Reading Matters

A visit to a very literary pub: the Palace Bar, Dublin, Ireland

It's no secret that I like a good pub -- and a good pint. If the pub has a literary connection, well, I'm in a kind of heaven.

Which leads me onto telling you about the Palace Bar, in Dublin, Ireland.

The Victorian-era pub, which was established in 1823, is pretty much untouched. When you step out of the hustle and bustle of what is the Temple Bar area and into the pub's confines it's a bit like stepping back in time. There's a lovely mahogany bar stretching the length of the front room, with a cute little snug at the front, and high arched mirrors along the wall. There's lots of stained glass detailing and frosted lights.

But it is the back room that really makes this pub so special. It is rectangular shaped, with tables and seats arranged around the walls. Look up, and you see the most wonderful glass skylight, through which sunshine pours down, giving the room a very special warm glow. (Or maybe that's the Guinness!)

When you get yourself a drink and take a seat, it's very difficult to leave. The place has a lovely ambiance -- and it practically thrums with history.

Anyone who is anyone in terms of Dublin literati has imbibed here. I'm talking Flann O'Brien, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh -- and loads more.

But what I really like about the history of this pub is its journalistic connections. According to the pamphlet that you can pick up in the bar, the pub was the "social home of the Fourth Estate" during the 1940s and 1950s. Newsmen, correspondents and compositors of Dublin's three daily papers used to drink here, and many an editorial meeting was held under the patronage of Robert Maire (Bertie) Smyllie, the editor of the Irish Times.

I actually like the sound of "Bertie" Smyllie. He apparently did a lot to champion literary writers and made space for them in the pages of his newspaper. He even set up a books section despite the fact that newsprint was rationed during the war.

If you fancy visiting the pub for yourself, it's at 21 Fleet Street, Dublin 2. Tel: (+353) 1 671 7388. Or visit the official website.

'Half A Life' by Darin Strauss

Non-fiction - hardcover; Beautiful Books; 208 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

As teenagers we all do things that are embarrassing, irresponsible and occasionally reckless. But spare a thought for American writer Darin Strauss, whose life was changed abruptly when he was just 18 and a month away from high-school graduation.

His book, Half A Life, recounts what it has been like to spend more than 20 years atoning for a tragic incident, summed up succinctly in the opening line of the memoir:

Half my life ago, I killed a girl.

It was May 1988, and Strauss was driving his father's car. A cyclist, on the road ahead of him, swerved across two lanes of traffic and collided with his vehicle, which was travelling at forty miles an hour.

Celine Zilke, the girl on the bike, was sixteen and will always be sixteen. And I knew her: Celine went to my school. She was an eleventh-grader. I see her playing field hockey in blue gym shorts -- Celine had been that lively, athletic type one always imagines in shorts. Or I see her settled in beside friends on the concrete benches just outside the cafeteria, or dashing off notes in the public-speaking class we took together.

The book examines Strauss's life -- from the accident to Celine's funeral and the resultant civil law case brought against him by Celine's parents -- in painstaking detail. It is unflinching in its honesty, often uncomfortably so.

And while he claims that his "moral and aesthetic codes argued against my writing an accident memoir", that is essentially what Half A Life is about. It is Strauss's way of dealing with the past, examining his guilt and taking responsibility for his actions.

While Strauss was found innocent of any wrong-doing right from the beginning, that doesn't stop his fellow students from shunning him at school. And it doesn't stop him from acting out the emotions and behaviour that he feels is expected of him. Sadly, his remorse plagues him right through his twenties and into his thirties. It is only when he gets married and becomes a parent that he is able to put things in perspective.

The book is told in quite a straightforward, occasionally punchy prose style and can be easily read in one or two sittings. It never feels like he is "creating an entertainment out of misfortune" (as he puts it), but I did find the woe-is-me attitude, while completely understandable, slightly tiresome.

Ultimately, this is a very sad book about what it is to be human, coming to terms with past actions, however tragic and painful they might be.

Half A Life won the 2010 National Book Circle Critics Award for Autobiography.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Still Life With Books

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Violet from Still Life With Books, who lives on the coast, near Perth, in Western Australia.

Violet says she has always been passionate about books and reading, and is interested in books as objects and cultural artefacts in their own right. "I'm also interested in book design, and am a sucker for a great cover," she says.

Violet has professional qualifications in the counselling field, but at present she is working on some web design projects. She's also a volunteer adult literacy tutor and enjoys helping other people discover the magic of reading and writing.

Without further ado, here's Violet's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favourite book: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I first read Rosemary Edmonds' translation of Anna Karenina in my teens, and although I have tried the other translations, I still prefer Edmonds' lyrical transposition.

I love Anna Karenina because it is such a perfect and complete novel. I never tire of reading it and always seem to approach the narrative from a different perspective.

As a teenager I was swept away by Anna's passion to live, rather than merely to exist. Then I became more interested in Kitty and Levin's courtship and marriage, and in recent years I have focused more on Levin's spiritual crisis. I find that as I grow older the book seems to grow with me.

I love the fact that so many people have read and adored this one book, and our reading of it links us all together in some small way.

 

A book that changed my world: Writing and Difference by Jacques Derrida

As an English Lit. major I was force-fed a steady diet of literary theory, which was not my favourite thing. It wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't been expected to gallop through the works of so many theorists. I'm not sure why Derrida's ideas jumped out and grabbed me, but discovering him really was like a ray of light shining through the clouds. Suddenly, a whole lot of things fell into place, not just in my studies, although I did discover a new way to read texts, but also in my way of thinking and being in the world.

I discovered Derrida around the time I began practising Zen Buddhism, and his ideas and Buddhist philosophy seemed a neat fit, somehow. Derrida was such a prolific writer that I don't think I will ever read all of his books, but Writing and Difference has a special place in my heart.

 

A book that deserves a wider audience: A Rage to Live by Mary S. Lovell

This is a dual biography of Richard and Isabel Burton, and is beautifully written and well-researched.

Richard Burton was one of the most famous, and infamous, men of the Victorian era. He was a soldier, an explorer, a writer, a translator, an ethnologist, a spy and a diplomat. He was fluent in thirty languages, and such an intrepid adventurer that he once continued to fight off attackers with a spear piercing his face, from cheek to cheek. He bore the terrible scars of that particular incident for the rest of his life.

Isabel fell passionately in love with him and waited faithfully for many years until they were able to marry. Burton was something of an iconoclast and the British government didn't quite know what to do with him, so he was given diplomatic postings in far-off places, which suited them both.

I expect this book received a great deal of attention when it was published, in 1998, but it is so wonderful that I hope more readers will give it a try.

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Thanks, Violet, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Violet's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've not read any of them, but I'm partial to the Burtons' biography, having once watched a film about Burton's attempt to find the source of the Nile accompanied by John Hanning Speke. He sounds like a very intriguing man...

'Hotel Iris' by Yoko Ogawa

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 164 pages; 2011. Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

When it comes to Japanese fiction the number of authors I have read could be counted on just one hand. I know my sample is not statistically significant, but I've found Japanese fiction hugely enjoyable. I have particularly appreciated the simple but elegant prose style and the sometimes dark and eerie subject matter. I'm not sure if that's a distinctively Japanese trademark, but it seems like every Japanese novel I've read has married the beautiful with the terrifying.

Enter Yoko Ogawa's latest novel Hotel Iris. This slim book is both strange and lovely. I ate it up on a lovely sunny afternoon, sitting by a pond in Richmond Park. The pleasant and pretty location in which I read it was such a contrast to the occasionally ugly content of the novel. 

In the story we meet 17-year-old Mari, who is under the thumb of her overbearing mother. Together they run a hotel on the Japanese coast, although Mari mainly works the front desk and runs errands.

Late one evening there's a scene in the hotel. A screaming woman is thrown out of Room 202 and lies on the floor hurling abuse at a man who is still inside the room.

