FictionReviewA low-key look at the ordinary lives of two unremarkable men elevates the humdrum through wit and poignancyWhat a curious book this is. You don’t often get good novels about ordinary people living tranquil lives almost completely devoid of incident – no shocking discoveries, no crises, no coming to terms with a dark past. The grandaddy of the genre is George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody (1892), and that took malicious pleasure in skewering the pretensions of its bourgeois everyman. Irish debut Leonard and Hungry Paul is its opposite: a charming, warm-hearted celebration of all that is treasurable about everyday life, “stories of overlooked people who had simply lived their lives as best they could”. It’s witty, but the jokes, refreshingly, are never at anyone’s expense.
The two title characters are single men in their 30s. Leonard, who writes for children’s encyclopedias, yearns to connect with someone and share the awe he feels at the beauty of the universe. Hungry Paul, by contrast, is self-contained: considerate, fond of his family, but perfectly content with “the innate orderliness of things”. He is the walking embodiment of mindfulness, living in and for the present moment. A strange choice of main character, you may think, and you’d be right: this is very much a two-hander, and without the low-key dynamism of Leonard as a counterbalance, Hungry Paul’s story would go nowhere. (Why “Hungry”? We’re never told. As a man who lets the world wash over him, he’s low on appetite.)
The leisurely pace flags further when it comes to the subplots, which involve even less remarkable relatives. Here the novel struggles to escape the fate of all books about unexciting people: they’re not exciting. That, of course, is the point. We’re meant to be appreciating the unappreciated aspects of life. But I defy any author, even one as winning as Hession, to make us savour a detailed discussion of who’ll order from the set menu and who’ll go for the a la carte.
Nevertheless, this is an appealing book thanks to Hession’s engaging style, which flits lightly across the emotional range like a harpist plucking the strings. He is often inventively funny, as when he refers to blokes going to the pub “for an evening of darts, dominoes, cards or other prison games”. In the same sentence he can be heart-rending, adding that Leonard chose not to go because “nothing made him feel lonelier these days than the thought of spending time in the company of extroverts”. These flashes of wit and poignancy make something exceptional out of what might easily have been humdrum, vindicating WH Auden’s assertion that the novelist must learn “how to be / One after whom none think it worth to turn”.
Leonard and Hungry Paul is published by Bluemoose.
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