With Kennys and Keohane's and Charlie Byrne's and Hawkins House still thriving, in spite of the relentless advance by multiples, the west is well served with family bookshops this Christmas, and with family books, and titles with a local connection. Among the many potential stocking fillers is Kevin Whelan's Izzy Baia.
Written by the Galway-based companion to two autistic men, the account is a series of vignettes, revealing as much about the peripatetic life of the author as about his charges. Reared in Oxfordshire, Whelan has worked as a trainee assistant manager in a jeweller's, as a swimming pool cleaner, as a fast food "flunkey" in McDonalds, as a Santa Claus, a hotel night porter, a telephonist, a parking lot attendant, a hospital cleaner, a bookshop assistant, and a delivery man for free magazines.
Throughout that time, he always had a typewriter with him. In his current occupation, he has recorded the experiences of being with, and trying to step into the heads of, autistic people - those who cannot communicate in a world obsessed with communication.
Located in Galway, the book is not just about autism, but about society and personal relationships, according to his publisher, Marino Press. Whelan tries to banish myths about the condition. Referring to Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of the autistic savant, Raymond Babbitt, in the 1989 film Rain Man, he says most autistics do not have such highly developed abilities and are not necessarily going to crack the Lotto on every jackpot.
He describes the mindstorms, the frustrations of not being able to be understood, and the burden on relatives. But autistics are the "aristocrats" among those with mental handicaps, he believes. "Imperious and sometimes grave, caring not whether they are deemed to `fit in' or whether they meet with your approval, they live wholly within themselves and for themselves. They are beyond us; they are beyond our rules; they are beyond our way of being."
And may be better off for it, in many ways. Fitting in would not have been foremost in the mind of Guy St John Williams in the project he has written about, although he obviously has a soft spot for Connemara. Then it always has been an attraction for people who live in cities and who are prepared to accept the moist climate in return for the utter contrast with their usual environment.
Not quite a typical immigrant, he returned to an island in Tully Lake to restore a dilapidated house which belonged to his grandfather, Oliver St John Gogarty. Leaving a glamorous life behind him, he came back from training racehorses in Macau, China. His book, A Year in Connemara, is rich in anecdote and description, inspired by his encounters with local people as well as with other immigrants. The text is well laced with humour - such as his description of Cannon Ball, a stallion pony that sired most of the Connemara ponies within a 30-mile radius when not being the saddled steed of his owner. And all done on his regular feed of half-a-dozen eggs in a quart of porter!
St John Williams's book shows a considerable knowledge of poems and prose written about Connemara, and he has a sharp eye for the flora and fauna of the area. Perhaps it is because of the sheer contrast of his previous lifestyle that he notices so much that others would overlook, or take for granted. Makes one want to be there.
Izzy Baia by Kevin Whelan is published by Marino Books at £5.99 paperback. A Year in Con]nemara by Guy St John Williams is published by Daletta Press of Monasterevan, Co Kildare, at £9.95 paperback.