Her insults stopped for a moment, but then a pillow flew out of the room, hitting her square in the face, and the screaming started all over again. The pillow lay on the landing, smeared with lipstick. Roused by the noise, a few guests had now gathered in the hall in their pajamas. My mother appeared from our apartment in the back.

"You pervert! Creep! You're not fit for a cat in heat." The prostitute's voice, ragged and hoarse with tears, dissolved into coughs and sobs as one object after another came flying out of the room: a hanger, a crumpled bra, the missing high heel, a handbag.

Both the woman, and her male companion, are ejected from the hotel. But a few days later, when Mari spies the man buying toothpaste at a housewares shop, she inexplicably decides to follow him. He knows he is being followed and confronts her. Then, in a weird twist, the pair strike up an unlikely friendship. It's unlikely, because the man is 50 years her senior and he's not exactly normal. Not only is he prone to unexpected rages, he has a few sexual quirks that seem almost psychopathic.

But it's that very danger which attracts Mari. She's so young, inexperienced and naive, she seems blissfully unaware of the jeopardy awaiting her. As the relationship becomes more and more dependent, and Mari enters a darker and more twisted world, you wish her mother, usually so controlling, would step in and sort things out. But her mother seems blind to Mari's cover -- that her time spent with the man is spent caring for an elderly woman.

And yet, despite the illicit and sexually deviant nature of their affair, there's something almost tender and touching about it too. That Ogawa manages to convey that without going into extravagant detail is an achievement in itself.

Ogawa is very good at scene setting, too, conveying the noise, clamour and heat of a Japanese seaside resort in just a few short sentences.

The tide was out, and the seawall was half exposed, a jagged edge against the calm surface of the sea. Some children had scrambled up to the highest point and were jumping into the water one after the other. White spray billowed up each time one of them hit the surface, but I was too far away to hear the splash. The shorebirds, as if imitating the children, plunged into the sea in search of fish.

But what I like most about Hotel Iris is the restrained style of the narrative. Everything is held perfectly in check. And yet it brims with tension. Will Mari be okay? Will her boyfriend turn out to be the next Ted Bundy?

This is the kind of novel that left me with a strange after taste, but it's also one that makes me want to explore more of this fascinating author's work.

Book giveaway: win a signed copy of Joseph O'Connor's 'Ghost Light'

To cap off my unofficial Joseph O'Connor week, I thought I'd give one lucky reader a chance to win a signed copy of Joseph's latest novel, Ghost Light.

If you don't know what the book is about, do check out my review, published last year, or check out Joseph O'Connor's official website.

Please note that it is the paperback version, which has been branded with Dublin's One City One Book logo, meaning you won't find one of these outside of Ireland!

To be in with a chance of winning this book simply leave a comment below by 12-noon GMT on Friday April 29. I'll then choose the winner using an online random number generator (or some such).

The competition is open to anyone, regardless of where you live, but you can only enter once. Good luck.

Joseph O'Connor interview, part 2: Irish literature and writing

Dublin-born Joseph O'Connor is an award-winning writer with seven novels to his name. I recently met him in Ireland to talk about his literary influences (see this week's Triple Choice Tuesday) and newest novel Ghost Light (see yesterday's interview, part 1). 

In the second and final part of the interview, we talk about new Irish writers, why Ireland has produced so many great writers, and how having a room of one's own is vital for the creative process...

Reading Matters: Are there any young up and coming Irish writers we should be aware of?

Joseph O'Connor: Yea, there are loads. I have a new book out that I edited for Faber called New Irish Short Stories. For many years those books were published by Faber, I suppose, every four or five years – Faber has had a great historic commitment to the Irish short story – and they were edited by David Marcus, who was great. He died a few years ago, and Faber asked me to take over that role.

So the criteria is that the stories have to be new, and previously unpublished, so this book contains work from William Trevor, Roddy Doyle, Colm Toibin, and other great established masters of the form, but also has new people like Kevin Barry – his contribution is a top story, absolutely wonderful.

The most remarkable thing about the process, for me, is that this is a small country, people find out you’re editing a book, they start sending you their stuff. Four people who were new sent me stories that I just couldn’t leave out.

The standard is so high among newer Irish writers. There’s a young woman in the book called Elaine Walsh. She works as a lawyer here in Dublin and this is her first ever published work of fiction and the stories are arranged in alphabetical order by author, so she’s next to William Trevor, which is kind of nice. There was just some quality about her story that I just had to put it in.

Another young woman called Órfhlaith Foyle, who has previously been published in magazines and things, has also contributed a stunning piece of work.

I think the younger Irish writers now – you know I’ve just finished teaching writing at University College Dublin – are so much better than when I was at college, they’re so well read, so hard working, and they realise, I suppose, that that whole thing that happened in London publishing in the early 1990s when Ireland was trendy has gone now. It’s not enough now for you to be Irish and have a novel that’s quite good and a book of short stories in which half are okay. Nobody’s going to take that risk on you anymore. Just to get into the starting gate, you have to be excellent.

RM: Do you have any theories about why Ireland, despite its small population, has so many brilliant writers?

It is a remarkable thing for such a small country. My only explanation for it is that certainly when I was a kid, writers were the only people from Ireland – apart from George Best the soccer player – who ever achieved anything.

To grow up in Ireland in the 1970s and the early 80s, to be a kid here, well, it was a rainy, rather frightened place, in which 100,000 people emigrated every 10 years, and we all knew that the official aims of the country were a farce. The country was not independent. It was deeply, deeply linked to England, and all the hypocrisy of that, pretending England was the old enemy and yet several million of us are there earning our living.

And people didn’t speak the Irish language the way we all thought they once would, and Catholicism was failing and there were already stirrings of scandal in the Church. And more than that, I suppose you had a sense that the place was a bit of a failure and if someone bothered their arse to put a bench in the local park it would be vandalised and then the rain would rot it and no one would ever fix it, and that’s what it was like to be from Ireland.

But somehow we’re the country of Yeats and Oscar Wilde and Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney, and that these people had opened up the territory where Irish people could succeed. And that the great generation of Irish writers 100 years ago, who still thought in the codes of Gaelic, had done remarkable things with the language. They had taken the conqueror's language, if you like, and it was the ultimate revenge: they decided to speak it and write it better than the English did. It's a bit like the West Indies and Pakistan and Australia deciding they would be better at cricket; we decided we’d be better at literature.

Anne Enright always says in other countries smart people went off and made millions, opening factories or banks, but in Ireland they wrote books – perhaps that’s a pity, but I think there’s something to it. There’s a notion in Ireland, and there still is, that to want to have a life in the arts is a good thing to do, it’s not a waste of your time. And I know having spoken to English colleagues who write and people from other countries, they often have a story the day they went home and told mum and dad "I’m dropping out of college to become a novelist" and the smelling salts had to be ordered and the vicar had to come around because it was such a shock. But in Ireland I think most families would be proud of that [wanting to be a novelist]. They would think that’s a good way to spend your time.

So I think it’s a mixture of those factors, and then success breeding success. And success breeding a kind of iconoclasm.

I remember when I started writing, one of the reasons I wrote was that there was a certain Irish writer older than me whose work I didn’t like and I wanted to bloody show them. So whenever I hear a younger Irish writer saying about me that I’m a load of old crap I’m sort of pleased because ––

RM: -– you think it will encourage them?

JO: Absolutely! Sometimes having a windmill to tilt at is a good thing. But I don’t know… it’s still an unusual thing [about why Ireland has produced so many writers].

RM: My pet theory is that the weather is so terrible…

JO: Oh yes, the weather. We all stay at home.

RM: Or go to the pub, and the pubs are so fantastic, so you’re stuck in a pub and it's raining and you’re having a pint or whatever, and the creative juices get going...

JO: Well it’s a long time now since I’ve been in a pub, I can tell ya. It’s a very long time. [Laughs]. I think that’s a strange thing, actually. You know visitors often have an image of Irish writers like Brendan Behan, making for home with a bottle of whiskey at 2 in the morning, getting out the typewriter, stick the cigarette in your mouth and away you go… But, in fact, younger Irish writers are so serious they live on tofu and mineral water, they do pilates, rather distressingly. Ha!

