All I could drink with the author of All You Can Eat

But first, a pint or two with Kevin McCarthy, whose novel Peeler I liked so much a few years ago. That affable, insightful author talked about Ireland, about America, about the American city where we both lived at the same times years ago (I was the quiet one on the Green Line) and, before I knew it, I had a copy of his second book, Irregulars, in my book bag.

Peeler, I wrote:

"performed one of those acts of alchemy that always leave me in awe: It conveyed not just the facts of the novel's historical setting (the founding years of the Free State of Ireland), but also the feeling: the rural and urban poverty in West Cork, the moral uncertainty, and aching nostalgia for a time very recently passed, before the shooting started, when life seemed much simpler."

So I am excited to have Irregulars, and I'll keep you posted.

Then Kevin and I hied to the Porterhouse (I took a pint of the plain to keep my heart from sinking) to meet Ed O'Loughlin, who slapped his latest book into my hands. I had not heard of O'Loughlin before, but he was nominated for the Booker Prize, and he was smart enough to quit journalism when he looked around and found that the world's corps of foreign correspondents had been been slashed and cut and decimated to the point where it could fit comfortably into a snug at any bar in Ireland and still hear its lonely voices echoing off the walls.

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Speaking of Irish authors new to me, Declan Burke has been throwing new names into the ring of late over at his Crime Always Pays, and no one knows more about Irish crime writing than Declan, even though he's sometimes too modest to show it.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013