Holiday Book Choices 2025 – Mini Reviews | #BookRecommendations | #BookReview

This year I made a very conscious decision to bring some older books with me on holidays to Portugal in July. These were books that had been languishing on my own personal tbr pile for quite some time. I did bring my Kindle as backup but, as it turned out, I didn’t need it. Instead I removed all the pressure of reading to a calendar date and just immersed myself in four very different reads.

All worthy holiday book-choices. Each one a book recommendation.

1. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
2. The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
3. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
4. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

Originally published in 1994, my copy is the beautiful Vintage edition from 1998. It’s been on my radar for quite sometime but I was completely unprepared for how caught up I would get in the lives of the islanders of Cephallonia.

It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals but over time he proves himself to be civilised, humorous – and a consummate musician.

When Pelagia, the local doctor’s daughter, finds her letters to her fiancé go unanswered, Antonio and Pelagia draw close and the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?

Kefalonia, the Greek Island, renowned for its beauty and stunning waters is the location for this novel, one that is ultimately a love story. I was shocked by the harrowing account of factual barbaric events that occurred there during the Second World War, a history I knew nothing about.

The romance between Italian soldier Antonia Corelli and Pelagia Iannis is central to this novel as they weave their way around political tension and obstacles. He is a charmer, a rascal, and a musician. She is the local doctor’s daughter, with ambition to follow her father into the field of medicine. At that time a Greek and an Italian should have been enemies but a slowly brewing relationship develops and a very emotional tale unfolds. Louis de Bernières takes the reader on an epic journey right up to when the Greek islands became a tourist destination, so there is also plenty of history to be gleaned from the novel.

Filled with a mix of sadness, heartbreak, wit and warmth, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is the perfect summer read.

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Published in 2007, my copy of The Bastard of Istanbul was published with Penguin in 2015. I have never read any of Elif Shafak’s work before but I am now ready for recommendations if you have any!

One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor’s surgery. ‘I need to have an abortion’, she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life. 

Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early forties, so it is a house of women, among them Asya’s beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster.

And when Asya’s Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey’s turbulent past begin to emerge.

Set primarily in Istanbul, we enter the home of the Kazanci family, one filled with a collection of eccentric and individual characters, all women. In a strange twist of fate, considered a curse, all the men, bar one who was sent away, died in their early forties. This cross generational tale reveals some (fictional) hidden and shocking truths about the Kazanci family history, while simultaneously educating me about the tragic (factual) Turkish/Armenian conflict that still resonates today and continues to have a huge impact on the diplomacy between both countries.

I have never been to Turkey but, through the writing of Elif Shafak, I was briefly transported there imagining Istanbul with all its associated scents and sounds. In the afterward she gives us an insight into her mindset and her unorthodox reasons for writing in English as opposed to her native Turkish. She is an enigma I expect and a writer whose work I most definitely intend exploring more of.

I absolutely loved this quirky story. It is a novel that left me filled me a pure sense of magic and joy, but also sent me off in search of further information about some harrowing historical events. Quite a special read.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

To be honest this was a novel I was almost embarrassed to admit I hadn’t read so it just had to come with me in my suitcase. I read few dystopian novels but felt that this was one of the originals and was a necessity for me. My curiosity was also piqued to see how close society was now coming into line with its central plot of control and despotic behaviour toward society and women. First published in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s novel was an award winning one and was also nominated for The Booker Prize. Many readers felt it was quite a bleak read but if anything it’s a frightening one. Margaret Atwood set scenes of her novel in the halls of Harvard in the United States. The Republic of Gilead is described as ‘a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans’. Scary? Very…

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged.

Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

With religious fervour and the radical behaviour of some dictatorial type leaders right now, how far are we from The Republic of Gilead. One has to wonder about society today and the manner in which social norms and values are changing.

While not necessarily what some would consider a holiday read, I am very glad that I read The Handmaid’s Tale. My edition from 2017 has a fascinating introduction from Margaret Atwood herself where she answers three main questions that she is regularly asked, in relation to the novel, centred on religion, feminism and its possible predictive nature. Her responses are timely and very astute, as you would expect.

A disconcerting read but also an important read, The Handmaid’s Tale does feel like a warning for society. Let us all hope that sense prevails for future generations.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

At nearly 700 pages, this 2010 novel from Paul Murray is quite a tome of a read (hence the holiday choice) but it is definitely worth the investment of time. Skippy is a young boy in a renowned boarding school in Dublin. The reason for his being there becomes clear as the novel unfolds and your heart starts to ache for this tragic young man. I devoured The Bee Sting which was nominated and won a number of awards including being chosen as the overall An Post Irish Book of the Year 2023 so I knew that Skippy Dies was a book that I would be reading someday.

Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls’ school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest – including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. . .

A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies scours the corners of the human heart and wrings every drop of pathos, humour and hopelessness out of life, love, Robert Graves, mermaids, M-theory, and everything in between.

Paul Murray has his own distinct writing style that draws the reader in with a stellar cast and an ambitious plot. Skippy Dies takes on a life of its own the deeper you delve into it taking every reader on an extraordinary journey. There are truths revealed that will slice at your heart, and that will infuriate and sadden you, yet there are also sprinkles of Irish warmth and wit littered throughout to lighten the reading experience at times. I laughed at some sections but I also stopped and took time away to process what I had read. Skippy Dies is a tragic comedy, a beautiful yet strange book and one that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for something a little different.

I hope you found something there that you might consider reading and if you have already read any or all do let me know your thoughts and what you think I should read next.

Thanks so much for reading.
Mairéad x