Entertainment.ie Review - Sheena McGinley
Bord Gais Energy Book of The Month - Anne Gildea
Sunshine 106.8FM: Radio Interview - Lynsey Dolan
Novelicious.com Review - Cesca Martin
Amazon Reviews
The Sunday Times: Writing Between The Gender Lines
Ciara Kenny
The Forced Redundancy Film Club, a novel about an unemployed woman who forms a film club with her former co-workers, has all the hallmarks of classic chick lit with one difference: its author is a man.
Brian Finnegan, editor of GCN, has told the story of how a "typical materialistic Celtic tiger girl" learns the value of friendship when she loses her job.
"At the centre of it is a romance, and the main character is a 36 year-old woman who thinks a lot about clothes and shoes, so it's likey that women will like the book more than men," said Finnegan. "But I don't want to rule out male readers either." Finnegan said he would categorise the novel as popular fiction rather than chick lit, but the label doesn't bother him. "It is commercial fiction, more like Marian Keyes meets Nick Hornby, and is full of references to popular culture. My best friends are women, and I think I understand how they operate. Labelling it chick lit narrows it down, but I don't have any snobbery about it."
The novel is a recommended summer read by Easons. Maria Dickenson, its head of book purchasing, said some authors such as Mike Gayle and Hornby have delved successfully into romantic fiction novels, but only from a male perspective.
"There could be an expectation on behalf of the reader that women would write with more authority about these issues, but that is not necessarily fair," she said.
Hot Press Review
Adrienne Murphy
It's contemporary Ireland. A disparate group of colleagues get the dreaded news. Numbing their shock in the pub afterwards, they resolve to meet once a month to watch classic movies in each other's homes to help beat the unemployment blues.
In the tumultuous year that follows their lay-off, the characters grapple with negative equity, collapsing relationships, childhood behaviour disorder, homophobic asault, alcoholism and the search for a biological mother.
Their film club becomes a crucible of transformation, a beacon of light along the path that each character must follow in order to turn the trauma of redundancy into a positive force for change.
With his zeitgeist debut novel, Brian Finnegan – well-known media commentator and editor of GCN, Ireland's gay magazine – brings us a warm, funny, touching, sexy, romantic, thoroughly enjoyable, brilliantly plotted page-turner, whose faith in the redemptive power of our love offers a ray of sunshine for our gloomy times.
