11 Emerald Street (Paperback)

Eight hours later I was fecken knackered. For the uninitiated, this is an Irish technical term describing a level of exhaustion reached when you're still reading at three in the morning even though you know you have to go tearing down the motorway at 6.55am to beat the worst excesses of the traffic at the M60/M61 Interchange.

I couldn't put the book down. I was pulled into the pages of the story and transported back to the Dublin of my childhood forty years ago. You're hooked from the very first page. Our hero, Robbie is sat in class and his teacher, Brother Finch, is a terrifying bully about to pounce on any poor eejet who looks crooked at him. If you haven't sat in a class like that, you haven't lived. Robbie survives to take us on a journey through the streets of Dublin and lets us peep into the world of his family, friends and enemies. The Demon Drink is ever present but somehow manages to avoid brutalising the story or stereotyping half the nation.

Hugh O'Donnell's skill in story-telling is that he remembers the little things we've long since forgotten and he brings them back to life in minute detail, almost in a stream of consciousness technique. At times he is weaving little anecdotes together to make sure we see Robbie and his family as real three-dimensional characters, the next minute he's painting detailed word-pictures of the whole neighbourhood.

Robbie's most endearing quality is the fact that he accurately recounts events for us so that we fully understand golliwogs and other facts of life, but he hasn't the foggiest idea of the deeper significance of the observations he makes. He is an innocent abroad and consequently causes havoc wherever he goes.
Humour leaps out at you. In fact, most of the time it's controlled, steady, but now and again, it catches you unawares and leaves you in hysterics. Wait 'til you read about the live goose in the parcel from Wexford...

And that's another startling thing that Hugh O'Donnell has done. He's captured the special relationship between the Dublin city dwellers and their families down the country. Those of us who emigrate to foreign shores leave behind our country and our loved ones. The move to Dublin from a farm in Kerry or Wexford is an equally traumatic and lonely experience. The writer gently touches on this theme and reminds us that the lines of communication between city and farm are still wide open.

Robbie's life is turned up side down when he suffers a head injury. His near-death experience has transformed him - he believes with a religious fervour that he has healing hands and he enthusiastically sets out to lay hands on those who need curing.

I got a bit of a fright at this point in the story. Was the author indulging in a little 'magic realism', was he asking us to suspend disbelief whilst he took the Irish novel to new areas? Had he created what a fella called Barth referred to as 'a text of bliss', a piece so difficult it almost defies comprehension? Rest easy, Hugh O'Donnell's feet are firmly on the ground. Robbie has total belief in his powers but to some extent, you're allowed to interpret the events in the rest of the story anyway you want. The humour remains but alongside the hilarity comes reality in the shape of suffering, often too close to Robbie for our comfort. If you want to know any more, buy the blooming book...

I loved the story because Hugh O'Donnell accurately re-creates the Dublin of the period, with its poverty, humour and its strength. It made me laugh, it made me think, it upset me. It allows fun to live alongside tragedy and permits our hero to grow up despite his best attempts to remain innocent. Buy the book now, especially if you have children at school. In a few short years, it will be on the secondary school Literature Syllabus in Ireland, England and elsewhere and you can tell your hooligans you read it with weeks of it hitting the shops.

Well done, Hugh O'Donnell. don't publish anything for a few months. Let me get on with this marking...