27 June 2007

Today I skip breakfast and then meet up with Emily, Stephanie, Dan, and Ryan for our weekly meeting. We go to Waterstone's and get lattes and talk about Irish Literature and why so many people drown in the sea. In Ken Bruen's novel, The Sea, this is the case, and I talk about how in Irish Drama we read several plays in which people commit suicide by walking into the sea and drowning themselves. For class I am reading:

The Teenage Dirtbag Years: Ross O'Carroll-Kelly by Paul Howard

The Ross O'Carroll-Kelly books are really funny. Paul Howard has a great sense of humor about the things he writes about. Though he is the protagonist of The Teenage Dirt-bag Years, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with Celtic Tiger Ireland. He, along with his family and friends, exemplify the worst kind monied people. They are Dublin southsiders (not that they’d admit to there being life north of the Liffey), they are newly affluent, they are snobs, and they love their rugby. The complete extremes present in the novel create a parody of Dublin life during the Celtic Tiger. The class fortunate enough to be effected by the economic boom, those with the excess wealth, are throwing their money away on designer bags and flashy cell phones with the text messaging function, and at the same time they are criticising and taking advantage of those that have not been affected by the boom. There is a benefit to reading the novel while actually in Dublin. Having been to both the north and south sides of the Liffey, as strange as it seems, you can see a definite class line drawn between the two sides. The south has Chanel and Planet Hollywood and the north has…well, it doesn’t matter because Ross wouldn’t shop there anyway. Being able to walk aroud Dublin makes this novel much more enjoyable than it would be if I had never seen and experienced the things Howard addresses.

The Rooms by Declan Lynch


Winterwood by Patrick McCabe


A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle