Eight Irish novels about the rise and fall of Big Houses

Louise Hegarty’s work has appeared in Banshee, the Tangerine, the Stinging Fly, and the Dublin Review, and has been featured on BBC Radio 4’s Short Works. She was the inaugural winner of the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Ireland Short Story Prize. Her short story “Getting the Electric” has been optioned by Fíbín Media. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

Hegarty's debut novel is Fair Play.

[The Page 69 Test: Fair Play; Q&A with Louise Hegarty]

At Electric Lit Hegarty tagged eight Irish novels about the rise and fall of Big Houses—a specifically Irish term meaning a rural country mansion. One title on the list:

Snow by John Banville

Detective Inspector St John Strafford is called out to investigate a murder at Ballyglass House, County Wexford, where the local Catholic priest has been found brutally murdered. The crime causes, or exacerbates, a divide between the Protestant occupants of the Big House and the wider Catholic community. As St John Strafford, himself a Protestant, digs deeper into the case, he uncovers layers of family secrets, political intrigue, and religious tensions, all set against the backdrop of the divided local community.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Snow is among Denzil Meyrick's five top Christmas crime novels.

--Marshal Zeringue