grief he shares more than a little responsibility.

Grace Notes

The luminous novel by one of the finest living Irish writers, which Brian Moore has praised as ‘in every sense a triumph…
moving throughout and ending triumphantly and joyously in its own special music.’The award winning Grace Notes is a compact and altogether masterful portrait of a woman composer and the complex interplay between her life and her art. With superb artistry and startling intimacy, it brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and musician making her mark in a male dominated field. It is a book that the Virginia Woolf of A Room of One’s Own would instantly understand. ‘MacLaverty summons up a time and a place with an unerring exactness reminiscent of Joyce’s Dubliners…
a magnificent portrait of the sources and ends, wretchedness and rewards, of creativity.’ Sunday Times London ‘Page after page something delighted and moved me marvelous, vivid tours of emotion, intelligence, poetry every step of the way. Compelling.’ Dennis McFarland, author of The Music Room ‘I was reminded of the way Joyce Cary so brilliantly portrayed a painter’s life in The Horse’s Mouth…
. What a wonderful writer MacLaverty is!’ Andrea Barrett ‘More ambitious than any of his previous work…
a remarkable novel.’ Anna Mundow, Boston Globe Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize Winner of the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award

The Anatomy School

A coming of age story of a northern Irish boy getting out from under the thumb of mother, church, and country. Set in Belfast in the late sixties, Bernard MacLaverty’s new novel takes us into Martin Brennan’s last semester of high school, when he finds old friendships tested and is forced to face the unknown. Before he can become an adult, Martin must unravel the sacred and contradictory mysteries of religion, science, and sex; he must learn the value of friendship; but most of all he must pass his exams at any cost. Celebrating the desire to speak and the need to say nothing, The Anatomy School moves from the enforced silence of Martin’s Catholic school retreat, through the hilarious tea and biscuits repartee of his eccentric elders, to the awkward wit and loose profanity of his two friends the charismatic Kavanagh and the subversive Blaise Foley. With characteristic ‘wise humor’ Publishers Weekly, MacLaverty ‘moves beyond the cloistered realm of school to capture the rhythms and pressures of provincial life, as well as Martin’s desire to overcome them.’ Denver Post. This absorbing, often funny novel ‘turns high anxieties and pain into well wrought fiction. MacLaverty has a wider vision, greater depth and technical craft than J. D. Salinger, a more subtle style than William Golding and a moral imagination to match that of James Joyce’ Toronto Globe and Mail. Reading group guide included.

A Time to Dance

Bernard Mac Laverty’s beautifully turned stories are full of humour, terse realism and moments of touching or shocking surprise. Nelson plays truant and sees something he wishes he hadn’t in the title story, ‘A Time to Dance‘. In ‘Phonefun Limited’, Sadie and Agnes, retired prostitutes hit upon an inventive new way of making someone happy with a phone call, while in ‘My Dear Palestrina”, a remarkable music teacher initiates her pupil into the mysteries of art and maturity.

The Great Profundo

A collection of short stories which explore the varieties of consolation people will seek in difficult circumstances, such as alcohol, poetry and impotent reminiscence. From the author of LAMB, A TIME TO DANCE and CAL.

Best of Bernard MacLaverty

One of a series of fiction titles for schools, this is a selection of ten short stories by Bernard MacLaverty which are all written from the viewpoints of children or young people.

Walking the Dog

A rich collection of short stories by one of Ireland’s contemporary literary masters. A rich collection of short stories by one of Ireland’s contemporary literary masters.

This long-awaited new collection from the noted Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty examines worlds in collision, relationships fragmenting, innocence coming face to face with real life and real death. A Catholic schoolboy playing football has a theological debate with a Protestant policeman; a chess game in Spain is a catalyst for grief and redemption; in the haunting title story a Belfast man out walking his dog is kidnapped at gunpoint.

As always, MacLaverty’s writing is vivid, exact, and pellucid, his characters perfectly observed, the surface of the prose deceptively still. It is only after we enter the world of the stories that we begin to make out the huge shapes that move there: loss, love, disappointment, fierce joy. This is a powerful, honest, and moving book by one of the great storytellers of our age. .

Matters of Life and Death

‘MacLaverty’s tales are poised and beautifully balanced, outward yet intimate, graced by both subtlety and substance.’ The Independent A new book from Bernard MacLaverty is a cause for celebration, but Matters of Life and Death is more than that. It is the finest collection yet from a contemporary master of the form. Beginning with the sudden terror of a family caught up in shocking sectarian violence, and ending with the whiteout of an Iowa blizzard and the fear of losing your way very far from home, this collection is about bonds made and broken, secret and known. In the extraordinary story ‘Up the Coast,’ a landscape painter discovers a place that makes her, finally, feel whole, only to have that communion shattered by an arbitrary act of aggression that will resonate throughout her life. Written with effortless skill and empathy, these stories are hauntingly real. MacLaverty’s perfect attention to every detail, every nuance of idiom and character, remakes the world for us here on the page.

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