LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL

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Helen and Barbara entered into what Peter called “nattering”, a seamless narrative of personal stories, asides and value judgements, delivered in a point/counterpoint style with each woman taking her turn on the mic, with a seamlessness known only to middle-aged women and gangsta rappers. Planning to buy Leonard and Hungry Paul for your group? Buy books from Hive and support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no extra cost to you. And the otherwise quiet and rather passive characters are given to lengthy philosophical exposition and didactic speeches, two of which in particular (Leonard to his putative new girlfriend, and Hungry Paul to his sister) do seem to rather stray into mansplaining. Bildiğimiz ezberlerin dışında tiplemeler ve bildiğimiz ezberlerin dışında gelişmeyi başarmış bir evlilik de var kitapta. Yazarın dili çok güzel, yer yer çok komik, yer yer hüzünlü ve iç burkucu ama naifliğini hiç kaybetmiyor anlatı. Çok güzel iç görüler ve gözlemler barındırıyor eser ama yazarımız bunları dev aforizmalar gibi suratımıza çarpmak yerine iddiasız biçimde metninin içine yerleştirmeyi seçmiş ve ne iyi etmiş. (Barış Bıçakçı'nın tam tersi diyebiliriz...)

During this time, Leonard worries about his friend. As his own life improves, will Hungry Paul get left behind? Hungry Paul’s sister, Grace, is worried too. Struggling to juggle her high-powered job with her final wedding plans, she fears that her brother, shunning independence, will become an increasing burden for their parents. Well that is because this is what this book is about. It's about quiet, finding one's path, knowing one's mind and going on, rather than doing little things and telling all the world all about them as loudly as possible. And that was a balm to my soul because I find all the loudness of our today's reality to be overwhelming, unnecessary and ineffective. Leonard and Hungry Paul are two 30ish-year-old bachelors, not exactly go-getters. Leonard has just lost his mother, whom he loved dearly. He feels her loss acutely, the house is empty without her presence. He realises how truly lonely he is and that he's not really living. Aspects of his job as a ghostwriter of encyclopedias and other reference books are starting to bug him.He has befriended a Mrs Hawthorn, an elderly lady at the local hospital where he and his Mum are volunteers. They go there to chat to the patients and keep them company. Hungry Paul isn't good at small talk, but he and Mrs Hawthorn (who has previously rebuffed all human interaction) are kindred spirits. Happy to sit in contented silence, holding hands even well after she's fallen asleep. I really liked the sound of this book; a celebration of nice gentle introverted souls, two loyal friends, more familiar with the contents of an encyclopedia, than societal norms. But I think my expectations were set too high. I expected some level of depth, reality and authenticity. And there were many genuinely well-observed passages written about Leonard or Paul but there were just too many excursions into farcical unreality so I found it a bit disappointing. My alarm bells went off at the cliched IT/Helpdesk Guy. Then the idea that there would be a €10,000 for a silly competition and that it would only have 3 entrants. Then Hungry Paul going for a job as the president of the mime foundation of Ireland. I think there was the potential for a really good book here and I think it would have been a lot better if it wasn't for all the really silly unbelievable events.

This is a gentle yet penetrating tale of the many guises of love and friendship that pierces the too often impenetrable veneer most will apply to protect themselves from others perceived judgement. Leonard and Hungry Paul may appear socially awkward but they offer a deeper understanding of relationships than many who remain unaware that their confidence in a crowd is shallow and blinkered. I have never read a book that is so gentle and careful. I’ve seen the phrase “up-lit” bandied around and this must be a perfect example. But when you read a book about two single men in their 30s who both have no “get up and go” (their idea of a “good night” is sitting at home playing board games and neither of them has ever left their childhood home) and then introduce other members of their families in stories that are also not very exciting, it is just not very, well, exciting. Very little happens in this novel, but the gradual unpeeling of character, and the way in which, through doing practically nothing, Hungry Paul’s assets are recognised, so shining a light on his future, make for a gentle but deeply satisfying read. As sometimes happens with boys who prefer games to sports, Leonard had few friends but lots of ideas. His mother understood with good intuitive sense that children like Leonard just need someone to listen to them”

So many moments resonated with me. I'm an introvert, one who hasn't been brave enough to drop the mask, but that doesn't mean that I haven't known excruciating moments of social awkwardness. If I'm honest, I am probably closest to Grace, who spends her days being super-efficient at work but needs a boyfriend she can trust enough to be a flake with at home. This was one of the observations I enjoyed the most. I am fortunate enough to have a Leonard. Overall a novel I would recommend, and although not quite to my personal taste (which errs to the bile of Bernhard, the apocalypses of Krasznahorkai, and to the unlikable female narrator genre rather than uplit), that is more a failing of mine.

Leonard and Hungry Paul are two friends who see the world differently. They use humour, board games and silence to steer their way through the maelstrom that is the 21st century. Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion. Leonard and Hungry Paul are not portrayed as flawed or unreliable – on the contrary they have a clarity of understanding due to their clutter-free attitude to life. The thing is, as a child the world looked huge, intimidatingly so. School looked big. Adults looked big. The future looked big. But I am starting to feel that over time I have retreated into a smaller world. I see people rushing around and I wonder – where are they going to? Who are they meeting? Their lives are so full. I’m trying to remember if my life was ever like that.” In 1979, as violence erupts all over Ireland, two outsiders travel to a small island off the west coast in search of their own answers, despite what it may cost the islanders.Before opening this book, I read an online reviewer categorise it as “up lit” (uplifting literature). This terrified me. There’s something odd and doomed about things that try to make you happy in times of chaos: like a man telling you to smile when you’re crying or the quartet playing a waltz as the Titanic goes down. Sobbing over a romance, poring over social critique; these can be cathartic and illuminating. But “up lit”?

This,. I will freely say, is not my preferred reading matter but I was somewhat misled by the magnificent first line: Leonard, who works writing entries for children’s encyclopedias, recognises that this represents a key turning point in his life and that he has the choice either to retreat further from the world (which he fears will turn him into a grumpy eccentric) or start to carefully engage with it (a path he embarks on when a single mother at work – her child a fan of his work - starts to show interest in him). He’s very conscious, he says, that those who have made the most difference in his own life are self-effacing people who often go unchampioned. “I’m not naturally like that. My wife is a naturally kind person and she’s had a very good influence on me. One of the nice things about One Dublin One Book is that friends of my mother have got in touch and said, ‘I didn’t know you were a writer,’ and I’m able to send them a copy and say, ‘This is inspired by kind people like you were to me.’” Writing a weekly column featuring débuts, I’m generally aware of everything produced by Irish writers, so I was surprised when Rónán Hession’s first novel was shortlisted for a Bord Gais Energy Book Award and was anxious to procure a copy.

Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession, is a novel of wry intelligence wrapped around the quiet rhythms of ordinary lives as they are being lived. The apparent simplicity of the narrative carries the reader through moments of insight as characters speak from their hearts on everyday dilemmas. The rarity of such truthfulness in conversation and the skill with which thoughts and feelings are conveyed make this a singular read. Rónán Hession is a writer based in Dublin. His short stories have been published in The Honest Ulsterman and The Bohemyth; his flash fiction has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine (US) and Brilliant Flash Fiction. There are some gorgeous scenes in this novel. The one that sees Leonard practising conversations in preparation for his first date, are reminiscent of those in Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers, (Though Amis’s protagonist is a teenager, whereas Leonard is in his thirties.)