The Reading Room: Okay, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea

I read a phrase recently which perfectly sums up Irish Times writer Patrick Freyne’s debut collection of memoir essays: ‘Hope in the humdrum’. The best writer elevates the every day, mundane – the humdrum – into something far beyond what we see as ordinary. This is his standout skill in this debut. The industrial estates that evoke a sense of homecoming, wanting to be in a band (but preferring the idea of being in a band) and trying things as a child “just to see what might happen.” Written with such flair and under his pen, they are life events that are not quite ordinary at all.

THE BOOK:

Okay, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea, by Patrick Freyne.

PUBLICATION:

September 2020.

WHY IT SHOULD BE READ:

It is perhaps the hardest of tasks to write a memoir of personal, self-reflective essays in a way which will engage the reader. If you’re Patrick Freyne however, the task is no doubt easier when you’ve lived a life which has, so far, seen you be a rock star, a carer and a dishwasher on the set of Braveheart. Dispelling the myth to a well-intended friend, you don’t, as he so tactfully reminds, need to be ‘famous’ to write a book about your life – you need only have lived it. Naturally, if you are able to recount yours as wittily and as well as he does his, you have quite a few stories on your hands.

The walkie-talkie on a father-son weekend camping trip? That was “to keep in touch with the other men,” his dad explains, because actually, the trip was cover for a counter-terrorism operation. There’s rural Ireland, running a pirate radio station, an attempt at a band, a sudden death, sadness, depression. He is writing from his midlife and recounts his life in a series of vignettes that can only come with wisdom and age. Perhaps what really counts here is that the experiences, many of which are hopeful, some which funny and others gloomy, are not glossy – they are real.

His is but a snapshot of a life full of humour, of tenderness – of the things left unsaid. For all these reasons, this book deserves a place on your bedside.

Jennifer McShane, October 2020.