RM: They’re a bit more professional?

JO: Yea, they’re quite professional. And, to be fair, our governments, which have made a complete mess of almost everything over the years, have, accidentally, done a number of intelligent things to foster the arts and they try to help you here. There are tax breaks and all of that which exist to help younger Irish writers. They’ve been reformed now and the amount of money they allow you to earn has been decreased.

RM: Is that because of U2 earning so much money?

JO: I certainly think the tax situation that was introduced in the 1970s, where you paid income tax on known creative earnings, it wasn’t envisaged that Irish people would ever make millions out of the arts. Nobody did really, it was a kind of gesture, more than anything else. I suspect the dole did more to support Irish artists than the tax exemption laws ever did. But yes, in recent years, probably rightly it’s been modified. But it still makes a difference.

And we have an Arts Council here, which is small and hardworking, and we’ve had a succession of government ministers of all parties who have had an affection for the arts, which really helps. And I think they realise that at some level it’s part of people’s interest in the country.

It’s hard to quantify but I find, having travelled a lot this year, for example, to promote Ghost Light in different countries, that the Ireland people talk to me about in other countries is not this sordid dungeon of dodgy priests and bankers and politicians. Usually the first five minutes of meeting someone, they will say something about Seamus Heaney or the Chieftains or Riverdance or Colm Toibin or Colin Farell – usually they will mention an artist to me. And I think our governments realise that and try to foster it.

RM: Well, Dublin as UNESCO City of Literature must help build on that. I couldn’t think of a better, more appropriate, city to promote literature.

JO: Were you here for that event?

RM: Yes, I went to DublinSwell.

JO: I thought that was an extraordinary night. It was a huge venue, there wasn’t a spare seat. I know the people who organised that event and they were surrounded by a lot of people saying it's too big, it's 2,000 people, it’s St Patrick's weekend when people are away and you’re going to sell 200 tickets, it’ll never be full! And on the night it was so full the event was almost half an hour late starting, there were still people trying to get in. There was a standing ovation at the end. Personally, that was about as much live literature as I would be capable of enduring, but it’s a remarkable thing. I don’t think there’s another capital city in Europe where an event like that could have happened.

It was the first night I ever met Seamus Heaney and how fantastic is that, you get to spend Friday night on the same stage as the winner of the Nobel Prize? I can’t believe my life!

It was a lovely night… I think it’s to do with the kind of crap we’re going through in Ireland at the moment, that sense of unease and trauma, and the false fantasies that existed during the Celtic Tiger years that some of us fell for, and now we’re at this cross roads wondering what we can take from the past. Is any of this stuff from the past any use to us? And I think that night, and my little night at the Abbey Theatre on Sunday [The Music of Ghost Light: Joseph O'Connor and Friends], we tried to say, well, "look there’s this thing that we do that we’re excellent at, we’re not just quite good, sometimes we win". And I think that people are just really responding to that.

RM: Are you working on anything at the moment?

JO: I’m working on a collection of short stories, which was originally for this autumn, but I’ve moved it to early next year, because Ghost Light is coming out in a lot of countries in translation, so I’m doing a lot of travelling for that. I write a column each week, do radio, so I’m always writing in a way.

RM: Can I talk about the writing process. When you write, do you have a special room? Do you work certain hours?

JO. I have an office at the end of the garden and you can’t see if from the house. I think my children have been in it maybe twice, my wife has never been inside. It’s very good for family reasons, for everybody to have their room.

Before I was a father I wrote when I felt like it. I’d stay up all night, and I often did, but you realise after you become a parent that you better not do that. So, at the start of every novel, at the start of Ghost Light, I was very good. I kept office hours, I went to the gym, never smoked, and took a few hours off for lunch. But by the end it obsesses you, you’re not even really sleeping any more, you lie there with your eyes closed flickering through what you wrote that day. It's very intense. I wish it weren’t. I wish there were an easier way to do it, but there doesn’t seem to be.

People have there little rituals too. Anne Enright told me once that she always washes her hands before writing.

RM: So, do you have little rituals?

JO: No, I just sit down at my desk and cut open my veins, you know, and then I wait for the words to flow out. [Laughs] It’s much more messy with me.

I'd like to thank Joseph O'Connor for graciously giving his time to talk with me, and to Lisa Gooding at Random House for helping to arrange the interview.

To be in with a chance of winning a signed copy of Joseph's latest novel, Ghost Light, do return to the blog tomorrow and enter my competition.

Joseph O'Connor interview, part 1: 'Ghost Light' & Molly Allgood

The week that I meet Irish writer Joseph O'Connor he is riding on a high.

His latest novel Ghost Light has been selected for the One City One Book initiative, in which everyone in Dublin is encouraged to read the same book during the month of April. That means Dublin is adorned with giant posters and billboards of the book's cover; the books are on display in shops across the city; and there's an extensive programme of events celebrating the novel.

His week kicks off with a major event, The Music of Ghost Light: An evening with Joseph O'Connor and friends, at the Abbey Theatre, which proves a resounding success -- and allows Joseph to share the stage with his sister, Sinead O'Connor, and a host of other supremely talented singers and musicians, including Camille O’Sullivan, Eimear Quinn, Ciara Sidine and a special guest appearance by Glen Hansard.

His book is then shortlisted for two key awards -- the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Award -- and tops the Irish bestseller list.

And just when you think things couldn't get any better he is elected to Aosdána, an affiliation of Irish artists limited to 250 members of which Sebastian Barry, Jennifer Johnston and Seamus Heaney also belong. The organisation, established by the Arts Council in 1981, is designed to honour artists, including writers, painters and architects, whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland. It's an impressive achievement.

"I’ve had a lovely week, really," Joseph tells me in typically understated style. "But being Irish and originally Catholic, I’m sure something awful will happen to me next week," he laughs.

I meet Joseph in Dalkey, South Dublin, and over coffee in the Killiney Castle hotel we talk about Ghost Light, which is a fictionalised account of the real life love affair between Irish Catholic actress Maire O'Neill (1885-1952), who performed under the stage name Molly Allgood, and the Protestant playwright John Millington Synge (1871-1909). Their relationship was frowned upon by pretty much everyone, including their families and Synge's great friend William Butler Yeats.

Reading Matters: Are you surprised at how Ghost Light has gained a life of its own? It seems to be everywhere, particularly here in Dublin. It’s almost like those characters have come alive, have stepped out of the book and are running with it.

Joseph O'Connor: Well, it’s been a lovely thrill, what’s happened to the book here in Ireland. I mean, you spend two years writing a book, and even though Ghost Light is my seventh novel, you’re still not sure anybody's going to read it. At some level, it’s still something you sat in your room at home and made up. Your book comes out and you’re not sure your granny’s going to read it. You just have to hope that a book will find an audience and find a life and that people will be touched by it. If that happens, it’s kind of alchemy when it does. And if it happens it’s a lovely thing.

RM: One of the things I’ve found – and I’ve seen you read it a few times – is that you very much concentrate on the romance between these two characters, Molly Allgood and JM Synge, but when I read it the thing that stood out for me was the humour. I laughed my socks off in places.

JO: That’s good, that’s good. Because you know I always try to use humour in a way that adds texture to a book. Particularly if a book is going to cover dark territory, you need to make the story-telling strategy as rich and as involving as you can. It’s a fact that we all recognise from our own lives, that people are capable of humour as a kind of consolation even when things are going very badly. I think it’s part of Molly's personality, so it isn’t something grafted onto the book.

My sense of her as a character is she’s full of life, spark and charm, and one of the ways she deals with herself and her predicament is to laugh at it. She thinks she’s slightly ridiculous and at other moments she thinks she’s very glam. And she still has, even as an old woman, a big dollop of frivolity that she had as a teenager, and that made her a very attractive character to write about.

I had such joy writing this book. I really really did. I mean, after my last two books, which are big door-stoppers and about very dark subject matter, I just loved being in Molly’s company for the two years I was writing this book.

