CURRENT AFFAIRS: BRIDGET HOURICANreviews The Irish Times Book of the Year 2010, Edited by Peter Murtagh, GIll & Macmillan, 287pp, €26.99
IT'S BOOK OF THE YEAR as in school year – September to September – so this ends just before 2010's seminal moment, when Ajai Chopra and the other gunslingers rode into town. But in a marvellously laconic remark in one of the final articles to make the cut, from September 2nd, Dan O'Brien, the Irish Timeseconomics editor, prefigures their arrival: "It is not clear that the Irish State can afford the current crisis." And almost a year earlier, on October 7th, 2009, back at the beginning of the book, Miriam Lord noted that Biffo "gave another poor performance in the Dáil, totally misreading the public mood". Never! Yes, with hindsight, all the signs were there. Take this early headline, from October 5th, 2009: "Recession focused minds on how vital EU is to our fortunes."
One of the morbid pleasures of reading this annual is checking for clues about the coming bailout. But that’s only one strand. The recession dominated, indeed swamped, the press this year, but fortunately it doesn’t swamp this book, which is intended as an entertaining read, so only about a tenth of the 100 or so articles reprinted here relate to the recession, and that includes pieces with more to do with schadenfreude – Seán FitzPatrick’s bankruptcy – than with economic analysis.
This annual reminds us that The Irish Timesreported on more this year than the banks and Nama, including events I'd forgotten all about, such as the World Cup. Tom Humphries's amusing article on power cuts in Johannesburg brought it all back: I actually watched almost all the matches! How had I forgotten that? Should I be worried? But that's what these annuals do: show the tricks that memory plays. Is it only a year since the second Lisbon referendum, and since Elin and Tiger's spectacular travails? Was there ever a time when he didn't philander?
Peter Murtagh may have wisely edited out some of the recession, but 2010 was still an inward-looking year. Other than my World Cup blind spot, there were three big international stories: the Haiti earthquake, the Polish air crash and the Pakistan floods. Otherwise the news this year was almost all local, and the usual mix of the good, the bad, the ugly and the Gubu. Gubu is most fun to read, of course. This has not in general been a fun year, so thanks to Iris Robinson for being Mrs Robinson, to Rosanna Davison for flitting off to Morocco with Johnny Ronan, to George Lee for auditioning for Celebrity Big Baby,to the faithful for donning sunglasses to scan for apparitions at Knock, and even to the Israelis for faking our passports (and coming up with such un-Irish names. Chester Halvey, Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings? Nope, me neither. And I thought Mossad always did its homework). And thanks to Finola Meredith, Kathy Sheridan, Miriam Lord and Mary Fitzgerald for their excellent reporting of these events, achieving the perfect blend of detail, context and understated humour.
Passports are a motif in this annual. From the Mossad fakers we move to photos of queues and cups of tea outside passport offices. Other motifs are funerals – Stephen Gately’s, Lech Kaczynski’s, Gerry Ryan’s, Alex Higgins’s – and water. Water, water everywhere: floods in Galway sink a car and wreck a driveway; floods in Pakistan try to sweep away a man. Happily, the tide always turns, so we also get the Roses of Tralee shrieking in the sea, backpackers cooling off under a waterfall at Killarney and a fantastic Christmas Day dive at Blackrock, Co Galway.
Squee is another motif. I had no idea until I perused this annual that The Irish Timeswent in for so much squee. But who could blame it? Times are hard: we need something as uncomplicatedly cute as orphaned baby hedgehogs to cheer us up. ("Squee" is not in the index, and I have no idea if it's in the Scrabble dictionary, but it's the sound you make when you turn to page 223 and see said orphaned baby hedgehogs, or to page 185 and see Andres Poveda's photograph of three dogs seated gravely in the red chairs of the Grand Canal Theatre as if enjoying a performance; anthropomorphism always produces extra squee.) But admittedly, though animals run riot through these pages, it's not all squee – at least, that is probably not the noise you make when you turn to page 252 to see Dara Mac Dónaills magnificent photograph of a kestrel soaring over Dollymount Strand, in Dublin, with a rat in its claws.
This is the 10th year of the Irish Times Book of the Year, and I wish I owned them all. The crisis-ridden decade that started with 9/11 and ended with bankruptcy is over. As I couldn't even remember the World Cup from a few months ago, God knows what events I've forgotten from eight years ago. Yes, I know it's out there somewhere in cyberspace, but what good is Google when you can't remember what you're searching for?
Peter Murtagh has used the best of Irish Timeswriters and photographers to put together a comprehensive, colourful, poignant and humorous account of the past decade. Gill Macmillan should issue a Christmas box set.
Bridget Hourican is a freelance historian and journalist
