Irish author Anne Enright has had success, winning the Man Booker Prize in 2007.
There is something about the Irish state of mind that shows in their writing.
The likes of Deirdre Purcell are often fraught and harrowing, and even the humour of, say, Roddy Doyle can be bleak.
Enright's characters reveal all their thoughts and feelings and seem to be constantly on the brink of despair, but I found myself looking for their redeeming features.
In The Green Road, Rosaleen Madigan is the matriarch of a family of four children, living on Ireland's west coast.
She does not cope well with the news that her eldest son, Dan, wishes to become a priest, and we see this time through the eyes of 12-year-old Hanna, who tries to make sense of all the adult events and is traumatised by the killing of a chicken.
Skip forward about 10 years and Dan is living a gay life in New York at the height of the Aids epidemic.
A grim read, but there are light moments of summers on the beach and the way that community united while facing adversity.
Rosaleen's other son, Emmet, is in Mali, after stints in Cambodia and Sudan, witnessing a lot of death and suffering.
Rosaleen says she has ''lost her son to death itself''.
Meanwhile the elder daughter, Constance, is close to home, living a seemingly good life, married with three lovely kids.
However, she is facing the possibility of a diagnosis of breast cancer.
Twenty-five years after Dan left home, he is now in Toronto, Emmet is in Ireland but planning a trip to Aceh, and Hanna is dealing with post-natal depression by drinking.
Rosaleen brings all the children back to the family home, announcing that she will sell it and split the proceeds among the four siblings.
Recriminations and misconceptions abound over Christmas dinner, resulting in Rosaleen leaving them to it as she becomes lost walking the Green Road that brings back memories of her late husband.
The family and a group from Alcoholics Anonymous (the only sober people in Ireland on Christmas Day!), work together to find Rosaleen, and there is hope of reconciliation, but the book ends up in the air, with a further misunderstanding and Rosaleen going from pillar to post as the family members struggle to reach any resolution.
Life in Ireland continues as it always has, all angst and expectation, with little or no reward or satisfaction.
• Rachel Gurney is an avid Dunedin reader.