RM: But she’s still in your company now, isn’t she?

JO: She’s never going to let me go, yea. [Laughs]

RM: And there’s no going back...

JO: Yes, she’s going to be like a bunny boiler if I ever try to get rid of her. But I just loved her, you know. And as a young woman I thought she was so fantastic – and I loved her spirit and fieriness, and then, as an elderly woman, I had such an affection and a respect for her that it made the book a joy to write. That was a nice thing, because the last two books, that I'm very proud of, were hard work to write. Redemption Falls was really demanding project, so to write this book – once I’d cracked it, which took some effort – I had long moments of joy.

RM: The thing that I found was, it’s not very often you get to read books written in the second person. And I read a lot.

JO: I know you do!

RM: And I found it a challenging read. I like challenging reads, so I wondered how you think it will work as the novel for One City One Book. Will it be too challenging for readers?

JO: I think it will work fine. I think Irish readers in particular have an openness to literary fiction. Although I’ve been quite surprised at the reaction in America, where it came out in February. The reviews have been very warm there, and while it’s not, you know, a big bestseller, it’s selling very steadily. And I was very, very touched as I went around book tours for two weeks to see readers who are not critics all say, you know, "the first ten pages, it’s a bit of an effort, but once you crack that, you understand now what Molly is doing".

And what Molly is doing is actually very simple, which is what we all do every day – which is kind of talking to herself, she gossips to the teapots as she says at one point, and she has sort of fantasies and self-delusions and she engages in denial about her predicament, but I sometimes think denial is a rather heroic thing. I think very few of us would get out of bed in the morning if it wasn't for our ability to indulge in denial.

And also, she’s an actor, she has spent her life being somebody else, so she has an ability to sometimes look at the world from inside her own head and sometimes to look at herself like a character, so she talks to herself, as a lot of people do. My father talks to himself as he walks around the house, my wife Anne Marie, I hear her having entire conversations with herself, no doubt more interesting than the ones she has with me. [Laughs.] So that’s all it is.

So once you crack that, the book becomes a relatively straightforward read, I think, compared to Redemption Falls certainly.

I also try to be true in the structure of the book as to how memory works. We don’t remember chronologically, we remember in pictures or bits of songs. Molly’s head is full of old junk, like the junk shop where she was born. It’s full of old furniture, and bits of song, and boys she once knew and something Yeats once said to her. It’s like a pack of playing cards, all thrown into the air by that hurricane at the beginning and she picks them up and tries to put them together and sometimes they make little stories and sometimes the reader is given these raw materials and the reader puts the story together.

RM. Is she really buried in Brompton Cemetery, as you state in the book?

JO: She is. I have a photograph of her grave. It’s rather untended, I’m sorry to say. She’s buried in that rather fashionable part of London and I think she’d be quite happy that she ended up there.

But I think the thing that Molly would hate about her grave is this. She always had this rather typical relationship with her sister, where they were very close but there were little resentments and envies. All the way through her life Molly was sort of dogged by this sister who went off to Hollywood and knew Gregory Peck, and the wording on Molly’s tombstone, remarkably, is as it is in the book – Maire O’Neill, died November 2nd 1952, sister of Sarah Allgood, died in Hollywood. [Laughs].

RM: Oh dear, that's a bit of a slap in the face.

JO: Yea, it’s like the ghost of the sister was there, the bitch! [Laughs] It was like, "Could I not have my moment, even in death, without you stealing the scene?" But they were remarkable women, the two of them, who came from a very poor part of Dublin and went a long, long way.

RM: And they’re still going thanks to Ghost Light.

JO: Well, I tell you, one of the nicest things that has happened, is that when I started researching the book if you wanted to see Molly’s portrait in the Abbey Theatre [pictured right] you had to go upstairs into the bar, out through the corridor, down the stairs, past the men’s loo, you know, near the fire escape. But Fiach MacConghail, the man who runs the Abbey, sent me an email about a month ago saying, "I think we’ll move Molly into the main hall there where Yeats is, and where Synge and Lady Gregory are". So now she’s there. And I think Molly would very much like that she was moved, you know. It’s a great delight now when I go to the Abbey to see her beautiful face looking down at me and saying "I’m where I belong"...

Tomorrow, I will post the final part of the interview in which Joseph O'Connor discusses writing and Irish literature.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Joseph O'Connor

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers, writers and readers to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles, new authors and new bloggers.

Today's guest is a very special one -- Irish writer Joseph O'Connor.

Joseph has seven novels to his name -- Cowboys and Indians (short-listed for the Whitbread Prize), Desperadoes, The Salesman, Inishowen, Star of the Sea, Redemption Falls and Ghost Light -- as well as a number of bestselling works of non-fiction. He has also written film scripts and stage-plays, including the award-winning Red Roses and Petrol. 

He broadcasts a popular weekly radio diary on RTE’s Drivetime With Mary Wilson and writes regularly for The Guardian Review and The Sunday Independent.

His latest novel, Ghost Light, which has received rave reviews and topped the Irish best-sellers list for more than 9 weeks, has been selected for Dublin's One City One Book initiative, in which everyone in the city is encouraged to read the same book during the month of April.

He was recently voted ‘Irish Writer of the Decade’ by the readers of Hot Press magazine.

I met Joseph on my last trip to Ireland, and over the world's biggest pot of coffee talked about Ghost Light, literary influences and what it's like to see giant covers of your latest novel plastered all over Dublin!

Mid-way through our chat, I asked him to nominate three books that mean a lot to him. He very graciously made his Triple Choice Tuesday selections on the spot. This is what he chose:

 

A favourite book: Dubliners by James Joyce

James Joyce’s Dubliners contains the most perfect short story ever written in the English language: The Dead. It’s about a couple of people going to a party in a house in Dublin on the 6th of January – it’s not even Christmas Night, it’s not even New Year’s Eve.

The story is a remarkable Joycean miracle, because it appears to be about nothing but you realise in the last paragraphs that it’s actually about everything. It’s about the deepest things that it is possible to write about – love and memory and desire, and how we can never really know the people we love and how we carry our ghosts, and how life is a process of adjusting and reaching a kind of agreement with the past.

And the prose is so beautiful, so memorable. I just think every single sentence in it is perfect. Joyce writes about that book that he was trying to develop a style that he called "scrupulous meanness", that he would never waste a word, that he would be absolutely scrupulous because it was about putting the words in the right order.

It’s just a wonderful involving read that you can read again and again, and it reveals new pleasures every time you do so. I love Ulysses, but Dubliners is my favourite Joyce book.

 

A book that changed my world: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger’s great book, changed my world -- and my life. I was a bookish kid and both my parents loved books, so by the time I was 16 or 17 I was a very keen reader. My first girlfriend's parents had lived in America and they were very cool and had an air of raffish Bohemianism about them, and she gave me a book that her father loved, The Catcher in the Rye. I had never read anything like it in my life.

I remember it with the same kind of joy as I remember hearing the Sex Pistols for the first time. And I can remember the moment -- I can probably date it -- when I closed the last page of The Catcher in the Rye and I thought I would like to do that -- write a book that would touch people and take them on a journey -- with my life. It changed me from being a reader to an aspiring writer.

I still read it every three or four years. It has the hallmark of every great novel, which is that it changes as you age. The first time you read it as a teenager you love the humour and the fact that Holden Caulfield is so cheeky and irreverent and so fucking smart and he’s got all the answers. And you love that opening paragraph when he talks about that "Charles Dickens crap" because all the stuff you’re reading at school is the Charles Dickens crap.

And then, when you read it when you’re a bit older and you’re a parent, you see the great grey darkness and sadness in the book and you want to put your arms around Holden and mind him, you want to step through the prose and tell him that everything’s going to be all right.

 

The book that deserves a wider audience: The Journey Home by Dermot Bolger

The Journey Home, first published in 1990, is a masterpiece. I wouldn’t be writing myself if it wasn’t for this book.

Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments came out around the same time.  Both books just opened up such doors to me, because they were the first books I came across where people were writing about an actual place called Dublin, not a stage set they’d inherited from the works of Joyce, with that funny little photogenic Dublin of gaslight and parasols. Suddenly, along come Roddy and Dermot, and they kind of blow the doors off that particular theatre, and they both, in their different ways, write not about the two great places of Irish literature, the city and the country, but instead write about where most of us live -- the suburbs.

And they’re brilliant about the unofficial goings on in this society, which of course pretends to have its fealties  to the church and conservative politics, but deep down, at grass level, other things are happening. And I think that Dermot is just the laureate at capturing that.

Poet Paul Durcan once said about Dermot that he’s Dublin's Passolini, and I really think he is. I love all of his books. He has a readership in the UK, and in Europe too, where he’s been translated. But the Journey Home was only published in the United States in 2008. It got the front cover review in the New York Times Book Review section.

He’s a really important writer, and a beautiful stylist. I love his characters, I love the honesty of his work, and his incredible creative imagination. He’s a poet, he writes for the theatre, he works as a publisher. There are very few Irish writers who Dermot has not helped at some point, he’s a wonderful man and he’s a national treasure, and I’d love his books to be known all over the world.

The Journey Home is as important as James Joyce’s Ulysses or as Joyce’s Dubliners or Roddy’s The Commitments, for what it reveals, and the permission it gave to subsequent generations of Irish writers, to write about what is actually in front of you. [He effectively said] open your eyes, wake up! The stories are actually there and all around you, like the birds. If you open the windows of the dusty old house of Irish literature and reach your hands out, the birds will come to you...

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Thanks, Joseph, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Joseph O'Connor's choices? Have you read any of these books? I'm delighted to say that I've read all three, and had only just finished The Journey Home a few days before this interview took place. Indeed, I had chosen it for my book group. I agree that it's a wonderful book, which deserves a wider audience, because while it's a challenging read it offers up a view of Dublin life not really told before, of what it's like to be cast adrift in the suburbs, going from one crappy job to another, all the while trying not to get sucked into the world of drugs and corruption.

A visit to the National Leprechaun Museum, Dublin

  

If you want evidence that the Irish are a nation of storytellers, then you need look no further than the mythology surrounding the leprechaun.

The first written documentation of the leprechaun, a solitary creature that mends shoes and stores his gold at the end of the rainbow, dates from the 8th century. And while the Irish have been writing -- and talking -- about him ever since, other nations have helped build the myth, including America which Disney-fied him in the 20th century.

Or at least that was what I was told when I visited the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin a fortnight ago.

The museum, which has only been open a year, celebrates Irish folklore. It specifically focuses on the leprechaun, but it also looks at faeries and other legends of mythology, such as Cúchulainn, a hero who defended Ulster, and the Fianna, small warriors who live in forests.

During my visit these stories were brought to life by a young, enthusiastic guide who took a small group of us -- Swedes, Germans and Australians -- on a story-telling tour lasting roughly 45 minutes. I'm sure without the guide, the museum would have been rather disappointing: it definitely needed someone to explain the ideas behind the different rooms that make up the museum, and it helped to hear some of the myths being told to us face-to-face, rather than simply picking up a leaflet and reading about them afterwards.

The museum is very much a hands-on experience. I had expected a room with exhibits in glass cases, but it's not that kind of museum. For example, there's one room filled with giant furniture -- a huge chair, a big chest of drawers -- which makes you feel like you're the size of a leprechaun.

In another room you walk through a series of brightly coloured string hanging from the ceiling, so that it feels like you are walking through a rainbow.

Once you complete the tour, you are then asked to draw a picture of a leprechaun and these are uploaded to the museum's Flickr account a little further down the line (as far as I can tell, my rather rubbish drawing hasn't gone up yet, or perhaps they threw it out because it was so terrible).

Would I go again? Probably not. It's a nice idea, but dedicating an entire museum to a mythical creature is a real challenge. The hands-on stuff is great, and I can see that it would particularly appeal to kids. I think school groups would definitely get a lot out of it. But as a middle-aged adult I wanted a bit more out of the experience...

Who says leprechauns don't exist? Here's a baby leprechaun, sans beard, spotted under street sign during the St Patrick's Day parade last month!

If you fancy visiting the National Leprechaun Museum you will find it at 1 Jervis St, Dublin 1, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Tel: (+ 353) 1 873 3899. Or visit the official website. Tickets cost €10 per adult, €8.50 per child aged over 3 years and €3 per child under 3 years. Family tickets, concessions and group discounts are available. My ticket was complimentary.

'Do No Harm' by Carol Topolski

   Fiction - paperback; Fig Tree; 336 pages; 2011. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

A couple of years ago I read Carol Topolski's Monster Love and found it one of the most disturbing novels I'd ever come across. When I discovered that Topolski had a new novel out, I was anxious to see whether she would up the ante. I think it's safe to say she has.

Do No Harm is billed as a psychological thriller, but it's not your typical page-turner. For a start it's structured in an odd way, interleaving several different story strands, told occasionally in the first person and at other times in the third person. The tenses are sometimes present and sometimes past. And yet, despite what could be described as a piecemeal, bitty approach, there's a narrative tension that builds and builds as you get closer to the climax. I read it with a sense of mounting horror, but the denouement, when it comes, is brilliant.

The story builds on our worst fears: that doctors, with whom we trust our lives, are capable of doing unimaginable things to their patients.

Dr Virginia Denham is a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology working in one of London's top hospitals. She's held in high regard by her patients (for her genuinely caring manner) and her colleagues (for her brilliant mind, surgical prowess and management skills). But Virginia is a bit of an odd ball. While her staff are used to her somewhat unkempt, mannish appearance, no one knows the secret life Virginia leads when she leaves the hospital and goes home to her empty house at night.

In this secret life, Virginia has an odd system of eating in which she stuffs herself silly for three days in a row (which she calls "trips"), then starves herself for the following four (which she calls "quads").

Choosing to eat like this put me in absolute control and I never had to depend on Mother for food. I never went hungry for attention or felt full of her bile. On trip days I stuff myself with the most desirable foods I can imagine -- way, way beyond my appetite's outer reaches. Quad days starve me into submission. During the three days of the trips, I can believe myself the most loved woman on earth. The austerity of the following four stops me wanting more.

Virginia also gets her thrills by self-harming while wearing lots of rubber. Her imaginary friend Ruby is often close by, encouraging her to do bad things.

The story is told in chunks and moves backwards and forwards in time, from 1974-79, in which we follow Virginia's adult life, and 1938-1945, when we hear of Virginia's childhood and her mother's extra-marital affair.

Interleaved into this narrative are two other stories: that of Dr Faisal Usman, one of Virginia's colleagues, who was sent to England, from Pakistan, to be educated as a child, but has never been brave enough to return to his homeland; and that of Gilda, one of Virginia's patients, who has escaped the clutches of a cult and given birth to a son she doesn't want.

This probably sounds very confusing, and I admit there were times when I wondered where the story was going. But if you hold all the elements in your head, you will be rewarded, because the ending draws all the threads together in one neat, and genuinely surprising, conclusion.

Topolski, who is a practising psychoanalytical psychotherapist, has created an amazingly complex character in Virginia, a woman who is outwardly successful and incredibly intelligent but who is deeply troubled and cruelly flawed. But be warned: female readers, particularly those who are pregnant or having difficulty conceiving, might find Virginia's exploits too traumatic to stomach...

A visit to The Exchange Bookshop, Dalkey, Dublin

At the risk of sounding like I am name dropping, I have Joseph O'Connor to thank for my visit to The Exchange Bookshop in Dalkey during last week's trip to Dublin. It wasn't that Joseph personally recommended the shop to me, but it was thanks to an interview I'd teed up with him that I got to visit Dalkey at all.

Dalkey (pronounced Dorky) is a suburb in South Dublin, and like most cities divided geographically by a river, in this case the famous Liffey, one side is regarded as more desirable to live than the other. In Dublin it is the south side for which everyone hankers. And it's easy to see why, especially in a place like Dalkey, which has a narrow, slightly kinked high street lined with heritage shop fronts, an assortment of pubs, a castle and a pretty church.

