Big Fat Love
Peter Sheridan
Pan, 2005
Ye Know Me Ma?
Yikes! How did I get back on Sheriff Street? Pitching what was left of my tinny into the gutter (as is the local custom) I reeled toward the familiar high-rise lights of the Irish Financial Services Centre. Last thing I remember I was at home, picking up renowned memoirist Peter Sheridan's first novel Big Fat Love. I haven't been down this part of Dublin for years.
Nope, no good. No matter how far I staggered, I wound my way deeper into the run down red-brick maze. Cars full of beady-eyed youths passed me for the second time. This was the territory where the crooked politician villain of Bartholomew Gill's The Death of an Irish Sinner maintained his secret den of evil. Critical Mick, I said to myself, you're in deep trouble.
The first person I encountered was a nun, of all things. Sister Rosalyn. "Directions to Connelly Station? Sure I don't know the North Wall at all, I've only just recently poked my nose out the refuge of the convent," the holy young culchie answered. "Say! Would ye be interested in coming with me to a Bingo game? There's loads of great prizes. Tins of pineapple. Loo roll that won't feel like broken glass against your... arse," she whispered, then giggled. "And the characters! It's a scream, there's a whole day centre full of colourful pensioners. Ah, you'll come!"
"Interesting codgers, you say?"
"Have ye ever heard of The Vegetable War? The young love that developed into fifty years of bitter hatred, played out on the battlefield of rival produce shops? Well, both parties are in the one room, selecting who else but each other in an afternoon game of Blind Date!"
"Sounds super!"
Perhaps local filmmaker Jim Sheridan will make another In The Name of The Father about it. Except with less prison. Fewer toes. More sex.
Backing slowly away from this unusual character, I made my excuses and ran. A wrecking ball swept its pendulous weight inches from my drunken head. Under a rain of curses from the workmen and the locals who had gathered to witness the demolition of an old Dublin community, I legged it toward the plywood protection of the temporary sidewalk.
The North Wall was changing. Soon evil ex-pawn broker property developer types would steamroll this district and replace it with high finance yuppie scum, making million-euro deals on mobile phones. I didn't have a mobile phone, and I was glad that artists like Jim Sheridan's playwright brother, Peter, were recording the docklands as they had once been. That was probably not enough to keep me from getting a brick to the back of the neck. The stolen car full of yabboes cut across my path and spilled out its thugs.
"Word to your mother," I greeted in my best street-lingo. Raucous laughter arose.
"Ye know me ma?" replied the youth in the golden dragon parka.
"Um... sure!" I prepared to run. "Just waved to her on Talbot Street yesterday."
"Everyone in Dublin seems to know me Ma," the kid exclaimed. "She can't walk down O'Connell Street or Moore Street or any other gratuitously-named landmark without some tosser yelling out 'Eh, Philo, you alright?'"
"She's a very sociable lady," I guessed.
Young Jack grinned. "Sociable, alright. But a lady? With those tattoos! Teaching nuns to curse!"
As I fell into conversation with the hooligans, what looked like ET himself emerged from the car. The giant-eyed creature was actually an ex-monk named Felix from a local shelter for wanton boys. The kids loved him, and their conversation proved to actually be quite pleasant. I felt a bit lost all over again. My two experiences of North Wall to date had been:
(1) Walking to The Point to see Kevin Doyle in concert, passing several dodgy-looking pubs which served as the dens for dodgy-looking customers.
(2) Making a brief escape from my 2002 slave labour in the IFSC in order to lunch at a Docklands street festival. Local under-10's stoned Mickey Mouse and other entertainers with Palestinian vigor.
No one seemed to be a villain, here. With third-person omniscience, I was dipped into everyone's point-of-view. From the formerly abusive pub-dwelling husband to the car-thief son, over to the depths of the Vegetable war to the institutional halls of the Eastern Health Board, not a soul bore a single malicious thought. This was probably closer to life than the thrillers I read, but it was guaranteed to rob tension from every scene. Where's the conflict, if everyone is good-natured and secrets are forbidden?
While musing, the lads and their mentor had moved on. Hating clichés above all, I was relieved to see a favourable portrait of the clergy. For once! Dan Brown and Deja Dead, kiss my eight-hundred pound American ass! God knows, there's more than enough for the both of you.
