I Am Glad I Like What I Like

Yes, I am glad that I like what I like.

Lots of my Friends on social media are pleased-as-punch with their new purchase this weekend – The iPad.  Quite right too, it’s a neat looking and very desirable piece of kit.

It struck me that the availability of the iPad in Britain (and soon here in Ireland) will create envy with some people.  It’s a lovely device but it’s not the cheapest thing in the world. 

Few people are entirely escaping the grip of the economic difficulties our green little country is currently in the midst of.  Therefore many people will want one but will simply not be able to buy one.

That’s why I’m glad I like what I like – ‘cos I don’t really want one.

Before you run off, this is not a whinge-post along the lines of, ‘Why can’t I have one?’  I am (thankfully) in the happy position that I could go out and buy one any day I ever wanted to.  Times are not buoyant but there’s ‘enough-to-get-by-on-and-then-some’ and I know that’s not the case for everyone and my heart goes out to them, it really does.

All this post is really about is me celebrating that the things I really love and desire are cheap or free or very easily accessible…

… bloody hell, it’s starting to sound like a ‘family, friends, trees, air and sky’ post now - you must have all left.  All those 'tree and air' things are valuable and wonderful, of course, but they’re rather a given and, let’s face it, a bit of a bloody cliché too.  I’m talking about those more mundane things which we might want or aspire to...

Imagine if your great love was Travel.  Every year, you lived for your sojourn to some far-off place or your weekend away in some wonderful colourful capital city.  Then the current recession would probably mess you up, wouldn’t it?  Imagine if your ‘thing’ was ‘Haute Cuisine’ –  a fine meal in a fine restaurant now and again.  These cutbacks could really interfere with your delight.

But me, I’m lucky.  I like movies, I like books, I like music.  I’m lucky because I can access these things whether times are good or whether times are bad.

I am also lucky because these things are great social levellers.  Look at the very-well-off people in the world.  Let’s pick one… Donald Trump, okay?  Do you like good food?  Well Donald Trump is going to eat better than you.  ‘You like clothes?  Trump’s going to dress better than you.  ‘You like travel?  … you get the picture.

But me?  I can have everything that Trump can have.  He’s got nothing on little-old-me.  What movie can he see that I cannot see?  What book can he read?  What tune can he listen to that I cannot?  (Actually I think there is one Jan Michel Jarre album – ‘Music For Supermarkets’ – that only ever had one copy made of it.  So I can’t hear that - but I’m not that bothered really).

These things I like enable me to gain enjoyment at the same level as the richest man in the whole world.  I like the thought of that.

So when I express delight at your new iPad, it’s genuine.  You’re getting something you desire and you deserve it.  I’m really not envious at all. 

Me? I’ve got a movie to watch…

And that new book sounds really good. 

Doesn’t it Donald?

The All-Important Holiday Read

I like to have something special to read over the Christmas holiday. I think it makes the insular feeling all the more tangible to have a special book to look forward to and then devour.

This year I didn’t have one.

Oh, I had some reading lined up – I always need that – but I didn’t have the book that I thought might once again help to define my Christmas for me… yes, it is sad, I know.

These seasonal reads don’t have to be festive or jolly or anything like that. Quite the opposite, in fact. A few years back, I had ‘In The Forest’ by Edna O’Brien, which may well be the bleakest book ever written. It was quite reviled in certain circles, here in Ireland, because it recounted a real-life murder and did so in great emotional and physical detail.

I liked it very much.

Then there was ‘I’m Not Scared’ by Niccolo Ammaniti. What a great Christmas treat that was! Have you read it? You really should. It’s about a boy who finds a similarly-aged boy trapped in a pit deep in the Italian countryside. I will say no more than that, lest I spoil it. There was a film too, which was good, but the book is a complete joy.

So here was I, this year, without a reserved seasonal read. I was re-reading ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ and loving it all over again but that was only going to take and hour or two anyway. What to do?

Then we went round to our friend’s house on Christmas Eve, as we traditionally do, and she had four books on her table.

“I got talking to the bookshop owner,” she said, “and she recommended these.”

She suggested that I take one and read it and tell her if it was any good. It seemed like fate, perhaps it was.

They were four slim attractive volumes. I picked one, I can’t remember what the other three were, sorry.