But it was The Exchange Bookshop that really stood out for me, with its distinctive green paintwork and double-frontage. I had 30 minutes to kill before meeting Joseph at Dalkey DART station, so I popped in for a browse. It was like stepping into an Aladdin's Cave. The shop is not only wide, it is very deep, and the whole back section is devoted to high-quality second-hand fiction, mostly of the literary persuasion.

The front rooms focus primarily on new fiction and non-fiction titles, and there's a section devoted solely to Irish literature, perfect for an addict like me.

The shop also sells wonderful stationery, much of it with an Irish or bookish theme, so I was delighted to buy a pack of six gift cards featuring book-lined shelves on them.

I also purchased two books: a second-hand copy of Christine Dwyer-Hickey's The Dancer, the first volume in her Dublin trilogy; and a new copy of Anthony Cronin's 1964 comic novel The Life of Riley, which has just been republished by New Island.

Having spent most of my 9 days in Dublin trawling all kinds of bookshops for treasure, I have to say that this shop was by far the best of a very good bunch. It's worth the short trip out of Dublin City to visit -- and the Idle Wilde cafe around the corner does a terrific lunch if you're in need of refreshment.

If you fancy visiting The Exchange Bookshop you will find it at 34 Castle Street, Dalkey, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Tel: (+ 353) 1 285 3805. It has an official website, but note that there is no facility for buying books online.

'The Newspaper of Claremont Street' by Elizabeth Jolley

Fiction - paperback; Fremantle Press; 176 pages; 2008.

In the delightful black comedy Mr Scobie's Riddle, which I read last year, Elizabeth Jolley had much to say about the lack of respect society has for those we brand "old folk". In The Newspaper of Claremont Street, first published in 1981, she has a lot to say about the way in which we tend to view the working class.

Despite its title, the story is not about a newspaper but tells the tale of an old cleaning woman who is nicknamed 'Weekly' or 'The Newspaper'. This is because she works in so many different houses that she picks up gossip and is able to pass it on just like a tabloid newspaper.

Though she knew of accidents and weddings, births and deaths and told the news from one house to another, she never spoke of things that really mattered. About these things Weekly held her tongue. [...] Weekly knew which wives didn't want their husbands to come home for lunch; she heard sons snarling at their mothers and ungrateful daughters banging bedroom doors. She heard the insincere voices and laughter in telephone conversations and she wondered how friends could be so treacherous to one another, so watchful over the successes and failures of each other's children.

Along with her discrete nature, Weekly is a hard worker. Even before she's left her room in a local boarding house, she's scrubbed and cleaned and made everything spic and span. She then spends the rest of the day, and often the evening, cleaning the homes of the doctors, lawyers, architects and millionaires who live on Claremont Street.

Her strong work ethic is only matched by her ability to save her pennies. Indeed, Weekly is motivated to keep working -- despite the agonising hours, the exhaustion and her aching bones -- by the promise of creating an "exquisite cone-shaped mountain made entirely of money, with a silver scree of coins on its steep sides". She plans on using this money to buy a second-hand car and then, a little later, a property of her own in the country.

Of course, the story wouldn't work without some narrative tension, and this arrives in the form of a Russian widow, who Weekly "adopts" and memories of an older brother with whom she had a troubled relationship.

Told in simple, elegant prose, The Newspaper of Claremont Street, feels like an easy-to-read fable with a comic touch. But underneath the spareness lies a macabre streak. Weekly might be hard-working and slightly eccentric, but she cannot be taken at face value...

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2011 shortlist announced

Ten novels have been named on this year's International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award announced in Dublin, Ireland, yesterday.

The annual prize is nominated by public libraries around the world. This year the shortlist is dominated by North American, Australian and Irish writers. With my penchant for Australian and Irish fiction, this means I've read a few from the list already.

The shortlist is as follows -- note that hyperlinks will take you to my reviews:

• Galore by Michael Crummey (Canadian)

• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (American)

• The Vagrants by Yiyn Li (Chinese / American)

• Ransom by David Malouf (Australian)

• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Irish)

• Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates (American)

• Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (Australian)

• Brooklyn by Colm Toibín (Irish)

• Love and Summer by William Trevor (Irish)

• After the Fire, a Still, Small Voice by Evie Wyld (Australian)

The winner of the €100,000 prize will be announced on Wednesday June 15.

You can find out more via the official International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award website.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Senior Common Room

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Anne from the blog Senior Common Room.

Anne lives in Birmingham, in the UK, and for most of her life has been involved in education in one form or another, although she did do a three year stint as a drama student before teaching 7-11 year olds and then moving into the university sector.

She took early retirement on health grounds five years ago and says that writing a blog is a wonderful way of keeping in touch with people when she's not well enough to get out and about in other ways.

Without further ado, here's Anne's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favourite book: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the most remarkable book I've ever read. As I expect most of you will know, it is about three young adults looking back over their lives and coming to realise that they have been created specifically to service the needs of others in a particularly nasty way. What is so brilliant about this book for me is the way in which Ishiguro manages to make it seem as though we shouldn't be questioning the ethics of what has been done to these people, while at the same time using empathy to insist that we do. The situation he describes (and I'm trying very hard not to give too much away in case anyone hasn't read it) is so horrific that I could never read the book again, but nevertheless it is the most extraordinary feat of narrative control I have ever come across.

 

A book that changed my world: Upper Fourth at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton

I suppose it could have been any book in the series, but Upper Fourth at Malory Towers just happened to be the first one I read. I was brought up in one of Birmingham's red light districts and my first job offer came from the local pimp. However, while I was reasonably flattered, I did turn him down because although most of my contemporaries left school at fifteen Blyton had taught me that a girl could do more with her life, she could go to university, she could have a profession, she could have a voice. The fact that I didn't go to a posh boarding school or have a name like Darrell or Alicia or Felicity didn't actually register. I knew what was possible and I was going to do it. I credit Blyton with my PhD.

 

A book that deserves a wider audience: Earth and Heaven by Sue Gee

This was the one that gave me the most trouble, but in the end I've picked Sue Gee's Earth and Heaven as representative of a writer I think deserves a wider audience. This book is about a Slade-trained painter, Walter Cox, and his family in the aftermath of the First World War. It delineates the struggle of Cox and his friends as they attempt to create a world of beauty, one that never again will tear itself apart and damage its young in such an appalling manner. The reader's anguish, knowing that such attempts are doomed to failure, makes this a very moving novel indeed. Gee is particularly skillful in her use of language to describe the natural world and I'm really looking forward to her new book, Last Fling, which is due out in May.

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Thanks, Anne, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Anne's choices? Have you read any of these books? I read Never Let Me Go in 2005 and found it a frustrating read, probably because I thought it asked more questions than it answered. But I saw the film earlier in the year and found it quite a heart-rending story, much more so than the novel. I'm almost tempted to read the book again to see if it might have improved with age. As for Malory Towers, I've pretty much read all the Enid Blyton stuff -- Famous Five, Secret Seven, Magic Faraway Tree et al -- but never experienced this series. I'm not sure why. And Earth and Heaven has promptly gone onto the wish list -- I do like a good Great War novel.

Artefacts that tell the story of your life

Today I visited the James Joyce Museum in Sandycove, about eight miles south of Dublin city centre. I will write more about the museum, which is housed in a Martello tower on the coast, at a later date. But one of the exhibits got me thinking...

On the first floor of the tower there was a host of James Joyce's personal belongings on display. They included a rather large cabin trunk that accompanied him on his European travels, a hunting waistcoat embroidered with foxhounds by his grandmother, a guitar he is believed to have played in Zurich circa 1916 and a brown leather cigar case.

What a random collection of objects, I thought. And what do they tell us about the man? That he travelled, hunted, strummed and smoked? Is this what he would have wanted us to see?

The poor chap never had a say, which makes me wonder what he might have chosen if he knew his belongings were to be showcased in this manner.

