This book was a pleasure to read, funny, big-hearted and entertaining. I loved the characters and felt myself rooting for each of them throughout. I'd recommend in a heartbeat

Not for me. The themes were tropes familiar in multigenerational stories about Ireland and the characters felt more like Issues than people. It was all a bit safe and obvious except for the disappointed structure and while I usually love a complex narrative it just muddied the waters here, jumping from year to year and POV to POV without much purpose.

This sounded so very promising and seemed to get off to a good start, but it somehow ran out of steam for me. I struggled to finish this book.

Felt a bit too whimsical for me with a lot of familiar Irish tropes. Wanted it to subvert them in some way. DNF

Really enjoyed the way the story was told, jumping back and forth between characters and years. Thought all the characters were well developed and intriguing, would thoroughly recommend!

Shortlisted for the Irish Book Award 2018 in the Category "Novel of the Year"
Martin does an excellent job telling the story of an Irish family by interweaving the ongoing influence of tradition with the rise of more progressive attitudes and the impact of major political events on the individual. With a panoramic vision and spanning from 1979 to 2011, the novel introduces us to the destinies of the four Doyle children. After the death of their mother, Granny Doyle, a deeply religious and conservative woman, becomes their primary caregiver. The oldest child, Peg, has to leave Ireland when she gets pregnant as a teenager and wants to have an abortion, and the triplets Damien, Rosie, and John Paul, who have potentially been conceived when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, also don't turn out the way their grandmother had planned.

Damien is gay and has a hard time growing up, Rosie's nonconformist spirit is perceived as provocative by many people around her, and John Paul, well - instead of becoming the first Irish Pope, as imagined by Granny Doyle, he becomes a YouTube star by satirizing the church. All those characters are vividly drawn, full of both flaws and virtues, and the story is not only heartfelt, but frequently very funny. I loved how Martin manages to illustrate family dynamics: What people know, assume, how they feel towards others, and the domino effects that ripple throughout the whole family structure due to minor or major events. With such a comparatively large cast of characters, it takes a lot of narrative control to convincingly write about emotional interdepencies and multi-layered repercussions, and Martin makes it appear to be effortless.

Due to the personal traits of the protagonists and the depiction of events that took place during the narrated time (like the financial crisis), the novel gains political relevance as it discusses abortion, gay rights, environmental protection, the banking system, the housing crisis, the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church, Obama, and party politics. By talking about the Doyle family, Martin paints a picture of Ireland in flux, and he manages to show the connection between the personal and the political without lecturing.

My only issue with the book was that some chapters are unnecessarily short which partly produces a level of fragmentation that does not seemed justified by the content - sometimes, there simply is no need to start a new chapter, and the excessive breaks are detrimental to the flow of the story.

But overall, this is a wonderful, smart and fun book, and I hope Martin will make it onto some more prize lists!

Very interesting to read this book, this year in particular! I remember 1979 very well and the author really captured the mood and atmosphere of the time.

I really wanted to like this book. The synopsis made it sound so much more. It started well, a story of Granny Doyle fetching up her four grandchildren.

But it just didn't seem to go anywhere. It was disjointed jumping from timeline to timeline, character to character. There were mentions of things and people but no following up on them so it seemed pointless mentioning them in the first place.

Each time I found myself getting into it and starting to enjoy it the story would just go off on a tangent and lose me completely.

I found this a very confusing read. I may try to read it again in the future to see if I can make more sense of it and enjoy it all rather than just parts. Right now though it's not a book for me although others may well get on with it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for an honest review.

During Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979, Granny Doyle was struck by a divine desire: that one of her grandchildren would become the first Irish Pope. Sadly for this nanna, her son had only managed to produce was an assertive and quick-witted girl called Peg. So Granny Doyle set a plan in motion, which would backfire in ways she could never have dreamed.

Ah, meddling nannas – there’s nothing quite like them. This was an odd book for me to choose but I quite liked the idea of a grandma getting a little more than she bargained for when trying to shape her family into one she can show off. It’s both a heartwarming and deeply sad story that showcases how much Ireland has and hasn’t changed in the last 40 years, especially when it comes to governing the lives and bodies of women and LGBT+ people.

I really wanted to like this book. It sounded really engaging with lots of interesting possibilities but for me it just didn't live up to expectations.

It started well with the wonderful character of Bridget Doyle planning to be the grandmother of the first Irish Pope after collecting Holy Water collected at the blessing of Pope John-Paul 11 when he visited Ireland. The birth of the triplets & their childhood were good but after that things got a bit disjointed and I really lost interest and the plot.

I'm sorry I can't be more positive- I'm sure many people will love it but it was not for me. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

This started off well - a story about triplets and their older sister being brought up by their grand mother shortly after Pope John Paul 2nd's visit to Ireland. The different characters were interesting and the dynamics between the siblings and various relatives and neighbours.

