Kirjahaku

NOW A MAJOR STREAMING SERIESA riveting technological thriller following a woman whose life is upended when her husband and son disappear in a mysterious plane crash and she is left alone with an unnerving home robot, only to get caught up in an AI-related conspiracy. In near-future Japan, Susie Sakamoto is mourning the loss of her husband and son to a plane crash. Alone in her big modern house, which feels like more of a prison, Susie spends her days drinking heavily and taking her anger out at the only “sentient” thing left in her life: Sunny, the annoying home robot her husband designed. Susie despises Sunny, and sometimes even gets a sinking feeling that Sunny is out to hurt her.To escape her paranoia and depression, Susie frequents the seedy, drug-fueled bars of the city, where she hears rumors of The Dark Manual, a set of guidelines that allow you to reprogram your robot for nefarious purposes. In the hopes of finding a way to turn off Sunny for good, Susie begins to search for the manual, only to learn it’s too late: the machines are becoming more sentient and dangerous. Thrust into the center of a dark, corporate war, Susie realizes there’s someone behind the code, pulling the strings. And they want her dead.With a darkly humorous yet propulsive and lyrical voice, O’Sullivan presents us with an unsettling look at a future that feels all too real. Gripping and thought-provoking, Sunny is a haunting character study of an anxious woman teetering in an anxious time.

How much can one land take? How much can one man take? What if the rains kept coming? What if the huge waves kept crashing in? What if the plates kept shifting and volcanoes kept up their choking spew? What if neighbouring nations became more antagonistic and the rest of the world began to forget you? It's the not-too-distant-future and a certain Asian country is in physical and moral tatters. What was once a polite society has become fouled and corrupted. Part-time referee and full-time PE teacher, Tombo, stands in the middle of all this, trying to find fairness and balance in his own life, as things continue to crumble around him. Added to his personal miseries - missing-presumed-dead daughter, eerily silent wife, unrequited lusts - comes the unwanted, unwarranted attention of two, mean-spirited, wrathful adolescent girls, who have decided that he is to be their "chosen one". Can this harangued Everyman battle against the forces that envelop him, or will he too fall to the whims of the new dystopia? In this pulsing, provocative, visionary work, O'Sullivan couples his usual lyrical fervour with a philosophical acuity to present before us a trembling world that may not be too far away... As well as being an absurd existential novel it is also a political satire, and a cautionary tale about what may lay ahead, therefore a novel very much for our times. "Colin O'Sullivan's writing is an antic, mordant and perverse plunge into strange and unnerving worlds." Colin Barrett

Rural Ireland in the late 1980s and, stuck in a rut in a small unnamed village, are sixteen-year-old cousins Laura and Kevin. The close cousins and constant companions ache to abscond to somewhere bigger, better, more exciting, where they are free to do what they want to do, free to become who they really are.But things are holding them back. As well as having to cope with family tragedies, the troubled, music-obsessed teens must also negotiate the tricky terrain of burgeoning sexuality, the pitfalls of adolescence, and issues of homosexuality that seem, confusingly, to impinge upon them.And then there is Laura's own serious affliction, epilepsy, which comes and goes when she least expects it. Only cousin Kevin knows how to handle this tricky situation, or handle her: with gentleness, with sympathy, and with maybe just a little too much in the way of love and affection.The months and the spiraling family crises serve only to bring them closer together: but how close is too close?And then there is the strange matter of the nearby pond: this small body of water keeps drawing them near. Laura is convinced that something lurks down there, but Kevin eschews, putting it all down to the psychological trauma she is going through. Are they prepared for whatever secrets might come bubbling to the surface, monsters real or imagined that could come rising from the depths?Colin O'Sullivan returns to a familiar (and formative) Irish setting with this punchy novel that grows in pace page by page. 1980s references abound, not only with music giants of the time, Boy George, Madonna et al, but also the politics of Gorbachev and Reagan, literal and figurative walls that are about to be torn down and imminent societal changes. Although rooted in the past, this fraught and frantic work is startlingly relevant and makes us consider today's current affairs.

It is Christmas Eve in London. Ben Morrigan is in boyfriend David's kitchen making Christmas crackers. The pair is invited to dinner at David's childhood home, the stylish abode of theatre - and sometimes TV - star Charles Cunningham. For David, that should be the perfect occasion to introduce Ben to the family for the first time. The couple set out on a car journey, and all is clearly not well. They bicker and argue, and something is preoccupying the dark mind of swarthy Ben, this young man who makes his living from making film/theatre props and constructing sets. The scene he has on his mind on this day is one of vengeance for wrongs inflicted a long time ago. Charles Cunningham and his wife Lydia wait nervously for the arrival of the guests and are ensconced in their own squabbling. Lydia worries about the state of mind of her aging husband - he has begun to forget things and, when pushed on certain topics, it becomes evident that they have escaped him altogether. But how much of his past will he be allowed to evade? The Christmas tree Charles gazes upon looks lopsided, as if it hasn't been set up properly and will tumble down at any minute: this central metaphor becomes an apt appraisal for the life he has lived and the truths he will be made face, as apt a metaphor as that of the marshmallows he sometimes indulges in: things that are soft, sweet, delicate and effortlessly consumed, but are now back to haunt like spectres from Christmases past. The scene is set for a fraught encounter as hunter and hunted face off on a dark winter night. Memories are summoned, or are practically wrenched back into play, many of which would perhaps be better off left locked away in a dusty old prop chest with the other Waiting for Godot accoutrements, the bowler hats, the stinging whip; and on a bare theatre stage an intense interrogation and crippling castigation is about to take place, which will frazzle nerves, break relationships and go as far as to upend the very notion of family. Will anyone come out of it unscathed, or is it just that, as Ben's favourite Christmas song has it, "the Christmas you get... you deserve"?