So, imagine this: a museum is to be set up in your name after you've departed to the big bookshop-cum-library in the sky. What four objects from your current life would you like to be saved for posterity and put on public display? And why?

A film adaptation I'm looking forward to seeing: 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'

 

I didn't compose a list of favourite reads in 2006, but if I did a retrospective one I would definitely include Lisa See's best-selling novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

This gorgeous story, set in 19th century China, follows the lifelong friendship of two girls who have their feet bound and communicate using a secret language.

I'm delighted to see it has been adapted into a movie by the Chinese American director Wayne Wang. The movie is due for release in the USA this coming July. I suspect that means we won't see it in the UK until Christmas. But judging by the trailer above, it looks like it will be a film worth waiting for...

You can find out more via the official website.

A visit to the John McGahern Library, Co. Leitrim, Ireland

In this beautiful building, by the shores of Lough Rynn in County Leitrim, lies a truly beautiful room that pays tribute to my favourite writer, the late John McGahern.

The John McGahern Library was opened by the then Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in November 2006 in the presence of McGahern's widow, Madeline. I wrote about it in 2007 and vowed that one day I would visit it for myself. Fast forward almost four years and I was fortunate enough to fulfill my dream last month.

The library is a small but sumptuous room on the ground floor of Lough Rynn Castle Hotel. The colour scheme is mix of deep ruby reds and golds, complimented by mahogany timber furniture and glass-fronted book shelves.

It is warm and welcoming, and on the two days we stayed at the hotel glorious sunshine poured in through the deep-set windows, filling it with a golden light.

The shelves are lined with a wide variety of hard cover books, mainly Irish novels and biographies. There is supposedly a selection of rare first edition volumes among them, but I was too scared to touch anything lest I caused damage -- and, anyway, many of the titles were behind glass.

Of course, a library dedicated to John McGahern has to include copies of his books, and a collection of first editions can be seen in a glass display case over which a framed portrait of the great man hangs on the wall.

With its touch of luxury -- the stiff-backed chairs, the small chandelier, the fireplace -- I'm sure it's a long way from the priest's library that McGahern used to riffle through as a child, but it is a truly beautiful and fitting monument to one of Ireland's greatest writers.

If you want to visit the library it is located at Lough Rynn Castle Hotel, Lough Rynn, Mohill, Co. Leitrim, Ireland. Tel: +353 71 96 32700. For more information visit the official website. Note that if you don't stay at the hotel, you can always partake in a delicious afternoon tea served in the grand but comfortable rooms adjacent to the library. There's also a bar if you fancy a stronger type of beverage.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Steph from Steph & Tony Investigate!

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Steph from the blog Steph & Tony Investigate!

Steph, a Canadian, is currently living in Nashville, where she is NOT pursuing dreams of becoming a country legend, but is instead attempting to complete her doctoral degree in psychology. While reading is perhaps her deepest passion (much to her co-blogger and husband Tony’s chagrin, not to mention their two dogs), she also enjoys cooking, knitting, traveling, learning languages and writing (strictly in English, alas).

Although she says there are many things she has come to like about living in the United States, the general population’s apathy towards literacy is not one of them. A friend once dubbed her the Grammar Warden after catching her correcting entries in a hostel’s guestbook while in Prague; this is a title she wears proudly.

Without further ado, here's Steph's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

A favourite book: All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Asking me to pick my favourite book is a bit like asking a mother to pick her favorite child, I reckon: you have your preferred child, but you’re not supposed to admit it. Just kidding!

Seriously, though, picking my favourite book out of the many volumes I’ve read has lead to a good deal of agonizing on my part. I’m not one to succumb to peer pressure, but I’m always so impressed with the titles others have picked for Triple Choice Tuesday that I may have inadvertently made this task more grueling than it needs to be. I suppose I could have just named Pride and Prejudice (a strong contender) and called it a day, but I loathe being so predictable. So, like Darcy’s infamous snub of Lizzie at Sir William Lucas’s ball, back onto the shelf my beloved Austen went. Instead, I picked All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, a rather dramatic departure.

Despite winning the Pulitzer back in 1947 and being (in my opinion) one of the best books ever written, I find that All The King’s Men gets very little love or attention in the book blogging world. This surprises me because I think this is a novel that truly has a little something for everyone. Set in the American South during the 1930s, All The King’s Men chronicles the life and times of Willie Stark as he ascends in the world of politics. But according to the author himself, the book was never meant to be about politics, and can easily be read in a broader context.

Alongside Willie’s bid to ultimately become governor, we are given insights into the ties that bind, the search for self, the human condition at its best and at its worst, the driving force of passion, and the intricacies of morality. It has romance, mystery, scandal, suicide, murder, and some fairly awesome speeches. The various characters’ lives intersect, forming an intricate yet robust skeleton to the novel, which is fleshed out by Warren’s writing, which will rock you at your core. This is such a wonderful, powerful book that is not only timeless but is a prime example of the power of the written word.


A book that changed my world: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Unlike my favorite book choice, picking a book that changed my world was something of a no-brainer. My first reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude was something of a revelation. It was my first Marquez novel, true, but it was also my first exposure to magical realism, and I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say this book blew my mind.

One Hundred Years is such a sprawling novel that completely ensnared me as it curled up onto itself. The scope of it all was awe-inspiring, and I was just completely unprepared for how beautiful and tangled it would be. I loved the thematic recursion that occurs throughout the novel, and the elements of the fantastic that Marquez weaves in made the entire thing approximate being lost in a fairy tale. I think that’s why I responded so strongly to this book: because it reminded me of being a little girl and being completely swept away into a book and the world that it was offering up.

And of course none of this could be achieved without Marquez’s writing, which was just so precise and so perfect and so seemingly effortless, it is mind boggling.

This is one of those rare books that is truly flawless and that transforms you as you read it. I closed it feeling as though my eyes had been opened to a whole host of new possibilities regarding the potential of fiction, and for that I’ll always be grateful.


A book that deserves a wider audience: The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

There are truly so many books I think deserve a wider audience, but, in the end, I chose The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, because while it got a little bit of buzz last year when it made the long list for the Orange Prize it never seemed like enough people really took notice of it. I was really bummed when it didn’t make the short-list, and when it didn’t really wind up on any “best of” lists for 2010. It’s not just that The Rehearsal is a remarkably strong debut novel, it’s a damn good book to produce at any point in an author’s career.

I really admire writers that tackle difficult topics, and I especially like ones that look at the cunningness and ruthlessness of girls. Give me a Cat’s Eye or a Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and I am a happy camper. Catton’s novel is a delicious investigation into girls on the cusp of womanhood, a high school sex scandal, and the ways that the lines between fantasy and reality often blur.

The Rehearsal is a daring and challenging read that is brilliantly realized and doesn’t pull any punches. I would love to see it gain a wider audience since I really think we should be encouraging and rewarding authors who take chances and provide us with bold fiction. It kind of makes me sick that someone younger than me has produced such an accomplished novel, but let’s not hold that against her!

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Thanks, Steph, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Steph's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've not read any of them, but as luck would have it, all three are in my TBR. I guess that means I need to bump them up to the top, thanks to Steph's recommendations.

'Born or Bred? Martin Bryant: The Making of a Mass Murderer' by Robert Wainwright & Paola Totaro

Non-fiction - paperback; Fairfax Books; 336 pages; 2010.

What makes one person go on a killing spree? Are they genetically pre-conditioned to commit such an atrocious act? Or is it the way they have been brought up? Is it nature -- or nurture?

In Born or Bred?, the story of the world's worst massacre by a lone gunman, the authors tackle these difficult, although somewhat clichéd questions, and try to come up with a theory as to why Martin Bryant carried out the atrocity for which he was responsible: the slaughter of 35 innocent people at the Port Arthur tourist site in Tasmania on April 28, 1996.