I picked ‘Fists’ by Pietro Grossi. I had never heard of it. My reasons were selecting this one were as sophisticated as ever – I liked the look of the cover (with the horse and all) plus it reminded me of the aforementioned ‘I’m Not Scared’ because it was also Italian and the cover was brown. Like I said, sophisticated reasoning…

So, having read it, I now wish to wholeheartedly recommend my 2009 Christmas read to you. Pietro Grossi is a young writer who claims Hemingway and Salinger as influences. This is not hard to see. Maybe my perception was a little heightened by finishing ‘Old Man and the Sea’ at the same time, but Grossi writes most convincingly of the sporting challenge and the condition of being a Man. He also writes with that sparse, razor style that I admire so much in the writers who have influenced him.

The book is made up of three long short stories (too short to be classed as novellas). The first and best concerns boxing and gives one of the best accounts of a boxing match that I have ever read. The second deals with horses and the third and least convincing is about the friend of a man who believes he is a monkey.

I really enjoyed this book. The writer is confident enough to get out of his stories when he feels his work with them is done – even if we, the readers, might not fully agree. He writes like a man who knows what he is writing about – a man who has stood in the ring, a man who has healed horses. I believe him in what he writes.

So once again this year, I have had my holiday read. “Christmas 2009” will be partially defined for me by Pietro Grossi and his great little book.

Next year… who knows?

Post Script: Jim Murdoch reviewed this book some time ago. I would have read his review at the time. I must have forgotten about it... or did I? Read it here and note the Author's reply in the comments. Carries some literary weight, does 'Oor Jim'.

The Boy with 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'

One of my great treats is the holding a new unread book in my hand and knowing that it has been recommended to me as a bloody good read.

It helps even more if the book is a bit weighty and has a brace of exultant reviews on the front pages. I’m a slut like that.

I had recently drifted away from the Castlebar Book Club and their books for some months. This was mostly because I couldn’t get to the monthly meeting on Tuesday evenings. Also, for some reason, some of the more recent book choices didn’t appeal.

I was in that lazy frame of mind where I wanted to read the books that I wanted to read and I was not open to new and challenging things.




Last month though, somebody from the club met me and said, “You have to read this month’s selection, it’s right up your street.” So I did. I got a copy from the library, shiny and new (what a great book club and library we have!) and I laid into it with anticipation.

‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ has been enjoying huge popularity over the past year. The author, Stieg Larsson, died in 2004 at the age of 50. He left behind an unpublished crime novel trilogy of which ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ was the first. It is said that he wrote the books for his own pleasure in the evenings after his day’s journalistic work was done.

The book introduces us to two memorable characters, as well as a positive slew of others. Mikael ‘Kalle’ Blomkvist is a disgraced journalist who is facing a prison sentence for an apparently misguided article he published. While in professional limbo, he is approached by powerful industrialist Henrik Vanger to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his great-niece some forty years before. He accepts and moves to live on the island where Vanger and his eccecntic extended family live in isolated mutual mistrust.

Phew. I hate exposition, don’t you?

All this takes a while to set up. The novel starts out with one hundred or so pages of journalistic shenanigans which is rather hard to digest. It then quickly morphs into a rather classic closed room murder-mystery-style affair before finishing up as something else again altogether.

The saving grace of all this rather po-faced nonsense is the enigmatic central character Lisbeth Salander – the eponymous gal with the tattoo. Both Blomkvist and Salander are extremely well-formed characters but it is Salander who holds the reader's interest best. She is a skinny slight girl with punk sensibilities and an aptitude for computer hacking and relentless investigation. Branded as anti-social and psychologically damaged, she is a law unto herself, a closed book to the world and an extremely poor enemy to make.

Through a convoluted chain of events, these two characters pair up to solve the mystery and, for all its political and social aspirations, that’s exactly what we are looking at here – a rattling old whodunnit.

The book is a good read. The story is fun and engaging if a tad improbable and the myriad of characters are quirky and sometimes challenging.

But there is no doubt at all that Salander is the pearl in this flashy oyster.

The author, Larsson, writes her with intimacy and genuine affection. I can’t help but be reminded of Ian Fleming’s James Bond who, for all his adventuring and tight-spots, was a character who we came to know by the facts of his everyday living - how he liked his eggs, how he shaved, how he showered and, yes, even what drink he liked.

Larsson does the same thing with his two central characters. We get to know them intimately by the food they prepare for themselves, the novels they read, the walks they take, how they like their coffee - and the result is a pair of engaging characters, one perhaps forgettable-with-time, the other possibly unforgettable.

The second book of the trilogy, ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’ is more Salander orientated. She becomes even more ‘Bond-like’. Money is no longer an object, resources are plentiful, she is independent, unleashed and yes there is even an exotic location thrown in. For me, this second book seems more diffuse than the first but it was still an entertaining read.

