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Longing for love and lost memories in an old Dublin hotel.It's not exactly Dublin's first address, the old Finbar's Hotel on Victoria Quay, overlooking the River Liffey and opposite the palazzo structure of Heuston (erstwhile Kingsbridge) Railway Station – but it's a place with both character and history: It has survived a fire, among its guests over the years have been some of society's more colorful personalities, its back rooms used to be infamous for their use as a secret gathering place for everyone from politicians, gardai (policemen), members of the clergy and prostitutes, and it has that particular run-down and dubious charm of a place which has seen better days once upon a time. And now it is going to be torn down, to be replaced by a modern structure by the propety's new owner. But before the staff leaves, before night manager Johnny Farrell, whose family has served the hotel's owners since the place was opened in the 1920s by old Finbar and Johnny's grandfather, James "the Count" Farrell, goes off to open a bead and breakfast in the suburbs with his wife, and before the hotel's one true human institution, Simon the porter, checks into a hospital to nurse his cancer, a group of unusual guests assembles one last time, for one of the old hotel's very last nights.
Ben Winters, the guest staying in Room 101, is arguably not the most colorful character – far from that, actually, he is a subdued, timid middle-aged gentleman who for one night has escaped the dull routine of his suburban middle class routine and is looking for a taste of city life, without even really knowing what to do with himself when he is not watching TV. ("Benny Does Dublin.")
Rose and Ivy, the sisters who share Room 102, have come together to work out past difficulties that have been haunting them ever since Rose suddenly left their Galway family home many years earlier. ("White Lies.")
Ken Brogan, the guest in Room 103, firmly believes that he can get every lady's confidence if only he wants – unfortunately, he's just had a very bad row with his girlfriend, and now he is out for revenge, and he thinks he has found the perfect object for that revenge in her cat Moggi. ("No Pets Please.")
Night manager Johnny Farrell and Simon the porter have a final encounter with the last descendant of old Finbar, Alfie FitzSimons, a cheap lowlife who used to harass Johnny when they were children, and who has returned to stay in the hotel's Room 104 for one last time; only to find that his hold over Johnny has finally worn off. ("The Night Manager.")
Maureen Connolly has recently learned that she probably has no more than another year to live, and has since made it a habit to leave her family life behind whenever she has to a doctor's appointment in the city (and sometimes, also when she doesn't have an appointment). Freed from her daily bounds and from the bounds of accountability, she then assumes made-up identities on the spot and embarks on a new adventure whenever she takes off – this time, with American tour guide Ray Dempsey in Room 105 of Finbar's Hotel. ("The Test.")
May Brannock Americanized her name when leaving Dublin for the U.S., but after having moved around in the States and finally left her last boyfriend in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has now returned to the place which her father, a firefighter, once helped to save from the flames – and while she is staying in the hotel's Room 106, she is trying to rekindle the connection with her childhood friend Kevin. ("An Old Flame.")
And last but not least, the art thief staying in Room 107 in anticipation of his meeting with two Dutchmen who have come to Dublin to buy his latest loot, grows restless and begins to stalk the hotel's corridors and other guest rooms, thinking that he may have been followed by someone he doesn't know and cannot trust. ("Portrait of a Lady.")
"Finbar's Hotel" is a collection of short stories written by seven Irish writers: Joseph O'Connor, Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle, Jennifer Johnston, Hugo Hamilton and Dermot Bolger (who also served as the book's editor); and while the stories are loosely connected by taking up each other's motifs and personalities here and there, and all together tell the story of the old Finbar's Hotel, its staff and its last guests, each story also stands on its own and presents its own world and cast of characters. The book thus provides great samples of the writing of some of Ireland's preeminent authors; be warned, however, that the authors chose not to reveal who wrote which installment; so ultimately you're left with the choice of either leaving the mystery of authorship unsolved, or relying on your prior knowledge of their style, or on what you have heard about them otherwise, to deduce the individual chapters' authors. The project was successful enough to spark two successor volumes; "Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel," which finds the hotel reopened in new splendor with a new set of unusual guests (written by seven of Ireland's best-known female writers and also edited by Dermot Bolger) and "Yeats Is Dead!", a hilarious spoof on the mystery genre, unlike the two "Finbar's Hotel" volumes pretending to follow a continuous storyline (actually, it's more like a very wild zigzag course) and reuniting some of the participants of this first "Finbar's Hotel" collection with Frank McCourt and a number of other popular Irish writers. Given their diverse authorship, all three volumes necessarily share a somewhat uneven quality, and not every reader will like every chapter equally well – but overall this is a very enjoyable collection, and if you are unfamiliar with contemporary Irish literature, this is as good a starting point as any.
Chick Lit, or a Victim of Sequelitis?An old adage says that some good things are better left alone – and I've certainly found this to be true here, because although this "Finbar" sequel was devised and edited by Dermot Bolger, who also oversaw the original project, I cared decidedly less for this book than I did for the first "Finbar" compilation.
