Review: Kevin Barry, Belinda McKeon and Paul Murray
This reading of new works in the Parade Tower was about new Irish writers. And at that, ‘hot’ new Irish writers if you’re into such branding. But by any definition of hot, Kevin Barry, Belinda McKeon and Paul Murray certainly are.
As Cormac Kinsella noted in his introduction, they were indeed ‘all young and all at the beginning of their careers’. It was certainly an inspired choice to programme these writers together because it certainly encouraged a big crowd, all eager to see members of the future literary establishment of Ireland.
Kevin Barry was up first, voicing his delight at being put in a castle. He read from his novel City Of Bohane (that’s pronounced ‘han’ not ‘hane’ he noted). Perhaps taking a leaf from Patrick McCabe’s book, Barry voiced and adopted the movements of his cast of rural oddballs from the fictional town of Bohane, coiling himself around the podium as if it were another character he was interacting with.
Belinda McKeon was next and while certainly not as animated as Kevin Barry, she gave a dryly humorous reading of her debut novel Solace. The book has been generating a lot of hype recently and its easy to see why. Her use of language is fantastic and the interplay between her characters really sparked during her reading. From the perspective of someone who hasn’t read the book, it definitely piqued my interest in grabbing a copy. McKeon read two different extracts from the novel, the last of which focused on the horrors of child birth.
This segued nicely into Paul Murray’s intro when he mentioned that he was going to have a child in 3 weeks time and humourously thanked Belinda for her reading. Skippy Dies has been one of the most talked about Irish novels of recent memory and it’s fair to say that hearing Murray read it was the biggest draw of this event. It’s a fantastic book and it’s one of the best Irish reads I’ve had in a long time. Murray read about Skippy’s attempts to get a date and also the confrontation between him and Karl, the school bully. It was hugely funny, well delivered by its author and created a fantastic sense of the rapport between the boys of Seabrook College. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) his reading went down a bomb.
A short question and answers session followed with the most interesting question revolving around the degree to which the authors act out their characters when they’re writing. Barry admitted entirely acting out all of them. McKeon said she can see them but refrains from acting them out and Paul Murray gave my favourite quote of the night: ‘If you’re not hearing the voices, you’re not getting the characters.’ They also touched on how well the cultural references in their books seem to travel abroad and how they’ve interpreted Ireland in their own books. It was a nice round up to a great event.
I left as most of the audience were making a beeline for the stack of books on sale at the back. Mission accomplished.
John
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