Verdict? If you like crime and fancy something a little off the beaten track – and you can handle a large cast of characters and don’t mind a little sexual quirkiness along then way – well then you could do a lot worse that reading ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’.

… I nearly wrote, “You could do worse than making a date with…”

Please shoot me if I ever do that.

Voucher Guilt

I have this thing going on in my head which I can only call ‘Voucher Guilt’.

I’m sure that Freud or Jung would have identified it as a serious issue, if they had received gift vouchers back in their day but they didn’t so they didn’t.

‘Voucher Guilt’: it’s not a ‘complex’ complex, if you follow my drift. It works like this:


I get presented with Gift Vouchers occasionally – not an outlandish amount of them, Christmas, Birthdays, Circumcisions, you know the routine. I’m always glad to get them and I look forward to using them to get something nice.

But then the time comes around when I’m required to use them and I get the sweats. I get guilty and uncomfortable and utterly ill-at-ease. I get Voucher Guilt.

My worst problem is with restaurant vouchers. I know, it’s paid for and I know that the restaurateur knows this and that everybody in the world will be cool with me and my voucher. However this does nothing to prevent me from being the only un-cool person in the entire world.

On those very few occasions where I misguidedly kept my voucher a total secret until the bill had to be paid, I have been reduced to a quivering mess as the manager prised the tear-soaked card from my pale shivering hands.

The only way I can survive using a restaurant voucher is for me to slink furtively up to the manager very early in the evening and call him off to one side. Our conversation may go something like this.

“’Voucher okay?”

“I’m sorry sir?”

“You’re okay with it?”

“What’s that sir? Okay with what?”

“Look, I have a voucher in my pocket and I intend to use it!”

At which point a slightly deaf manager may raise the alarm and have me arrested.

If I can get the management on my side quite early in the evening then I can usually get away with it. Still there will be dreadful pangs as I pay the bill with my voucher. I will think of the poor pot-washers and veggie preppers who are in the back and who were hoping for a little hard cash at the end of their labours. Instead they are about to find out that they were slaving on a job which they got paid for weeks before. Their families go hungry and it’s all my fault.

I should have just paid…

Here are three things I have observed about my Voucher Guilt:

The size of the guilt experienced is inversely proportional to the size of the restaurant or shop I am in.

The size of the guilt is directly proportional to the age of the voucher.

Book tokens don’t count.

Oddly enough, my love of books seems to outweigh this ‘Voucher Guilt’ effect. The most common type of voucher I get is a book-token and I can turn up in the shop with these without hanging my head or having to consult the management. I feel comforted by the knowledge that book tokens are such an institution.

Maybe in fifty years time, I will have got used to the other types of voucher too.

Maybe I’ll be dead.

Now, where did I leave that coffin voucher?

A Couple of Books at Bedtime

Another slightly odd thing I do is that I like to read more than one book at a time.

Generally there is a ‘Day Book’ and a ‘Night Book’. The ‘Day Book’ gets toted around and read at random opportune moments – so it can take a while to get through - whereas the ‘Night Book’, which is generally the book that gets read faster, is reserved for bedtime. Sometimes the ‘Night Book’ becomes so insistent that it has to get read during the day time too.

You know how it is… or maybe you don’t.

It’s a rare enough event that both books strike a strong chord at the same time. Finding two books that entertain/touch/amaze is rare enough without finding two together. So when this happened to me quite recently, I resolved that I would at least mention those two books to you. I’m not asking that you all run out and read them or anything dramatic like that. Perhaps if you see one of them on a dusty second-hand bookshelf some slow day, you might half-remember that somebody once told you they liked it.

That will be quite enough for me.

At the time of this configuration of the literary planets, my ‘Night Time Book’ was ‘The Secret Scripture’ by Sebastian Barry.

The book itself hasn’t exactly been a secret, nominated as it was for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and arriving on my shelf laden with kudos and praise. That sort of thing tends to put me off a book, contrary bastard that I am. So much so that I might never have read the damn thing if it hadn’t been for the fact that the story is set largely in my home town of Sligo and many of the locations and institutions portrayed within are quite well known to me.

The premise isn’t exactly ‘high octane’ either: An old lady, well on her way to her 100th Birthday, keeps a secret written account of the circumstances which led her to spend much of her life within a mental institution or 'lunatic asylum', as the maps in these parts still charmingly call them. We flash back to her story as her doctor, himself facing great mental turmoil, tries to fathom something of her secret story.

Enough of that book review shizz – I found it to be a most engaging, human and literate read which also succeeded in drawing me into the story to such a point that the book ended up being something which I hastened to return to.

