Dermot Bolger

This deeply personal narrative combines the stream of consciousness style of Faulkner with the bare simplicity of Hemingway. The plot does take some effort to parse, and the Irish slang is unfiltered. I think you'd have to be a middle-aged Irishman to fully comprehend it. Since I'm neither European nor a soccer fan, much of the cultural passion for the sport was lost on me, but I could at least sense its power and meaning for the author. But "In High Germany" did strike a chord with me in show more one respect. I did strongly engage with its tale of cultural displacement in a foreign land. The tale of moving across borders for work and feeling like you belong neither here nor there is very true in my life as a man who grew up in farm country and planted his flag in a big Eastern metropolis. I sympathize with the feeling that it is hard to look forward, and harder to look back. Also, I too am in my early thirties, having myself just recently passed that turning point in one's life, around age 28, where I can no longer maintain the pretense of immaturity. I did connect with aspects of the story, just not the parts I expected. show less

Here's one novel that showcases the talents of seven of Ireland's finest writers. Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, and Hugh Hamilton, tell the stories of rooms 101 through 107 of this Dublin hotel, one room at a time. Seven authors, seven rooms—each writer describes one room, and most intriguing—the reader is never told who wrote which chapter.

While, at first, I'd wished that the book hadn't visited a couple of these literary show more rooms, the hotel needs every guest it can find and the characters do interact throughout the book. The guests check in with their baggage—be it their suitcases or their thoughts, fears, dreams, or perversions. Like a peeping tom, the reader watches.

The Finbar Hotel itself is past its glory days ... a little seedy and forgotten, and soon it's to be torn down. On the other hand, because these writers have created in Finbar's Hotel a work that is clever, fresh, and full of emotion, it would be grand to have another hotel full of literary rooms built.

(4/99) show less

Room 101 - Benny Does Dublin: Ben has decided to break with his staid routine and spend a night alone in a hotel. He's never been in a hotel room before and has lied to his wife in order to arrange this little adventure. She thinks he's at a friend's funeral, but really he's come here to Finbar's Hotel only a few miles from home. Here he can be a different person and try to have a bit of excitement for once in his life. Things don't go according to plan.

Room 102 - White Lies: Two sisters show more meet up at the hotel to discuss their mother's declining ill health. Rose left home when she was sixteen and has only returned for their father's funeral. Ivy, the elder sister, is married with children. She is exhausted and feeling burdened by the sole responsibility of caring for their mother. She wants to convince Rose to at least visit, but more than that, she wants to find out why Rose left all those years before.

Room 103 - No Pets Please: Ken has come to this hotel after his girlfriend threw him out and moved a new boyfriend into their home. He has stolen his ex-girlfriend's cat and plans to kill it by the end of the night. In the mean time, he hopes to do some drinking, meet some nice people, and occasionally taunt his girlfriend with telephone calls.

Room 104 - The Night Manager: Johnny, the manager of Finbar's hotel is basically coasting for the last few months of the hotel's life. The building is sold and slated to be torn down. He and his wife plan to open their own elegant small hotel in a scenic location. He's been working at Finbar's for his entire life and knew the original owners, having grown up with their children. He gets the shock of the night, though, when Alfie, one of the owner's descendants checks in under a false name. Johnny knows Alfie is up to something, but can't resist the urge to reconnect with someone from his past.

Room 105 - The Test: A woman checks into hotels alone as a way of dealing with her quickly approaching death and the ongoing infidelity of her husband. She has been diagnosed with cancer and is not expected to live out the year. But when she finds herself alone in a strange hotel room, she feels youthful and alive. She has a chance encounter with an American tour guide and the strangers find unexpected solace in the other's company.

Room 106 - An Old Flame: May has returned to Dublin after over a decade to conclude affairs related to her father's death. She is staying in Finbar's for one night only before flying home to America. She's had a wild love life and been all over the U.S., but her heart keeps drifting back to the boy she knew at sixteen. She remembers standing with him by the river watching the original Finbar's burn down. May's father was a firefighter, and he was there that day too, helping to extinguish the blaze. It's surreal to be staying here now, and on a whim she looks up her old boyfriend in the phone book and gives him a call. He's married with kids now and probably can't make it for a drink but they chat for a bit and catch up.

Room 107 - Portrait of a Lady: A career criminal checks into a room in order to facilitate a clandestine meeting with potential buyers for his stolen artworks. He has several masterpieces that he's been trying to offload for awhile now but he has to be so careful because of expected police scrutiny. As he waits for his buyers to turn up, he drifts between mournful memories of his past and constant paranoid suspicion of other hotel guests. show less

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This is a collection of short stories, all but two of which are set in contemporary Ireland, by new Irish writers most of whom I had previously heard of. The whole collection is rather a good perspective of life in Ireland today, and reminds me a bit of the way Frank O'Connor depicted the very different Ireland of the 1920s and 1930s in his stories - indeed, one or two here seemed to have direct resonances with his work, and all are in his shadow.

I show more wouldn't want to push that too far, though. The difference with O'Connor and his time is that this collection has much less writing about work and religion, and much more openness about dysfunctional relationships - between men and women (now that we can admit that sex happens outside marriage, and that marriages do not always last for life), and between men (mostly) and alcohol. Sixty years ago, Michael McLaverty was able to write a funny story about the schoolteacher making poteen under the nose of the authorities; it's difficult to imagine anyone writing a funny story centering around alcohol now.

There is another recurrent dysfunctional relationship, that between the Irish and the countryside, which kills (bodily or spiritually or both) the viewpoint characters of several of these pieces. Where the writers of the mid-twentieth century were a bit suspicious of modernity and romanticised the rural virtues of the past, the writers of the early twenty-first seem to have gone the other way; the country is a dangerous, unforgiving, lonely place, and we humans mess with it at our peril.

The two least successful stories are the two set outside the present day - a vignette on the execution of Erskine Childers which can't quite decide if it is drama or documentary, and an sfnal piece written as a far-future scholarly analysis of a nude picture of Pamela Anderson rescued from the ruins of Los Angeles, which is not as good as the description makes it sound (and that is not saying much). The others are all excellent.

I do have one fairly serious gripe with the presentation. It is not made clear what relationship these stories actually have with the Henessy Literary Awards. Apparently they were all first published in the Sunday Tribune, and thus were also somehow eligible for the Hennessy process, but I think the editors, Dermot Bolger and Ciaran Carty, could have spared a couple of sentences to clarify what the set-up is. show less