I sometimes get asked to review books. If I had my way the beginning of every review would go something like this. "Before I tell you about this book I'd like to say congratulations to Ms/Mr Whoever for actually writing it. I don't care what it's about. Or whether it has a nice cover. Or if it's full of cliches and has an ending you could see coming from page 7.
"I don't even care if the author's father happens to be the Taoiseach. It's a book. A person started it, finished it and managed to get someone to put it in handy book form and flog it. In short, this book that I am about to review is an achievement in its own right, whatever else you or I may think."
Sadly, that kind of statement does not get past our literary editor. Don't think I haven't tried. Which means that when a book turns out to be a bit rubbish I grit my teeth and try to be as kind as possible while saying what I think. I know this isn't strictly professional, but when I write a review I am thinking about the author. Especially if the author is (a) alive, (b) Irish and (c) lives in or near Dublin. I'm thinking about bumping into the author at the anchovy stall in Temple Bar Food Market or catching their eye while I'm sipping real ginger beer in Jo'burger, in Rathmines.
Basically when I write a review I'm half-thinking about the book and half-thinking about how high a criticism such as "the dialogue was clunky and stilted" will measure on the embarrassment scale if one day I'm forced to make what will surely be clunky and stilted small talk with the author at a taxi rank. Very high, I imagine.
Of course all this only applies when I don't like a book. When I like a book it's a pleasure to be able to heap praise on a writer. There is nothing better than when you are asked in those year-end reviews what books you read and enjoyed, so you can bestow an early Christmas present on a writer by saying that he or she is "a master of understated emotion" or just "it was deadly".
A couple of years ago I namechecked Declan Lynch's book The Rooms in one of those pieces. I raved: "Lynch has an intimate and honest writing style that really got under my skin." I could have left it at that, but oh no. It was nearly Christmas, and I'd probably had too many sherries, so I went for broke and added: "The best novel I've read this year by far."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it wasn't the best novel I'd read that year by far, but I didn't know his publisher was going to stick the quote on the front of a new edition as a kind of ringing endorsement. Unfortunately, some people who saw it assumed that if I was recommending a book it would turn out to be either laugh-out-loud chick lit, a motivational self-help or, maybe, a hilarious mixture of both. In fact The Rooms is about a man's struggle with alcohol. "If I go in here and have this drink I will die" is the cheery opening line.
To make up for that I want to tell you about another book that Lynch - alive, Irish and living in Co Wicklow - has out. And this one, the affectionately humorous Book of Poor Ould Fellas, will warm your heart. Before I read it I hadn't thought much about this group, which Lynch says is the most endangered species in Ireland. Now I can't stop thinking about them.
You probably know one or two. They live alone or with a brother and maybe with a dog called Mick. Their social lives have been decimated by the smoking ban. They can barely watch daytime telly for fear of catching Bláthnaid talking about impenetrable subjects such as aromatherapy. This new Ireland holds nothing for them, these men from another time. Their bit o' dinner consists of oxtail soup, bread and maybe Calvita. They have no voice because nobody cares.
They wish Johnny McEvoy was back on the box. They like trousers and Guinness and things that work. They hate being hugged, because it's not their way and because they know you will wrinkle your nose up because they smell on account of not going in for newfangled gadgets such as power showers.
It's unlikely that any of them are reading this magazine - restaurants, what's hot and what's cold and wine reviews are not their priorities in life - but if one of them has accidentally picked it up in the doctor's waiting room and is reading this I'd like to say hello. Thanks to Lynch and Arthur Mathews, who did the brilliant illustrations for The Book of Poor Ould Fellas, we know you are out there. And some of us do care.