One major gripe – and I had this with 'The Kite Runner' too – after several hundred pages of care and integrity, the author chooses to go all ‘Hollywood’ right at the end by tossing in a twist which would make ‘The Crying Game’ penis hang its head in shame. I’ll say no more – ‘probably said too much already – but I would like you to be warned about that, just in case you set off on this journey on my word alone.

The ‘Day Book’, oh God, the ‘Day Book’ I will have to recommend more wholeheartedly to any of you between eight and eighty. It is ‘Millions’ by Frank Cottrell Boyce. I bought this for my eldest son and he loved it and then everybody else read it – and loved it - and then I finally read it and I loved it too.

It’s a charming story of two boys who live with their Dad after their Mum has died. One day they come upon a large sack of money which has fallen from a passing train. Interestingly the money is in Pounds Sterling and the story is set at a fictional moment in time when that currency is about to change to Euro, leaving the lads only a few days to spend it all.

The central character, Damian, is an absolute expert on Saints. So much so that they infrequently visit him and give him advice on his predicament. It is this kind of off-the-wall characterisation that pushes the book firmly towards genius.

Frank Cottrell Boyce, for me, reads like Nick Hornby at his early best. He constantly inserts basic and telling truisms in his writing, his characters are quirky and real and he explores the subtler implications of the money-situation with an insight of a man who may well have lived the event himself.

If this all sounds familiar, it was made into a little-seen film by director Danny Boyle (he of most-recent Slumdog Millionaire fame) from a screenplay which was written by the author. Interestingly, the book was written after the screenplay and the writer discusses (in the back of the book) how being on set with the film sparked some of the quirkier moments of the book. The only other substantial book which I can think of which developed in this way was Ian Fleming’s ‘Thunderball’. Anyone else know of one?

But, rest assured, this is no cheesy movie-tie-in attempt. It’s a great book and, if you do get to read it, I’d love to hear what you thought of it.

No rush, I’ll be here… somewhere.

Ask Me What is My Favourite Book…

… and I’m most likely to tell you that it is ‘Watership Down.’

Richard Adam’s master work is certainly right up there on top of my list.

But it not the mere reading of the book that has pushed it so high up in my reckoning. There are so many other factors at play: my age, my level of expectation, even the place of reading and the weather.

(Photo CC Dean Ayres)

It’s a complicated thing.

I would probably have been aware of ‘Watership’ Down when it was published in 1974 even though I was only 11 – I was just that kind of child – but it was when I saw a copy on my science teacher’s desk circa 1976 that I became interested in reading it. My science teacher, Tom Rogers, didn’t strike me as the reading type but the book was beside his satchel for a period of weeks and I used to steal glances through it when he wasn’t looking. (I later came upon ‘The World According to Garp’ in the same way but it was a stand-in teacher who was reading that one).

Those rabbits put me off at first. I wanted mystery and murder and laughs and rabbits didn’t hold much promise of any of that. But the book was intriguing, there was crowded typeset and earnest reviews and the cover showing a rabbit head in profile was striking enough that I felt it would look good at my bedside.

So I saved up my money and at the start of my summer holidays I was able to buy it.

The opening lines had me worried. From memory, it was all about fields and flowers and sunsets - such that I began to wonder if I could get a refund for some comics instead. Before long, however, the story kicked in, the characters sprang to life and I became completely and utterly entranced.

I remember us making one of our family excursions to Glencar Lake. Dad fishing out in a boat, Mum making floppy ham sandwiches and me… me buried in my book, impervious to my surroundings.

Except that last bit is not true at all, I may have thought at the time that I was impervious to the breeze in the long grass and the threat of a shower rolling in across the lake, of the bee landing momentarily on the page or the long indifferently-weathered summer weeks stretching out ahead of me.

But I wasn’t. These things slipped in between the pages and the lines and the words and became as much a part of why I love this book as the words themselves.

And who can not love this book, to some extent at least? How can any of the myriad fans of Lord of the Rings not also see the same questing, adventure, mythology, crisis and heroics in this wonderful novel?

It is my belief that many people’s perceptions of this book are adversely coloured by the animated film which was adapted from it. If it were an outright ‘bad’ film, the damage would be limited but it is, in fact, an earnest but ultimately rather boring and ‘average’ sort of a film and that is infinitely worse for the book. People remember the ‘cartoon’ and can’t be bothered to try the book – having seen the film, I can’t blame them for that.

As an adult, I was afraid to return to Watership Down after my childhood reading, for fear that I would be disappointed, but I did brave it again about five years ago when I read it aloud to my then-seven-year-old. I surprised myself (and please don’t tell anyone this) by reading the last line, closing the book, bidding my son good night and then crying just a tiny bit.

