I was given this book by an Irishman so that's a recommendation in itself. I enjoyed it.

I have to confess that I do read the reviews that all modern novels have in abundance; but not normally until after I have read the book. In this case, there is

• McCarthy's Bar is so unrelentingly funny: The Australian
• Wonderful … the funniest thing I've read in years: The Examiner (Australian)
• One of the most wittily, poignantly and accurately observed travel books in Ireland to date … he can draw a tear as effortlessly as he gets a laugh: Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia

Did you spot that they're all Australian? Spooky that!
Of course, if I'd read these reviews before I'd read the book then I would have realised that the reviewers had either oversold the book or simply don't know what they're talking about. All of the novels I read these days have reviews that say they are the best in their class, ever.
That was a book review warning, now to McCarthy's Bar itself.
The style of the book is that it was written as events unfolded. So, as McCarthy is flagellating himself in Purgatory, he has pencil and notepad in hand; and as the little old lady happens by as he's trying to repair his puncture, he is taking dictation: not missing one of the thousands of words she is spitting out at the rate of many a minute. It works. I never felt that what McCarthy has to say was wrong, inconsistent or was something he'd got from somewhere else and dressed up for his own purposes.
He came across Frank McCourt on his travels, for example, and I felt in Angela's Ashes that even he used stories that weren't necessarily his own.
McCarthy provides a number of cameos for us, but the most acidic are reserved for our cousins from across the Atlantic. Here's one:

"'Will the horse expect extra oats?' enquires an admirably self aware American who, at a guess, has won a trip to Europe as first prize in the Fattest Arse in the Midwest competition. Perched on top of the cart in baseball cap, stripy stretch fabric polo shirt and vast architect designed shorts, he looks like Tweedledum. It takes two of the assassins to hoist his wife up there to join him, like Tweedledee in drag. The horse craps ostentatiously in derision, and off they trundle, to provide a bit of comic relief for the people stuck in traffic jams."

Eesh!
I seem to remember that it was this couple who later announced "We don't do stairs"!
Continuing with the stereotypes, the Kiwis get the following treatment as McCarthy is scaling a near vertical incline that goes on and on:

"As I'm taking a breather … a woman comes bounding down the precipitous slope at a tremendous pace, as if she's wearing seven league boots. It's Vicki, the Kiwi … New Zealanders will never walk up or down anything if there's a chance it will hurt more to run instead. Theirs is not so much a country as a fitness camp."

As for Touristic Opportunism, the world record for tacky has to go to Knock, a place of pilgrimage since 1879 apparently. What's so tacky about that? The sign in the shop window in Knock advertising 'Kneeling Nun Dolls - Only £14.99'. Beat that!
On page 305 McCarthy mentions the Ford Consul car that his family had when he was a child. He talked about its leather seats, it being hoisted onto a ferry and he remembers its registration number, forever imprinted on his mind.
How's this for spooky? We had two Ford Consuls as I was growing up; but NEVER leather seats (message for Pete McCarthy: did Ford Consuls ever have leather seats?), I have a vivid memory (from the 1960s) of one our Consuls being hoisted onto the MacBrayne ferry as we wended our way to the Isle of Lewis; and I can tell you that JJX 389 and VBY 383 were the respective registration numbers of the two cars.
Ford Consuls obviously have a powerful effect on the memory!
What about Irish humour? It's here. The best example among many comes near the end of the book when a farmer appeared in court on a charge of being drunk and disorderly.

"When asked to plead, he responded that he did not recognise the court. When the presiding magistrate asked him why not. O'Connor responded, 'because it has been painted since the last time I was here.'"

A map of Ireland would have helped as he trudged around places that Irish people probably have to think twice before remembering where they are let alone the likes of me.
Overall, a good book that is very well written: it's a travelogue and a retracing of childhood steps and roots. McCarthy's ancestors are Irish. Read it and you'll find that it is rich with humour, pathos and quotations from Thackeray. I've tried to give some idea of what I got from McCarthy's Bar but I have no doubt that what you'll get from it will be different. The book is as rich as Ireland itself.

25 August 2001