MY LIFE IN BOOKS: JOHN PATRICK McHUGH
John Patrick McHugh is from Galway. His fiction has appeared in Winter Papers,
The Tangerine, Banshee, Granta and The Stinging Fly. His debut collection of short stories, Pure Gold, is out now from New Island.
The books on your bedside?
I recently started The Brothers Karamazov — so far, so enjoyable. The Russian classics are always way more fun than their weight suggests. I have the new Bryan Washington staring at me, and Una Mannion’s debut novel A Crooked Tree. I have finished Natalia Ginzburg’s The Little Virtues and that is still there because I miss reading it.
The first book you remember?
Muckeen the Pig by Fergus Lyons. It is about a pig who is being brought to market to be sold and presumably slaughtered. However, the pig believes he is going to market to simply get a fancy hat and an ice-cream. I can trace a lot of my questionable humour to this book. I read the Beano religiously as a kid and I can remember anxiously waiting to get the annual summer issue — where Dennis and the gang visit far-flung places like Blackpool — on the day of its shelfing, and spending many hours thereafter giggling.
Your book of the year?
I am going to cheat, and show off: Sally Rooney’s new novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, will be my book of 2021.
It is funny, it is ambitious, it is moving, it is beautifully written, and it is very now. On stuff I haIt
ven’t read for this year ahead: I can’t wait for Roisin Kiberd’s
The Disconnect — the sharpest writer with the most glorious and zippy mind. There is a rake of short story collections which I’m hugely excited for: Jo Lloyd’s
The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies, Louise Kennedy’s
The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac, Deirdre Sullivan’s I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay.
Your favourite literary character?
Pierre Hunter from The Driftless Area by Tom Drury. Throughout this brilliant little novel, Pierre was the best company: funny and spirited and plain odd. was a delight to get to know him, and it is always a delight to spend time in a Drury novel.
The book that changed your life?
Not sure any book has changed my life, more changed my understanding of it, but I do distinctly recall reading Joyce’s ‘Araby’ when I was 18 and feeling like a switch had clicked deep inside me. Something in how he used language, in how he describes the sister nervously playing with her bracelet, in how he captured the way my skin glowed after playing outside for hours, was so jolting and new and thrilling. To be very grand: it felt like my first direct encounter with art.
The book you couldn’t finish?
Kafka’s The Trial. Not sure why, because I enjoy his short fiction. But I often find that upon returning to a book I set down, it was me that was initially in the wrong, not the book. So maybe I should chance it again.
Your Covid comfort read?
Is it a comfort read if the subject matter is quite grey and depressing? If so, then Chris Ware. I went through everything by this graphic novelist while in the first lockdown last year, when I couldn’t stomach prose. I would highly recommend doing so especially if you harboured any suspicions about the “literary” merits of comics. Hilarious, desperately sad, bleakly honest.
The book you give as a present?
I think I will start handing out the books of the French writer, Annie Ernaux. Her work comes in handsome and slim editions from Fitzcarraldo: both important qualities for a gifted book. The contents are, however, as devastatingly wise and substantial as any tome.
The writer who shaped you?
Too many to name here, but Frank O’Connor was a particular influence. ‘Guests of the Nation’ is as good as short fiction gets. Plus, Larry is the greatest name given to a fictional child.
The book you would most like to be remembered for?
The Collected Stories is a lovely dream…
‘Before I started having sex, I used to think it was this wonderful, mind-blowing thing. From what I’d read about in books and heard others say, I thought it would be spectacular. I had no idea how awkward it would actually be.” So reads the opening line of Lucy-Anne Holmes’ latest book, Women on Top of the World: What Women Think about When They’re Having Sex, which was published this week.
This is the British writer, actress and campaigner’s second non-fiction book (she has also written three novels), her previous outing being Don’t Hold my Head Down,
about her own sexual journey. Holmes was also the woman who founded the No More Page 3 campaign, which ultimately saw off The Sun’s chauvinistic throwback.
In Women on Top of the World,
Holmes has interviewed 51 women from all over the world and of all ages about sex. Age, infidelity, foreplay, menopause, body issues, fantasies, difficulties after illness, domestic violence, BDSM, tantric sex, masturbation, isolation in a marriage, sex after illness, and anal sex, it’s all here. We hear from heterosexual women, gay women, bisexual women, queer women, monogamous women, polyamorous women, non-binary women and transgender women.
The text, as in the above quote from Melodie, is written in the first person voice, this work is the female gaze as its purest. Each chapter is set over four pages, we get the person’s name, age and country (Melodie is 19 and from the UK), and every story is accompanied by a beautiful illustration. The whole thing is laid out in gorgeous pink peach and red colours, all very millennial, although the contents make this a book that should interest a woman of any age.
The breadth of Holmes’ research, and her ability to encourage such honesty is impressive. There’s Audrey, 23, US, who says “I’m not the biggest fan of penetration. My best ‘sex’ moments have rarely involved it. I find it difficult to relax when someone is shoving themselves inside of me.” Jaya, 25, from Ecuador/Austria, who says, “I feel like an onion who has been peeling off all these layers around sexuality, about what is right and what is wrong and what is real.” Hope, 33, from Canada, who, in talking about sexuality and disability, says, “my parents left me to figure it out on my own, but I really wish they’d said, ‘Don’t just date the first person who will have you,’ because that’s what I did.”
In talking about marital sex, Priscilla, 40, from Tanzania, adfailed mits, “My husband and I have busy lives revolving mostly around the children, so we’re always tired. We joke about it: ‘Not today, mate, I’m out of order.’ Sex doesn’t happen often, but when we do, it’s very heartfelt and passionate because our love is deeper… It’s hard to explain my climax. It’s like water builds up internally and is about to burst, but in a nice way.”
While this book places the woman’s experiences and desires firmly at the centre of the narrative, it’s not all empowerment. Holmes movingly reveals the doubts, fears and, on occasion , traumas of her interviewees. She reveals how childhood incidents can shape a person’s entire adult sex life. How difficult so many women find the act of being in the moment with their partner.
Women describe how childbirth can separate a person from her sexual self, and what that does to a marriage. Many reveal the self-consciousness they feel about receiving oral sex, some admit to having never had an orgasm. There are poignant moments peppered throughout: the attempt at bondage, “by the time he got the harness tied, he’d lost interest, so I had to sit there and chat awkwardly for a while before he untied me.”
Lucy, 74, from New Zealand, whose marriage ended after her husband had an affair, explains, “when we divorced, I was only hit on by married men. Welcome to the world.”
There are women overcoming traditional religious upbringings, a trans woman talking about her body, a woman recovering from FGM (female genital mutilation).
And then there are the quietly hopeful stories. Women exploring multiple orgasms, women finding themselves for the first time in a relationship built on trust.
As the stories layer up, Holmes reveals how finely balanced a woman’s sexual confidence and openness can be, how much baggage we carry. In this sense, it will prove a reassuring read for women many years into their own sexual experiences. The panoply of tastes on show, a celebration of anything goes, make this an important read for any young women starting out on their sexual life.