Of course no one will ever truly know why 29 year-old Bryant did what he did. I'm sure Bryant, who will spend the rest of his life behind bars, does not have a full explanation for what he did either. But this book, written by two highly experienced journalists, attempts to look behind the crime and to examine Bryant's life in the search for clues. In their introduction they write:

This book is an attempt to delve beyond what we think we know about the crime, to place events in context and to provide an answer not only to why this horror might have unfolded but what possibilities we now have, thanks to neuroscience and greater understanding of the human psyche, that might give us a chance to prevent a recurrence -- or at least lessen the chances of it happening again.

This might sound like a pretty straightforward approach to adopt, but Wainwright and Totaro had an uphill battle to get this book written, not least because the Tasmanian Government has had a "media blackout" in place about the incident. In 2001, it went a step further by placing an exclusive embargo on Bryant, preventing any information about the man being disseminated via the media.

The authors figured they could get around this by writing the book from Bryant's mother's point of view, but she eventually fell out with them, and they had to start from scratch.

There will be many people who will see Born or Bred? as a ruse to make money out of a horrendous crime. But the story is very sensitively handled (remember, it was written more than 10 years after the event), to the point where the actual killings are recounted at the rear of the book in a specially marked off section "to give readers the choice of avoiding graphic violence". (You may recall my post about this, in which I thought it was somewhat odd, but with hindsight I can see that it has been done like this for a reason, even if that reason might have been to convince the publisher that this wasn't a book shamelessly exploiting the crime for the sake of it.)

As a piece of narrative non-fiction, the book is well written, fast-paced and rich in detail. It provides a gripping account of one man's life and unearths the stories of his ancestors to show how his story cannot be taken in isolation. It particularly focuses on Bryant's oddness as a child and the ways in which his parents attempted to address his mental and social problems in different ways -- his mother was remote, his father hands-on. Neither approach seems to have worked.

Interestingly, a prison doctor later diagnosed Bryant with a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome, but the authors are quick to point out that while it might explain his abnormal behaviour as a child it "does not explain his actions as an adult: people with Asperger's are not potential mass killers". But Professor Paul Mullen, a British-born, Melbourne-based psychiatrist, who assessed Bryant's state of mind to see if he was fit to stand trial, disputes this diagnosis. He claims that Bryant was "profoundly socially disabled" not autistic.

So, if his mental problems alone are not enough to cause him to go on a killing spree, what else contributed to this callous act of violence?

The authors are able to demonstrate how a series of events, in combination with Bryant's mental and social problems, lead to that fateful day. Their case is a convincing one. And while I won't recount it in detail -- you need to read the book if you want to know more -- it's clear that the suicide of Bryant's father and Bryant's access to money played a strong role.

The $64 question in my mind was exactly that: how on earth did Bryant afford the $10,000-plus he spent on guns and ammunition referred to in early chapters of the book? Little did I know he had inherited a fortune (literally) from a kooky heiress he had befriended. Helen Harvey was related to the founder of the Tattersall's lottery in Australia and when she died in a car accident (in which Bryant was also involved) her riches passed to him. Without that money it is impossible to see how Bryant would have amassed such an arsenal -- there were firearms and ammunition hidden in various places throughout his house, including shot-guns, semi-automatic weapons, a telescopic sight, an ammunition belt and dozens of cartridges in boxes and bags.

The prime message from this book is not that Martin Bryant was "evil" and hell bent on killing as many people as he could on one day, it is that it might have been prevented had he received appropriate psychiatric care from a young age. (It might also have been prevented if someone stopped to chat to him enroute to Port Arthur that day: he made three stops at petrol stations, for seemingly pointless reasons, as if he was willing someone to end his journey.) He gave out all the signals that he was abnormal as a child and yet his parents, his educators and his doctors failed to deal with the issue properly, perhaps because information about mental health was lacking or the resources were not there to assist. The issue, of course, is not black and white. His life experiences and current circumstances contributed.

The final word goes to the pyschiatrist who assessed Bryant's state of mind in the aftermath of the killings:

"Once you break it down you begin to see a terrible tragedy. What you get with Bryant is someone who did something evil. But, as a person, I'm afraid he's rather dim, rather silly, rather resentful and feels he was mistreated and despairs on life. You combine that with a fascination for guns and you've got a tragedy. Take the [father's] suicide out, and it wouldn't have happened. Without the money, it wouldn't have happened. Take the guns out, and it wouldn't have happened. Provide a little more effective care, and it probably wouldn't have happened."

One for the diary: Jennifer Johnston on BBC Radio 4's Book Club programme talking about 'The Gingerbread Woman'

The Gingerbread Woman was the first Jennifer Johnston novel I ever read. I loved it so much I've spent the past four years tracking down her rather extensive back catalogue and have slowly been making my way through them all. 

She has promptly become one of my favourite authors. I like her restrained style, her use of dialogue and her subject matter.

But she's under-appreciated, and I hope that in some small way by reviewing her books on this blog I'm doing something to bring her work to a wider audience.

How delightful then, to find she's the subject of this weekend's BBC Radio 4 Book Club. I don't always get to listen to the show, but I subscribe to the newsletter, so was very excited to read this in my in-box this afternoon. It was written by the host James Naughtie, and I hope he doesn't mind me quoting it in full, but it's just too good not to share with you all:

Jennifer Johnston told us in Derry that she sometimes feels as if she has been writing about the history of protestant Ireland for forty years. We were talking about her novel The Gingerbread Woman (first published in 2000) which is this month’s Bookclub, Sunday 3 April and next Thursday 7 April, both at 4pm.

The novel has a theme familiar to her readers: a Dublin woman, Clara, has a relationship with a northern man, Lar, which comes to nothing – they end up falling back on themselves – and through their comings and goings, and Clara’s doomed relationship with a New York lover, we learn a great deal about loss and solitude.

Jennifer, who was on sparkling form with our readers at the Verbal Arts centre in the old city, says she writes for someone sitting in a comfy chair with a glass of wine, and you get a feeling that she has indeed been writing the same story for decades. That isn’t a put-down, or an insult, it’s how she’s put it herself.

The Protestantism point is interesting. She grew up in Dublin in that tradition (her father, Denis, was an exceptionally popular playwright in the thirties) and since her first novel in 1972, The Captains and the Kings, which won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, she been fascinated by the slow decline of the Anglo-Irish population. At the same time, she’s been drawn again and again to the theme of the divided island. Why? “It’s difficult not to,” she told, and who can argue with that?

Incidentally, she moved to Northern Ireland in the mid-seventies, at a difficult time when some people preferred to go the other way, and has lived in County Londonderry ever since.

We had a very happy time with the readers who came to the recording, because Jennifer’s style is to weave anecdotage and personal history into every conversation. We talked about the books in her home when she was growing up (she loved P.G. Wodehouse, always a good sign) and the fact she preferred reading to playing tennis or hockey, because she was short-sighted. “Very few people have read as many books as I have,” she said with a throaty chuckle.

She began as a writer with a play which she admits was not very good – dreadful, in fact – but an agent spotted her ability and told her, “You’re a writer.” And it has always been true that dialogue – the sound of people speaking to each other, that she wanted to catch in her drama – has been very important to her. “All my books are filled with dialogue, great long passages of it.”

So she writes on, though she confessed to us that she’s slowing down a little (she’s in her eighties now) – “I’m writing now, going very slowly, perhaps because of my advanced years, or coming out this cold winter. It’s like dried up toothpaste coming out of a tube.” Mmm. That suggests a reluctance, which is not in her make-up. She laughs a good deal, and enjoys the funny side of life despite her interest in human melancholy. “One of the strengths of this country is that we can laugh at anything and it makes you think. If we didn’t have this gift of laughing we’d be a dismal nation. And we’re not. I’ve just remembered the Irish beating the English at cricket. Very funny. Bet the English didn’t think it was funny.”

And she had a lovely last word, with a twinkle. Is the end of The Gingerbread Woman happy or sad? “It doesn’t matter.”

You can find out more on the BBC Radio 4 Book Club website. You can also subscribe to podcasts of the shows, useful if you live outside of the UK and cannot access programmes on iPlayer.