I don’t think that piece of silliness was on account of the resolution of the book or the fate of any of the characters therein.

I think perhaps, for a moment, that bee landed on the back cover again and the lake breeze of my teens eased one final time through my hair.

Sharp Words Exchanged Whilst Digging 'The Graveyard Book'

Catherine at Sharp Words has once again asked me to help her to review a book.

Okay, that's just a big fat lie. I asked her. I begged her.

Last time we did 'The Book Thief' and it was great fun and got a fun reaction. This time it's 'The Graveyard Book' by Neil Gaiman.

When it comes to the book, I really really think that it_



No... wait. Nonononono.

Click here and read our review.

Well, really it's her review with me throwing random stuff in here and there.

You know how I go on.

There Once Was a Fellow Called Ken…

Anyone who’s come across me around the forums may have noticed that I quite like Limericks.

I like trying to write them, particularly if the name in question is a little unusual. I don’t think I’m particularly good at it but I like trying to came up with a rhyme which says something about the subject-matter as well as meeting the simple rhyme and scan criteria.




My relationship with the Limerick goes back quite a ways but it was definitely cemented when I came second in my school class in first year of secondary school.

I would have been twelve years old then. For coming second (I always came second, where are you now Martin Kennedy? Eh? Do you have a blog all of your own… he’ll probably answer too) anyway, for coming second, I got a book. It was called ‘A Little Treasury of Limericks, Fair and Foul’.

It was a great book, right up my street. The teachers knew I liked a bit of a laugh and a joke so somebody thought this would fit me. They were right, bless them. But, man, they so mustn’t have looked inside – it was full to the brim of filthy limericks. I couldn’t show my prize at home ‘cos they would have looked inside and all hell would doubtless have broken out. So I kept it as my little secret, well, one of them – you don’t need to hear about the others thank-you-very-much.

The opening Limerick in that book summed up the art-form pretty well I thought. This from memory:

The Limerick packs laughs astronomical
Into space that is quite economical
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones are seldom so comical

How true, how true.

There are clean ones, of course, but it seems to be the added sauce that decides whether a particular limerick is palatable or not.

I’d like to share with you my favourite limerick, which comes in the form of a story. It’s a story I tell quite a lot and I pass it on to you in the hope that you might tell it somewhere too. If you tell it right, it’s a winner but, please note, it works better in the telling than it does in the reading so you may not get a full appreciation for the jollyness-potential from what follows. I should also say that I am writing the following story from memory from that book. I don’t know the copyright issues with my doing that but if anyone has a problem, do let me know.

Thanks.

So, the father-of the bride had to make a speech at the wedding and he was very nervous about it. He wrote all his prompts on little cards and then, at practically the last moment, he discovered a limerick which he thought would finish off his speech brilliantly. The limerick went like this:

There was a young man called Skinner
Who took a young girl out to dinner
At half past nine
They sat down to dine
And by a quarter to ten it was in her…
… the dinner, not Skinner.

Yes, it had a sixth line, breaking all the rules of limerick writing but it was funny, if a little rude, so he decided to include it in his speech.

The speech went ‘poorly’. He’d had too much dinner-wine and he’s got his little cards all jumbled up and, right at the end, he could not find the card with the limerick on it, So he decided to rescue the evening by doing the verse from memory. Here’s what he said:

There was a young man called Tupper
Who took a young girl out to supper
And half past nine
They sat down to dine
And by a quarter to ten it was up her
…not Tupper… some bugger called Skinner.

More About The Song – Poems by Rachel Fox

Rachel Fox has a great blog and, if you don’t go there regularly, then you really should. Click this link and see.

Go on, I’ll still be here when you come back. I’ll just do a bit of tidying…


Rachel also has a new book of poems published and I wanted it so, like Paul Simon in his song, “I sent away… and I waited till it came”.


It is such a lovely book, really. I keep it on my desk and pick it up and read a poem or three now and again.


It does me good, I feel.




Here’s a little poem, reproduced with The Author’s kind permission:

Short Love
I loved you for three weeks
Or maybe longer
It may seem a short love
But it was stronger
Than you might imagine
From its length

Rachel writes stories and songs, she also blogs about her life on the Angus Coast in Scotland. One can’t help feel though, that in her heart, she is a poet. She is also a very accessible poet. The tools of her trade are honesty, forthrightness, humour… and music.

I think it is this latter quality to her writing which draws me in more the most – the sheer musicality of it. I find a song-like quality to many of the poems I have read and many more of them respect and reference the music she has known along her way.