The entries here strike me more or less as what is known as classic "chick lit": there is, among others, a woman trying to get pregnant for the first time shortly before menopause without having to marry, a freshly liberated woman confronting the guy who suppressed her in a relationship years ago, and a mother reuniting with the son she gave up for adoption shortly after his birth out of wedlock. Alas, all of this has been done before, and in many instances better and with more original plotlines than here.
One characterization that does stand out among the rest, though, is that of a father who, in many respects at his wits' end (even quite literally so), pays a last visit to his career-woman daughter in a desperate effort to retrace the steps of his life and find again what they both have lost. (Room 102: "Da Da Da – Daa.") You might argue that as a type he, too, is an Irish cliché and in fact, would have been so long before Frank McCourt resurrected them in "Angela's Ashes;" and I would not fight you over the issue. Worse yet, I found the daughter and her fashion world entourage to be so badly stereotyped that I was actually ready to slam the book shut a couple of times halfway through the story. Yet, something about the father truly touched me. – I also thought that this story and "The Debt Collector" (Room 103) had the only truly well-done endings in the book; most of the others either fizzled out rather half-heartedly or came to a sudden, abrupt and rather random stop.
Unfortunately, in this and also in other respects the obvious centerpiece of the book, "The Master Key" (Room 105) – the story which is designed to hold the book together in a similar fashion as does "The Night Manager" in the first "Finbar" book – is particularly disappointing. It is also the biggest offender as far as consistency with regard to the recurring characters and the hotel's history are concerned; for example, the rather seedy and not at all respectable place of "Finbar I" is suddenly is described as a (still somewhat run-down, but essentially honorable) hotel for families and traveling salesmen right around the same time when "Finbar I" had clergy, cops and underworld converge in the hotel's very own back rooms.
My overall favorite entry is the story taking place in the penthouse, "Tarzan's Irish Rose," which is charming in an offhand fashion while at the same time sporting a rather sarcastic tone. Stylistically well-done and driven by an emphatically drawn, quirky protagonist is also "The Wedding of the Pughs" (Room 106); but alas, this story, too fizzles at the end and left me thinking "What? That's it?" Overall therefore, "Finbar II" unfortunately cannot sustain the high level set by the original "Finbar's Hotel" collection. It is an only mildly entertaining compilation and very inconsistent; both as far as the quality of the writing is concerned as well as with respect to those elements of the contents that are supposed to hold the book together and provide a bridge to "Finbar I."
"Yeats is dead?" O yes.Well, of course he is; in fact, has been for some 60 years now. But that's not the point. The point is, or at least seems to be, that "Yeats Is Dead!" is the unpublished last work of the doyen of Irish literature himself, James Joyce. Or is it? Or are the 600 pages of undecipherable scribble that are at the center of this book's wild ride really the chemical formula for a new anti-ageing skin cream? Or something else entirely? In short, what is the point of the chase; or put differently: Is there any point at all?
"Yeats Is Dead!" is the literary version of a midrange relay race; or of that party game in which a story is built one word or one sentence at a time, added in turns by each of the participants, often with hilarious results, particularly if the players abandon the idea of creating a story that actually makes sense and take off in whatever direction their fancy takes them. Here, the participants are fifteen Irish writers of varying calibers with a very well-developed sense of humor, who each get to add one chapter to the story, and the results are hilarious indeed. Bodies fall like flies, allusions to Joyce abound, and Irish clichés are jiggled by the dozen, from "O Danny Boy" (here: in a Rasta version) to bars serving whiskey and very strangely named drinks indeed, and accents from working class Dublin to Limerick and beyond. (And can there possibly be a more Irish-sounding name than Grainne O'Kelly?) Even one of Ireland's football – i.e., soccer – heroes, ex-midfielder turned sports journalist Eamon Dunphy (yes, that one) gets his fair share of shots from the authors' collective hips.
The book follows the example of the two short story collections "Finbar's Hotel" and "Lady's Night at Finbar's Hotel," likewise collaborative efforts by some of modern Ireland's best-known authors. Unlike those two collections, however, "Yeats Is Dead!" discloses the authors of the individual chapters; and unlike them, it also pretends not to contain several loosely-connected short stories but one continuous, novel-length storyline – for whatever that's worth, though, given the book's general premise and the differing styles and approaches of its writers. Contributors include acclaimed writers Roddy Doyle, Frank McCourt, Hugo Hamilton, Gene Kerrigan, Anthony Cronin and Joseph O'Connor (who also served as the book's editor), playwrights Conor McPherson and Gerard Stembridge, comedian Owen O'Neill, sports writer Tom Humphries, and others. Roddy Doyle gets to deliver the opening salvo, which is of course a hard act to follow – personally, I would rather have seen him write the final chapter; and I would also have loved to see a contribution from the editor (and co-contributor) of "Finbar's Hotel," Dermot Bolger. But from the murder by heart attack which starts it all to the surviving cast members' final conclave in (where else?) a bar in County Limerick, this is one great frolicking literary tour de force. It's not great literature; nor does it pretend to be ... just fifteen Irish writers poking fun at themselves, their country and the mystery genre, and they had me laughing out loud a lot in the process. Definitely. O yes.
Copyright 2001-2007: Themis-Athena, all rights reserved.
