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| Hazel Gaynor and your editor. Pic by Tony Keane. |
Your editor has a problem. How to report on something he was involved in? Because normally I'm comfortably in the background, on my own side of the camera, making my own observations on other people's doings.
"This is what it's like when you point your camera at me and I haven't done my makeup," Hazel Gaynor said with a clearly satisfied grin as we were both lined up by photographer Tony Keane in Woodbine Books last evening. "Get used to it."
Hopefully I won't have to. I was in the front line only because Hazel had done me the honour of asking me to launch her latest book,
The Cottingley Secret, in Kilcullen. Which was also why people were commenting all evening on how well I looked.
Just because I very rarely wear a tie? Oh, all right, I do generally dress down rather than up … it helps me merge into the background.
Anyhow, I was very glad to be able to speak about Hazel's fourth novel, and to speak well of it because it is a beautiful book in every way. I have
previously reviewed it, so won't go into any more detail here.
But to briefly reprise some of my thoughts from last night, I like Hazel's books because they are stories well told about real happenings, mostly from around a hundred years ago, with her own fictional characters woven in to bring those stories to life in a way that we as readers can feel part of. And she does it without bringing in violence, or graphic sex, or any of the coarser elements which seem to be required to construct a best-seller today. Apparently it works for her, because her books are international best-sellers.
Hazel also has a command of words and language which makes her books and their stories inter-generational.
The Cottingley Secret, for instance, can be appreciated by a reader in early teens as much as by a septuagenarian like myself. And by every demographic in between. Being able to create a book like that is a special gift.
Hazel spoke a little last night about herself and her family's early days in Kilcullen when they arrived in 2005, not knowing anybody here then but now with friends across the community, including on the sidelines of the GAA and rugby pitches. She outlined her current life as a writer, 'commuting to the attic' every day and often wondering if what she is doing at the time is any good. And she reiterated her gratitude to her family for 'putting up with her' when she is in writing mode, and to her fellow-writer friends who give amazing support. She spoke too of the background to
The Cottingley Secret, and how writing the novel allowed her to bring together her original home in Yorkshire and her place today in Ireland.
The launch was special too because it was in a small town bookshop which will shortly be celebrating its first anniversary. Dawn Behan and Aidan Cunnane are, very bravely, living their own dream in a business which might seem — and probably is — a scary undertaking. But which has not just survived, and offers an extraordinary selection of books for its size, but that also lights up the village grown bigger of Kilcullen in a way which is a quantum beyond being a mere business. That they had a multiple
New York Times best selling author to launch last night, along with several other established writers in the packed bookshop, won't do their business any harm at all.
Most of all though, it was a night for celebrating local success and support beyond it. Because all of us are the better off for Hazel and her fellow writers. And for Dawn and Aidan (and their multi-talented colleague Saoirse, lateley even a
barista) and their independent bookshop colleagues. And beyond them for the publishers who continue to invest in the physical book in hand in a digital era which has not, despite all forecasts, managed to crush the attraction of a good story in words on a printed page.
A lovely night it was.