The sisters said it best
I’ve always been
Lost in music
It’s never felt
Like a trap

It’s always felt
Just the right place
To wander loose
Off the track

Here I go now
Lost in music
I’m not sure if
I’ll be back

And don’t go making the mistake of thinking Rachel is a ‘fuddy-duddy up-her-own-arse’ type of a poet either. If her blog is anything to go by, and of course it is, Rachel has lived life to the full. She has had her early wild years of clubbing, DJ ing and God-knows-what else while now she paints an attractive picture of the gently-maturing-parent with the odd dash of irresponsibility thrown in.

Her book is a lovely thing. There’s some more stuff about it here and lots more poems to read (and hear) here. You can (and should) buy the book from here or Amazon.

And then there’s that blog… put in your reader, or bookmark or whatever-the-hell you use, I’d like to bet it won’t come back out anytime soon.

I have sometimes feared that I may suffer from Metrophobia. No, I love big cities, this is actually a fear of poetry.

The Poet-Bloggers I have come to know, over the last while, have helped me get over that. I think it helps me to appreciate the poetry when I see a little of the poets lives and preoccupations set down in their Blog-Posts. It gives me a little context for their work.

Perhaps it means I read their poetry all wrong – making it more about the singer than the song. But at least I’m reading, touching and being touched. That’s a start, eh?

I want to thank some of those Blogger-Poets who have helped me to peek inside the door to their minds.

Rachel Fox

Fiendish

Dave King

Francis Scudellari

Catherine Sharp

Kat Mortensen

And most recently - Maguire

And of course, the amazing Jim Murdoch who is the dour miserable old sod with the most glowing, humorous, poetic heart in the whole wide world.

Go and have a look at what they do. If one of them doesn’t touch you, another surely will.

That’s the way it is with poets.

The Moon Cut Like a Little Book

I am pleased to let you all know that my theatre play ‘The Moon Cut Like A Sickle’ has just been published by those lovely people at the Drama League of Ireland.

Thanks guys!

Here’s a picture of the book because I know you won’t believe me otherwise.



It’s a neat publication called New Irish Writing 2 and I’m in there between Henry Hudson and James E Reid – which is quite a comfy place to be - except that Henry is all-elbows.

My play is written for a teenage cast of five boys and seven girls.

Here's a brief synopsis:

Terry and his friends love to drive their cars fast around town but now that Terry is finally due to get his own car – the fastest of the lot – his girlfriend Lisa is worried that he will come to harm. After all, his brother Joe was killed out on the roads racing his car, history may well repeat itself.

After being dragged to see a production of the Greek play ‘Lysistrata’, Lisa has a great idea.

In that play, the women stopped their men from going to war by…

... 'tell you what, I’ll let Lisa explain in this little extract:

LISA
Yes and we could stop our guys in just the same way.

MADGE
From going to war?

LISA
From driving like idiots.

MADGE
Ohhhhhh!

DAISY
How?

LISA
How?

DAISY
In this great 'Lysterine' play of yours, how did they stop their men from warring?

LISA
They... withdrew.

MADGE
With...?

LISA
...drew, that's right.

DAISY
How do you mean they 'withdrew'? Where did they withdraw to?

LISA
Not 'where', 'what'?

DAISY
Okay. What did they 'withdraw'?

LISA
You know.

DAISY
Lisa... what the hell did they withdraw?

LISA
Everything... their favours.

MADGE
Favours?

DAISY
Hang on... you mean...

She makes an ambiguous gesture with both hands.

LISA
I do.

DAISY
I'm fifteen years old, I don't actually do 'favours'.

MADGE snickers.

MADGE
Yeah, sure.

DAISY
Shut up you.

LISA
I don't mean sex. We're all far too young for that.

MADGE snickers again.

DAISY
I said shut up.

LISA
I mean the things we do do - kissing and hugging and general ego boosting and... just... riding around with them in their stupid stupid stupid cars.

DAISY
Withdraw.

LISA
Everything.

DAISY
Until they stop.

LISA
Until they stop.

MADGE
Or at least... Slow down?

LISA
Stop.

MADGE
Stop.

If you want to hear more, there's a radio piece which RTE One (the National Radio Channel) did about the first production. You can hear it ... no, sorry, you can't anymore, they took it away.

And if you fancy a copy of the little book, contact dli@eircom.net. Ask for Dara and tell him I sent you (he'll charge you more that way). I think it costs fifteen euro including postage.

But really, I’m not trying to flog you a book.

