John Boyne and Andrew O’Hagan

Maybe it was the weather or the fact that Kilkenny had just won the All Ireland Semi Final but the turn out in the Watergate Theatre for this double reading wasn’t quite as packed as the previous events from the literature strand. The appreciative and eager audience were most welcoming of Messrs Boyne and O’Hagan when they took the stage at 6pm, each of them reading from their most recent works. Both men have lovely speaking voices so it was a real pleasure to hear them read from their books. I also had to admire how neither of them put accents into their characterizations but still gave a sense of the voice (listen to O’Hagan’s Marilyn Monroe voice complete with Scottish lilt).

They wasted very little time getting into it with O’Hagan immediately launching into a 20 minute reading from his new novel The Life and Opinion’s Of Maf The Dog, named after the dog Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe in 1960. The reading was hilarious with O’Hagan giving lovely Scottish accented approximations of his characters voices and doing the best verbal illustration that I’ve heard of what a dog might sound like if a dog had a thought process. The list of Maf’s all time favourite dogs was particularly hilarious.

Andrew O'Hagan by Kilkenny Arts Festival

John Boyne was up next to give two readings from his new novel The House Of Special Purpose. He apologised at the outset for his non approximation of his protagonist’s voice, telling us that we’d just have to imagine that he was an 80 something year old Russian man. But after the child characters of his last two novels, he fancied trying something different he told us. Another fascinating delve into European history, Boyne succeeded in giving taster’s of his new novel that got the taste buds positively salivating.

They rounded off proceedings with a lively Q&A session that succeeded in sending people out for copious amounts of book buying and signing. Mission accomplished!

  - John

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