A
Wild People by Hugh Leonard
Published by Methuen Publishing Ltd., 2001
This
is Hugh Leonard’s first foray into novel writing. He is best
known as a columnist with various newspapers and as a playwright.
This novel is set in ‘literary’ Dublin and is a satire
on the pretensions of the upwardly mobile middle class.
The
writing is vintage Leonard – sharp and funny and accurate
in it’s portrayal of a certain type of Dublin social milieu.
The characters are very well drawn and the dialogue comes alive
on the page. He manages to get the turn of phrase that enables the
reader to hear the accent of the speaker, whether Dart Dublin, Stage
Italian or ripe Kerry. His descriptions are brilliant – the
gossip columnist who is ‘a litigious sharp-faced red-head
of 50 who had a perpetual bad hair day’ and the Kerry poet
‘with a mangold –shaped head’ and a mouth ‘stretched
into a smile that seemed to have been ironed there’.
There is a temptation to try to identify some of his creations with
well-known personalities who frequent the Dublin social or literary
scene. The plot is slight – the book is more an examination
of the mores of society and of the limitless ways in which people
inflict hurt on one another, whether intentionally or not. He paints
a picture of a small incestuous society where people are both watching
and watching out for one another.
In
this novel Hugh Leonard displays his mastery in being able to take
an insignificant event or accident which actually happened and let
his elaborate imagination develop the what might have beens, the
what should have beens and what could have beens of the situation.
He does this using satire, puns and humour and above all his authentic
Dublin accent which never leaves 'a good turn unstoned'.
Reviewed
by Marie, a Clare County Library staff member.
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