All this wandering was wearing me out. It was an enjoyable diversion, getting lost in Big Fat Love territory. But, was I getting anywhere? It was taking me a long time to get through it.
Finally, bobbing down the street, came a slip of a girl. OK, she was 32. Compared to my fat head this was a slip. "Howyis," she greeted, and immediately started cracking jokes.
"Can you help me find my way to the quays?" I asked. To which Philo (rhymes with Brillo) answered:
"Sure, why'd ye be wanting to go there? Isn't there everything ye need right here in the North Inner City?"
I tried to explain that my local chipper was calling to me.
"Ah, we've got Dublin's best chipper right here in the North Wall. I was on me way there meself, if ye don't mind the company."
I didn't. Waiting for our eight smoked cods, we nattered on. "Fer fucks sake, Critical Mick! Seven smoked cods! You'll never loose an ounce of weight, no matter how many diet biscuits ye cram down your throat for dessert."
Philo's lack of knowledge about weight loss strained my credibility, but I let it pass. She was explaining how she in fact finally lost six inches off her waistline.
"Golly!" I exclaimed. "That's the best means of revenge that I have heard in a long while! That did not involve a Polish giant with a penchant for nectarines. But, shouldn't the true origin have been established earlier on? The cause of all the weight? I thought you got the proclivity from your own mother, a statement regarding poverty's cycle."
Philo's surprisingly feminine face goggled. "It's no fucking wonder they call you 'Critical.' Would ye show some respect? You're here by my good graces, do ye hear? Ya foreign bastard!"
"I didn't mean to cause any offence. Just expressing an honest opinion."
"Sorry me hole! If I wanted abuse, I'd duck into those pubs you found so dodgy and locate my husband!"
As any occasion when seven smoked cods are near, I just couldn't keep my mouth shut. "Yeah, that husband! From what you've told me, matters were finally resolved not through any action from yourself. Doesn't that violate the essence of what a story is? A likeable do-er in a hell of a mess, making a decision and riding out the consequences?"
Philo's eyes got bigger and brighter, like a looming DART train.
"You're likeable, don't get me wrong!"
WHAM!
Just my luck. Philo goes the entirety of Peter Sheridan's novel, Big Fat Love, without swinging back and here in a crappy ass review I receive her twenty-plus years of pent-up rage.
"Just give away the ending why don't ya!" Philo roared. Scores of locals joined in:
"Philo, is that American tosser giving ye trouble?" -- "Ye want me to stuff him in a suitcase, dump the body in the canal?" --- "Let's sink him like an aquanaut!"
The good folk of North Wall rolled my drunken, overly-critical ass out of town. Hitting every gutter along the way.
"Ye cyber-fucker!" roared young and old. "After all the poor woman has been through! Here you come, comparing her to that bomb of an Angelica Huston picture, Agnes Brown!"
"No! I saw Brendan O'Carroll in Tallaght! His stuff's alright!" I raised in lame defence.
"Ye daft git!"
My fat ass flattened the door of The Harbourmaster.
"Take this with ye!" Philo's five children yelled. SMACK, landed Big Fat Love.
"And this!" yelled the nuns and the pensioners. Every Inch of Her landed beside. I gave it a quick thumb.
"Wait, this is not a sequel! It's the same book re-branded in PC fashion."
Copies of Peter Sheridan's two excellent memoirs, 44 and 47 Roses, pelted down. The bouncers from the Harbourmaster grew very cross.
"We'll break America yet!" swore Jacks young and old.
Spying no smoked cods, I was able to keep my mouth shut. Helped by a swift boot from the yuppies in queue, my wrecking ball of an arse waddled its confused way out of the docklands.
From the safety of his suburban office, Critical Mick says: Big Fat Love contains authentic voices and interesting portraits that certainly have more right to Dublin than me. The book is far better than the Northsider Sister Act that I feared it would be, the first few chapters. But I'm more a Roddy Doyle fan. Or Neville Thompson. Tension. Action. Set-ups and falls. The references to the Theatre felt gratuitous. The villains at the ending unestablished.
Three singles and chips out of five, though those three are soaked with loads of salt and vinegar.
Would ye ever cop the fuck on and give Critical Mick a nixer reviewing the books for yer fishwrap rag? His take on Big Fat Love for instance is the dog's bollocks. Dog shite more likely, But between the jigs and the reels Critical Mick got the summary, opinion and plug across.
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