Word Power Books on West Nicholson St played host to Ciaran O’Driscoll, an Irish poet and prose writer of distinction, as part of their Edinburgh Book Fringe programme. Early on O’Driscoll, between mouthfuls of water, dryly admitted that this book had been 18 years in the making. A story stimulated by his one year relocation to Italy with his wife in order to find the time, space, energy and inspiration for a novel that had been nibbling at him for years.
The protagonist of his book George has gone to Italy for the opposite reasons however, choosing it as the place for a one year sabbatical to escape the clutches of writing stagnation. This troubled man, pursued by his traumatic upbringing, suffers complete inertia when he stumbles across a field that he believes will be the scene of his spiritual salvation. The problem when running from the past is that if you stop, it soon catches up with you, and the demons that afflict George from here on in, transport him from the land of the living and the real. The story takes a surreal trajectory that plots the despair and downfall of a downtrodden man. To find out what happens you’ll have to buy the book, which I have, but which I haven’t read, and even if I had, I really wouldn’t want to ruin it for you or him... after all, it took 18 years to write.
Ciaran’s reading was thoughtful yet engaging, poised yet poignant. The beauty of Ciaran’s prose is its slow distilling simplicity; the ability to transform an everyday phrase or saying and through its exploration, create something profound or peculiar or both. His use of language makes you want to jump up and down on a trampoline, shouting aloud a word you’ve said a thousand times before, as if you’ve just discovered it for the first time.
