By Molly Kehoe
There is a wide range of great books available at Kenny’s bookstore located in Liosban Business Park, Tuam Rd, Galway City, Co. Galway. Whether you’re looking for a cheesy rom-com or an overly-descriptive science fiction novel, Kenny’s has something for everyone. That is if there is someone who truly enjoys reading science fiction. They offer new, second-hand and rare books for great value for money.
Kenny’s online shop offers a section for books on sale for less than eight euros. It is a great deal as there are many quality books on offer. They have a wide range of classics and modern books that are surfacing in popular discourse at the moment. They have novels from Sally Rooney to F. Scott Fitzgerald that can be delivered to your doorstep for less than 8 euros as they offer free delivery to the Republic of Ireland.
They offer free delivery around Ireland and stock all the latest best sellers. They are one of Ireland’s best independent bookshops online. They have a section highlighting popular Irish Women Writers at the moment. For example, the poetry collection Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick. Victoria Kennefick grew up in Cork and lives in Kerry. Her pamphlet White Whale won the Munster Literature Centre Chapbook Competition in 2014 and the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet in 2015. She was named an Arts Council Next Generation Artist in 2016. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, PN Review, The Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. Kennefick’s poetry has been described as “Complex, challenging, and deeply felt”. Her collection of poetry focuses on women and the body. She explores topics of grief, self-worth and the loss of innocence. She subverts traditional notions of womanhood and makes the female body a place of love but also terribly dangerous. It is a fantastic collection and is an important addition to Irish poetry as a whole.
Kenny’s has a wide variety of classics available in-store and online. For example, they have an expansive collection of the Penguin Clothbound Classics. They average at around twelve euros per book which is amazing value for money. The penguin clothbound classic collection is of brilliant quality and is a valued addition to any book-lovers collection. They offer the lesser-known classics in Kenny’s. The collection of classics they offer is unlike any I’ve seen. They offer well over sixty clothbound classics for example and it’s not just the typically known classics.
Another brilliant Irish women writer Kenny’s stocks is Louise Nealon. They’ve many novels signed by the author. In particular, Snowflake which debuted in 2021, eighteen-year-old Debbie lives on a dairy farm in Kildare with her mother and her uncle Billy who lives in a caravan in the garden. The stock in Kenny’s comes signed by Nealon with an exclusive bonus content – a short story, ‘The Possibility of Snow’. Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. This world is Debbie’s normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety. A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you’ve taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who’s taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.
Nealon is unable to escape comparisons with Sally Rooney, even though this book is in an entirely different register from Rooney’s work. While Rooney is interested in philosophical questions about our place in the world and how relationships work, Nealon’s work is much grittier and down-to-earth. I think the similarities between the pair of authors are slightly unfair. Though Nealon’s novel begins with Debbie going to university, this story is rooted in the world of a rural dairy farm. The world of Dublin and Trinity College is secondary to the beating heart of the novel, which is Debbie’s family. Debbie’s family is loving but struggles to function and find their way in the real world. This book has been described as “an indictment of the struggling mental health systems and of clueless therapists, as characters try to seek help and meet bureaucratic walls”.
Kenny’s has a wide variety of books available and is well worth a visit if you’re exploring Galway. From cheap deals to fancy clothbound classics, they have it all!
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