Leonard and Hungry Paul

In the words of Grace (Hungry Paul’s sister) “Well now, that was nice”. When I tweeted that I was about to start this book it got a huge amount of love from so many people, I was quite surprised…can it really be that good that people were jealous of me reading it for the first time? The book really is that special, I am now officially in the gang who will get jealous when somebody else gives this a go. A friend of mine saw the book and asked what it was about, I was at a loss for words to describe it, I settled on “It’s a really nice book about two lads who still live with their parents, these two lads are the wisest people you’ll ever meet” and then I said she should get her own copy and snatched my one back.

Leonard is the more outgoing of the two (only by a bit), recently his world has been turned upside down by events and he is struggling to cope with these changes. Hungry Paul is far quieter and so very wise, he offers some very sage advice and if he starts up a cult, I’ll be there signing up fer sure. There was something about Paul that felt familiar to me and it took the scene with the roses for me to realise what it was, he comes across as a un-obnoxious version of Ignatius J. Reilly from The Confederacy of Dunces, he has the same sort of sage advice to give and will stand up for what’s right. The rest of the characters were lovely, how they acted around Leonard and Paul was heart-warming. The story itself was well written and easy to follow, a sort of coming of age type book, throughout the whole book I had the feeling that things were gonna come undone for the duo and that Hession was gonna sucker-punch me, I guess the pandemic years have damaged me a bit for always expecting the worse.

This book is bloody fantastic, I laughed loads, I’ve learnt things, I’ve had my outlook on life altered and dammit! I also welled up a bit, the teeniest tiniest bit, was probably just raining on my face or something…anyways give this book a miss cos I’ll only get jealous!

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/12/26/leonard-and-hungry-paul-by-ronan-hession/

Are you feeling a little down? Has coronavirus got you feeling the blues? Have I got the remedy for you. It's this little gem of optimism written so well by Ronan Hession.

If you've ever seen the film Elling by Peter Naess and thought "I need more of this. This is nice!" You need to read this book.

If you've ever read a novel filled with English aristocrats having lots of picnics in idyllic settings or making loads of self-discovery journeys in Europe and thought, "What if this but without the elite wealth?" You need to read this book.

If you've ever thought, "What if there was a buddy comedy with Ignatius J Reilly on meds paired off with Daniel McCallum from the show Rosehaven?" You need to read this book.

The coup Hession pulls off is that he manages to compose a novel about characters with relatable problems and never once falls into the trappings of genre and never once veers away from honesty about characters he clearly loves. To be a protagonist in this novel is to have a merciful and loving god.

It put me in a great mood. I never wanted it to finish and yet I was happy for each one of the characters when it did.

From the first sentence to the last I loved this novel and I imagine you will, too.