I always think plays are a bit like blueprints for houses – it’s much more fun to see the actual house than the plans.

That's why I’d prefer you to see the play.

So, if you’re a youth theatre group (or know one) who might be interested in a one hour play for a nice-sized cast of 15-16 years olds – a play which has proved itself in a few productions to date – a play which has entertained audiences and delivered a heart-felt kick in the teeth to them too – and, equally importantly, a play which has engaged the young casts right through the rehearsal and performance stages… well, let me know.

I’d like you to see it.

And I have lots of other plays too. I’ll throw in a post now and again about one, to see if you might like any of them.

Finally, for fun, I might as well give a copy of the book away. The first commenter who answers this random question can have a book posted to them by me. The only thing is they'll have to tell me their address and I do tend to come around and raid the fridge.

Random Question: What lady links 'Mack the Knife' with 'From Russia with Love'? There's probably loads of answers but the one I have in mind is the only one that counts.

You don't have to know the answer. This is the internet, go and look it up.

Living with the Truth By Jim Murdoch – A Review

‘Living With the Truth’ is Jim Murdoch’s first published novel. There are several more to follow shortly.

I think it is a ‘Good, old-fashioned, read’.

That is quite different to an ‘Old-fashioned good read’, which it also just happens to be.

You’re with me so far, right?

The story is effectively a two-hander. Firstly we meet Jonathan Payne. He’s a second-hand bookshop owner who leads an understated, solitary existence. One ordinary day, he is visited by ‘Truth’, no less.



Truth quickly becomes his companion, his sidekick and his erstwhile mentor. The narrative follows Jonathan’s exploits with his new associate as he gradually discovers what a frustrating, embarrassing yet ultimately revealing companion the truth can be.

Truth accompanies Jonathan to his work, to the seaside… everywhere. And, everywhere they go, Truth challenges the people he meets while sharing with Jonathan some choice portions of his omnipotent knowledge of everything which has ever come to pass in the whole history of time... but nothing about what may yet come to pass.

Ask yourself, how unnerving would that be?

Contrary to some other reviewers, I did not find the book to be an easy read. There is much packed into each of these little pages and I had to proceed with some caution lest Jonathan and his friend Truth might dash ahead and leave me behind.

The action is somewhat episodic and those seeking a riveting story line might come away from this novel a little bemused. Jim. you see, is far more interested in his characters than in putting them through some ridiculous assault-course of a ‘De Vinci-Code’ plot.

In fairness, this book is about as far from ’The De Vinci Code’ as one can get. It is a serious study of life, truth, religion, sex, loneliness, ambition, and God knows how many other things as well.

As I mentioned, it did strike me as an ‘Old Fashioned Book’. Those long paragraphs portraying Jonathan’s somewhat dour existence, gave me a sort of a ‘Sixties’ feeling about the proceedings. I was thinking ‘Keith Waterhouse’ and ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ long before Jim name-checked ‘Billy Liar’ somewhere along the line.

But then, Jim names-checked everybody somewhere along the line.

Jim is a serious writer but he also is gifted with a super sense of humour and he comes to his writing armed with the most tightly-packed bag of cultural references I have ever seen.

His ‘Truth’ character is an ‘Enfant Terrible’ of quips, verbal side-swipes and non-sequiturs. His book may be a little light on story but it is big on character and even bigger in heart.

Now then… having just said that the book is a two hander, I now wish to contradict myself.

The book is actually a three-hander.

Let me try to explain...

When Lady Diana gave her famous doe-eyed interview to BBC reporter Martin Bashir on the 20th November 1995, she indicated that ‘… there were three of us in this marriage’. In a somewhat similar fashion, there are also three people in this novel.

That ‘third man’ is everywhere, he’s lurking behind the bookshelves, at the next table in the restaurant, across the aisle on the train.


That ‘Third Man’ is the writer, Jim.


Nowadays it seems that every single novel in the world requires the writer to be like a puppeteer, manipulating the characters quietly from behind or beneath, never showing himself or taking an active part.

Jim shows himself all over the place in his writing. He cannot resist providing knowing commentary on the proceedings as they proceed. If there’s a good cultural reference to be utilised and the characters of the book can’t handle it, never fear, Jim will get it in there himself.

And this is by no means a criticism, in fact, I bloody love it. By deliberately putting himself forward as a succinct personality within his own book, Jim puts himself in the company of some of the writers I treasure the most – those who have fearlessly done the same. Writers like; Flann O’Brien, Tom Robbins and Spike Milligan. These men are present within their own books like puppeteers who have stood up from behind the striped curtain to play out in public with their own little Punch and Judy dolls. It isn’t easy to carry off – you need a distinctive voice for a start – but Jim does it admirably well. In fact, I would go so far as to say, “That's the way to do it!”

