THE SOCIAL NETWORK:The writer and director Christopher Fitz-Simon launched Peter Somerville-Large's new book, Mixed Blessings, at a private club on St Stephen's Green on Thursday evening.
The book is about a boy, Paul Blake-Willoughby, who “attends a Protestant boarding school and, later, a Catholic agricultural college, both as grubby as the other,” Fitz-Simon told the guests.
Blake-Willoughby is from a mixed marriage and gets to choose his religion. “Daddy, a Catholic, is a military gentleman, but no great intellectual,” explained Fitz-Simon. “Mummy is a chilled-out Protestant lady.” She doesn’t like people from Scotland, anyone who feeds crumbs to birds or anyone who puts the names of their houses on their gates.
“Selective detail of social change from the earliest Fianna Fáil era to the Celtic Tiger is presented, but in a wonderfully elusive and understated way,” said Fitz-Simon.
Somerville-Large said he was nervous about attending the launch and recalled a book launch of his years ago in Cork: “I sat there with a pile of books beside me and the owner of the bookshop for about two hours, and nobody came in.”
He need not have worried on Thursday. The authors Patrick Skene Catling and Alannah Hopkin turned up to lend their support. Dr John Maiben Gilmartin had just returned from Portarlington, where he was researching Huguenots.
The actor Margaret Toomey – who plays Eileen Bishop in Fair City – told me that she’s taking part in On Yer Bike . . . with Dalkey’s Writers, at Dalkey Castle next Monday, Thursday and Saturday. It’s a literary event focusing on famous writers from the southside village.