Book #9 Last Night On Earth by Kevin Maher

Last Night On Earth

Last Night On Earth will be released be on the 2nd April 2015. My thanks to Little, Brown Group for the complimentary copy.


As I started reading Kevin Maher's Last Night On Earth two unexpected things happened. I grew up in England, but my family hails from a tiny Irish town in the West that no-one has ever heard of. Last Night On Earth is partially set in this town, something that I was delighted by from the off. This never happens, I've never even seen its name in a novel. Secondly, I myself had a difficult and oxygen deprived birth, as does the child of the man from this town. Eerie. Frankly, at this point, Last Night on Earth could have been "a pile of shite altogether and I would still have thought it was deadly. It wasn't a pile of shite though, it was mighty"

I write that using the Irish vernacular because that was the thing that made me love this book deeply. The lead character Jay has this incredibly authentic voice that has the cadence and vocabulary of home and just sounds so right. Particularly at the beginning, I was just dying laughing at every page and it just filled me so full of happy nostalgia.

A young Jay has fled Ireland for undisclosed reasons and like many diaspora taken a job in the building trade in London. He ends up being selected for work on a program about films and joins the media, were he simultaneously stands out for his background yet is patronised because of it.

Throughout it all, he writes letters home to his dear old Mammy from her Right Hand Man. And they are so funny, and often, inappropriate. I would be thinking "ah sure now, why wouldja say that to yer poor Mammy? would he not have killt the poor old girl stone dead with the carry on outta him?" - the answer becomes clear down the line.

I liked less the sections which focused on Jay's wife Shauna's therapy sessions with Guert, because it's Jay's voice which makes this book what it is. The sections near the end about the docusoap and the Millenium Dome felt a little dated stylistically and perhaps something of a cliche. Perhaps I've read too many books in the last decade about people who live in London and work in television....Jay is a great character, and doesn't need this backdrop to succeed as a character.

I've read a lot of books that are billed as "comic" and are nothing of the sort and don't even raise a smile. I stayed up for hours giggling at this and kept texting bits of it to my mother. One for the Irish, definitely, but also those who love Irish humour. Jay's friend "The Clappers" should get her own spin off as well.
 
Despite the slight criticism I've made, my entire family is going to be told to buy this book, aunts, uncles, the lot, and I'm really looking forward to getting a hold of and reading The Fields, Kevin Maher's first book, he's now writing a third, and he's pretty much got a reader for life in me now. As long as he keeps writing, I'll keep reading, and I would recommend you did too!  

Verdict 10/10

2015 Challenge : a book set in your hometown

Book #91 On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry

On Canaan's Side

On Canaan's Side, which was longlisted but not shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, tells the story of Lily Bere, an elderly Irish American and her "First Day Without Bill" through to her "Seventeenth Day Without Bill". Bill, her grandson, has before the beginning of this novel committed suicide after returning home from the original Gulf War.

On Canaan's Side acts as a memoir for Lily, as she flits between the visits of her friends in her hour of need, and her history beginning with her childhood in Dublin. Though it takes a death as its main plot focus around which the story unfolds it is very much your average "old lady looks back upon her life" novel. It is nicely written and involving and includes much of the history that Lily would have lived through, the Civil Rights movement, political assassinations and Vietnam, right back to the First World War and the changing times of Ireland in the 1920's and how world events can directly impact  individual lives.

It was a nice book, and I enjoyed reading it, but, it won't be one which will linger in my mind for a long while to come, or perhaps one which I will particularly remember reading without the aid of the blog. It's also slightly depressing as Lily lives a long, tragedy filled life, were she is often ill used and alone. Apparently Lily's family, the Dunnes are also characters in two other Sebastian Barry novels Annie Dunne and A Long, Long, Way and one day I may read some of those to complete the picture, but, so many books.......so little time..........

6/10 

Book #16 The Story Of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

The Story Of Lucy Gault

The Story Of Lucy Gault was shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 2002, which was won by 'Life Of Pi' by Yann Martel. Personally, I infinitely prefer this book. It was recommended at a Readers Day in January of last year and I bought it then with a number of other books. I have found I think over the years that if you buy one or two books you are more likely to read both but when you buy a boxful, ones get left aside. I do so like getting a big box from Amazon though it's like Christmas!

This is a difficult book to review without massively spoiling the plot so I'll have to be careful.
The story begins in 1920's Ireland. The Gault family are Protestant landowners with British connections, a dangerous combination in Ireland in the twenties. Captain Gault and his wife decide they must leave, but their young daughter Lucy does not want to go and decides she will make them change their minds.

What happens next is not the obvious, but her decision has tragic and lifelong consequences for all concerned, and not the sort of tragedy that heals with time, but a daily, pulsing, presence. The kind that makes people tell the story to each other at the mere mention of her name.

In the years that follow the characters live in something like suspended animation. Time moves on, events occur, the world changes but they do not. A relatively short book by my standards, the book is probably the better for its brevity, Trevor has a vision and executes it well.

This book is a novel about tragedy, grief, guilt, responsibility, solitude and love. Above all, it is profoundly sad, not in a way which makes you sob but in a way that makes you ache. Although this book will not become a favourite, the memory of it is going to stay with me for some time. 7/10