One final thought. I know Jim through his world-class blog and through his welcome visits to my own corner of ‘t’internet’. If I knew nothing of him except what is in the book, I wouldn’t dare make this suggestion. But a little learning is a dangerous thing and I’m feeling bold.

I think one of the reasons that Jim succeeds so well with this first novel is that he is actually both of the central characters.

In real-life, Jim is Jonathan Payne - an ordinary man leading an ordinary life.

But, when he writes, Jim becomes ‘Truth’.

On his Blog, ‘The Truth About Lies’, he exhibits many of the same traits as Truth. He is confident, knowledgeable on his subject matter and if he doesn’t know something, he will spend all the time necessary in finding it out. He is investigative, challenging and fairly bloody uncompromising.

Jim is Jonathan and Jim is also Truth and that, I think, is why this book works so very well.

I commend it onto you.

Here are some other reviews of Jim's Book.

Pics and Poems

Sharp Words

Good Reads

BCF Reviews

More About the Song

Writing Neuroses

Orgrease Crankbait


You can, if you wish, purchase the book directly by clicking here.

The Book Thief - Sharp Words Exchanged

So there was I, having this fun email exchange with Catherine of Sharp Words all about the book 'The Book Thief'.

Little did I know she would turn it into a post!!


Oh, all right, I did know...

I think it's a great, fun idea and a good way to extract some more ideas on the books we are reading. Well done Catherine and thanks very much for letting me have a go at it.

Why not go over to Sharp Words and have a look?

Oh just before you go...


If you're around Dublin tomorrow, 17th May 2008, The 'Centre Stage' event kicks off at Cabinteely Park at about Two. Balally Players are putting on my play 'The Moon Cut Like a Sickle' in the open air at about 2.45pm (all right then, 3.00pm but you don't want to be late).

This will probably be the final-fling for this production and the guys have hinted at some neat innovations in honour of the super open-air setting.


The weather is promised good so why not head on down?

Let me know if you do, eh?



This is a link to a radio feature which Dublin City FM did about the production. There's an extract or two along the way. I'm not in it but, God knows, it's none the worse for that.

I am in this one though - (from the original production). You have to page down a little.

Just in case you're wondering what I sound like...

Book Review - The Book Thief/On Chesil Beach

The Castlebar Book Club choices for February/March were ‘On Chesil Beach’ by Ian McEwan and ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak.

I loved ‘On Chesil Beach’, hell I suggested it to them.

The level of detail and intimacy in it reminded my of McEwan’s slightly earlier novel ‘Saturday’. Both these books blew me away on account of the often-microscopic eye the author brings to bear on the lives and affairs of his characters.

Both books also have something else in common.

In both cases, the stories roped me in, enthralled and ‘convinced’ me. However, in the cold light of day, when all the reading was done and the writer’s hold over me was broken, then the resolutions in both books left me something less than convinced.

In ‘On Chesil Beach’, a naive misunderstanding leads to far-reaching consequences (a bit of a recurring theme in McEwan’s writing methinks).

It’s just that those far-reaching thingies were just a little too ‘far-reaching’ for my credulity to bear.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent, slender, thoughtful read (with a little graphic content, so be warned) and I commend it unto you.

‘The Book Thief’ is a good read too.

It took me quite a while to get through it – I don’t really know why because it’s not particularly dense or demanding.

It covers similar ground to the central part of ‘The Tin Drum’ by Günter Grass.

The heroine, Liesel, is a little girl who is adopted into a German family after her parents are taken to a concentration camp. Her adventures on Himmel Street during the burgeoning war makes for a well-written and entertaining story.

For me, her experiences came across a little like ‘World War 2 Lite’.

Although the effects of the war and of Hitler’s tenure are not flinched away from, the conceit of using a narrator who views the events from an elevated vista somehow removes a layer of reality from the events described.

One always feels one is inside a story rather than inside any kind of reality.

The fact that the narrator is ‘Death’, ‘The Grim Reaper’, (whatever you call him) seems to be neither here nor there. This device, for me, only serves to delay the reader's entry into the story and, as it constantly reasserts itself, the story remains oddly remote.

The ending of the book (no spoilers, don’t worry) provided a satisfying conclusion to the story.

This was a book which I looked forward to getting back to and that is a commendation in itself.

Perhaps not quite as good as the wealth of glowing reviews which adorn its covers, this is still one to enjoy.