Judge a book by its lovers..celebs’ top page turners
TRIUMPH OF THE WRITTEN WORD
IRELAND’S leading literary event runs all week, celebrating authors, poets, playwrights and screenwriters.
International Literature Festival Dublin – held since 1998 – toasts our literary pedigree with a big event in the capital’s Merrion Square.
But what works of literature do some of our best-known readers admire most?
RTE radio presenter Oliver Callan chose City of Bohane by Irish author Kevin Barry.
The Monaghan man – a Patrick Kavanagh scholar – told The Star: ”It’s a Mad Max thunderdome-style Irish western.
Oliver (43) said: “There have been futuristic stories and novels before and since but none of them have characters who speak like they do in this book.
“I had fully formed voices for the gangsters in this story inside my head from the beginning.”
He also loves The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. “It’s old but it’s still relevant. Is there any difference between Wilde’s commentary on the obsession with self-image with validation from one’s own class, and today’s influencers?
He loves Wilde’s “devastating one liners” such as: “Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes” and “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Afternoon TV show host Maura Derrane cites Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
“I didn’t think I’d like it because I’m not into AI or dystopian science fiction, but I really got into it. I really like Klara, you see the world through her AI eyes, and watching her get emotionally smarter. It’s a beautifully written, emotional book about a timely issue.”
Portrait
Breda Brown, presenter of Inside Books Podcast and Chair of the Irish Writers Centre loves The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor. “It’s an amazing piece of writing. It’s an intricate portrait of the life of Lucy from her childhood in Cork during the War of Independence in the 1920s to her final days at the end of the century. It’s a very moving and haunting story and one I think about regularly. Fans of Claire Keegan should seek this book out.”
Other Irish stars have told previously of their favourite authors and books.
Bono said Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl influenced The Joshua Tree, while Screwtape in CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters was the inspiration for his on-stage persona MacPhisto.
He admires the works of GermanAmerican Charles Bukowski, writer of graphic poems, novels and shortstories such as Post Office. He said: “Bukowski taught me nothing is as filthy as antiseptic writing that edits itself.”
Chat show host and author Graham Norton loves Depression-era novel The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. “I love Mary Lawson’s books. I think she is perfect.
“There isn’t one sentence in her books that’s under-written or over-written. They are just nuanced, emotional and hold-your-breath.
“They’re brilliant.”
Senator David Norris (79), Ireland’s Joycean scholar, says of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses: “Listen to it, read it as far as you can with your ears. If you’re bored, skip a bit, look for a joke”.
Singer Imelda May (49) is a fan of Dublin author Roddy Doyle, who wrote Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments.
“His writing is very honest and I always related to it growing up because it’s like reading my childhood.”
Donegal author Paul Lynch, winner of this year’s Booker Prize for his novel Prophet’s Song said Thomas
Hardy changed him as a teenager. “At 16, I read The Mayor of Casterbridge for school and sat on the bed and bawled when Michael Henchard met his desolate end.”
During an illness last year, Lynch (47), turned to Robinson Crusoe, as he too “found myself on a most unexpected island, in recovery.”
Bob Geldof loves Speckled People, Hugo Hamilton’s memoir about growing up in 1950s Dublin with a German mother and an Irish nationalist father.
Geldof said the book was “unputdownable simply because of its language. It’s an odd little book but it’s got great truth.”
Comedian Tommy Tiernan likes satirist Flann O’Brien, who he has called Ireland’s first comedian. He says of the author of At Swim Two Birds and The Third Policeman: “He was a phenomenal writer. The language is so intricate and it has an amazing rhythm.”
The International Literature Festival Dublin continues through Sunday.