Then it got rather confusing with the time line jumping around and various plot lines that didn't really go anywhere such as the new family on the street, the political coalition and the ambiguous ending. I was also confused by Peg's lifestyle in New York and felt her character wasn't explored fully.

I really wanted to like this book as I usually love the black comedy genre and also it addresses important issues. Although perhaps in part that was the problem - that the author was trying to fit in as many issues that have faced modern Ireland as possible and it didn't all neatly fit into a fiction book.

I couldn't quite into this novel. It's a very disjointed piece of literary fiction, in that its exploration of the narrative plays out in small vignettes. I did like that parts of the book were based on objects that were significant in the character's lives, but after a while I got bored by the lack of action that took place. It's a very character driven piece, and is designed for readers who like those kind of psychological study novels. I think there's a nostalgia factor for anyone with a good relationship with Ireland, or even has had religious relatives who have acted like Granny Doyle in this book. But otherwise, this just wasn't for me.

Last year I read a new American novel called The People we Hate at the Wedding by Grant Grinder. Still possibly the best title for a novel, but to me it was rather disappointing, and when I came across the nuptials in this book (several pages long, but still only a minor part of the plot) I realized that scenes like this were what I had been hoping for.

This is a wonderful wedding: to me the words leap off the page and you can see every moment of it. Is it just something the Irish excel at? – weddings are also well-done in the very fun Oh my God, What a Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen from earlier this year. I am open to being told it’s the weddings themselves (and I have been to many cracking Irish weddings), or the way they are described.

The wedding is a high point in this very unusual book: it has many features and strands that we are all familiar with: unhappy childhoods, family falling out, unforgotten grudges, secrets in the history. Matriarch Granny Doyle is determined there should one day be an Irish Pope, and she has great hopes for a child conceived during Pope John Paul II's visit to Ireland in 1979. She ends up bringing up four of her grandchildren, all of whom will be a disappointment in one way or another. Life in Ireland is going on in the background, and the usual Catholics/sex/disapproval/horrors/anti-gay feeling are going on in the foreground. The way in which her wish is (kind of) fulfilled is funny and actually very believable (SPOILER: not a real Pope).

- and I can only guess that the publication of this book was planned to coincide with the visit by the current Pope, Pope Francis, to Ireland, starting tomorrow. Who knows who will be conceived this time.

The action flips back and forward from adulthood to childhood for the Doyle siblings. It’s done in quite a fanciful way, as if for a piece of modern art: there is a series of artefacts, such as a holy water bottle or a handbag, and each is the starting point for a section of the story.

Of course, nobody is very happy – feature of many an Irish book - and the secrets spilling out, the inheritances and the memories, don’t make things better.

There are many funny and charming lines:

The 4 year old Peg’s new shoes are
Shiny enough to impress a Pope and sensible enough not to suggest a toddler Jezebel.
The same Peg – older and not happy or sociable –
Sometimes worried that she had outsourced affability to [husband] Dev.
And then
Catherine Doyle might prove to be the Patron Saint of Dramatic Interventions.
Had John Paul sat in Solomon’s chair and eyed the two women fighting over the one baby, he would simply have bought another baby, one for everybody in the audience.
The beginning of the book is particularly impressive, there is a glimpsed-at happy-marriage, a wife whom we never get to know, a life that should have been fulfilled and close – and then it all disappears, haunting everyone disastrously. I found the middle of the book somewhat tricksy, I wanted the author to just slow down and tell the story, have faith in his characters. But then the end picked up again a lot (despite a final, annoying, uncertainty).

But a good novel: funny, sad, entertaining, and with a most interesting picture of Irish life over the past 40 years.

The picture is The Wedding Dance in a Barn, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, painted in around 1616, from the Web Gallery of Art. I absolutely can see them dancing to 'It's Raining Men'. Hallelujah.

I was looking forward to reading this book, but although I enjoyed the writing style, I found it difficult to engage with the characters and their stories and didn't feel it came together as a whole.

I was sent a copy of Future Popes of Ireland by Darragh Martin to read and review by NetGalley.
This, in my opinion, is a five star book. Warm hearted, poignant, sad, funny, it is a delight to read. Beautifully written with a whole host of very believable characters, this novel may well take your breath away – it did mine. The story revolves around one family, the Doyles, and moves between decades and characters alike, keeping the prose fresh but not at all confusing. Set mainly in Ireland as the title suggests, the author has managed to imbue this novel with a real sense of time and place, weaving in politics, history and even mythology. A complex but accessible novel making me eager to search out any other writing I can find by Darragh Martin.

This book begins with the Papal visit of John Paul II to ireland and Bridget Doyle's decision that she must be the grandmother of the "future pope of Ireland". Thanks to Some Papal holy water her wish is about to become true as her daughter-in-law gives birth to triplets but does not live to raise them. Damien, Rosie and John Paul along with their elder sister Peg are all raise by grandma. Incidents in their childhood set child against child and John-Pauls "miracles" into family history. Dysfunctional but indicative of an Ireland trying to drag itself into the 20th century the narrative is by turns, humorous, heart-rending and Endearing. Nobody emerges unscathed yet there are plenty of moments to laugh and enjoy the "craic" along the way. The biggest problem with this book is its meandering narrative moving backwards and forwards in time so that the reader's head swims trying to keep it all in order. However the characters are larger than life and fully identifiable with and the storyline well worth the read.

This book begins with the famous and still talked about visit Pope John Paul II made to Ireland, and the mass he gave in the Phoenix Park – and will be published in the same year that Pope Francis will return to the same venue.

This book couldn’t be more timely: while it is funny and light hearted in places, and switches perspective and time and place quite quickly, it also charts social change in Ireland from the seventies to the height of the Celtic Tiger in 2007. The premise of the book is an old woman who wants a grandchild who will become the first Irish pope. While this results in funny moments – calling the youngest of the family John Paul and claiming coincidences around him as miracles – her plot has devastating consequences for the whole family, beginning with the death of her daughter in law in childbirth.

Shunting back and forth in time, we see social change in Ireland played out in one family: gay characters forced to remain closeted or coming out eight years before the marriage referendum, characters travelling to England for abortions cloaked in shame, before being able to discuss it openly with another woman who had to make a similar decision, eleven years before the Eight Amendment was repealed, the booming economy in Ireland and the price that the environment would have to pay – and the price all Irish people would have to pay.

This was such an interesting read – unfortunately I was ultimately disappointed by how hard it was to engage with the plot, and how I could very easily put the book down when something else grabbed my attention. However, I can see already that some of the characters – the estranged Aunt Mary, former radical and closeted lesbian, in particular – will stay with me and command my attention more and more after I finish the book, precisely because this book has come about at such a relevant time.

An engaging story following the fortunes of an Irish family from 1979 to 2011, neatly spanning the decades of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ and the rise and fall in fortune and aspiration of the main characters. 1979 is a particularly auspicious year, the year Pope John Paul II visits Ireland, instilling notions of change, and the year the Doyle triplets are conceived. Their childhoods are overshadowed by the absence of the gentle mother they never knew, the grief-stricken father they rarely see and the spirited, caring sister who is forced to leave, leaving them with the stifling, unbending presence of Granny Doyle, a matriarch of the old school, deeply traditional and heavily biased towards her favourite of the family.

The characters are the strength of this novel, I was rooting for them all, and especially for Peg of course, hoping that their lives would come good as they grew up and away from home. The structure of the novel, switching back and forth between the 20th and 21st centuries, means that from the beginning we have some idea where they are in 2011 and, as the story unfolds, we come to see how they get there. By the end, when a sense of redemption prevails, they and I could even sympathise with Granny Doyle, an old lady who outlived her comfort time zone, referred to by her Christian name at last. The glittery-eyed frenzy of the boom and bust years was well done, too, and I loved the images of John Paul’s surreal video appearances as the ‘Irish Pope’.

A really satisfying read, tragic yet hopeful in the best tradition of family sagas, I’d recommend it highly.

Future Popes of Ireland builds a convincing tale of four Irish siblings and their extended family from 1979 - 2011. It’s an at times funny, at times tragic, tale of bitter family feud, sibling rivalry, familial love, political conflict, mythology and religion. Exactly what you might expect of an Irish tale in the time period perhaps, but told with a lightness of touch and wit, combined with some timey-wimey and perspective changes, that is ever engaging.
Although some of the story-telling beats are familiar, it’s all put together in an entertaining manner. Definitely worth picking up.

I do have a fondness for stories set in Eighties Ireland. A reminder of a pretty idyllic childhood. This story opens with the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland in 1979. A vast gathering of Mammies and their various offspring in Phoenix Park looking for that Papal blessing. Now that there has been a Polish pope Bridget Doyle is just desperate for her family to produce the next one. Blessing her son’s bed sheets with Papal blessed holy water is bound to guarantee that happens.

Future Popes is Martin’s debut in novel form and this is a beautifully observed story of four siblings and their relationships as they grown up. From the arrival of the triplets under a veil of sadness to the disparate adults scattered around the globe.

It is a book that you need to pay attention to as the chapters do meander through the siblings timeline and it can be difficult to work out which period you are in if you are dipping in and out of this one. Do persevere though as it is a wonderful tale of family and the dreams and expectations that can make life within that unit a lot more challenging.

Supplied by Net Galley and Harper Collins UK in exchange for an honest review.

UK publication date: Aug 23 2018. 448 pages.