Jack Fennell talks all things bookish for the companion series to our popular podcast, Burning Books
Join Jack Fennell at the Dublin Book Festival for the launch of Your Own Dark Shadow: A Selection of Lost Irish Horror Stories (Tramp Press), the latest in the Recovered Voices series.
A book from your early days?
The Rainbow Serpent by Dick Roughsey. A picture-book retelling of an Australian Aboriginal creation myth, in which the Rainbow Serpent shapes the world and comes into conflict with the first humans. Thanks to this book, Australia existed as a magical otherworld in my childhood imagination, and Roughsey’s Rainbow Serpent and Quinkins used to make guest appearances in my childhood drawings, alongside Fionn and Cú Chulainn.
Dog ears or book marks?
I prefer bookmarks overall, but needs must. I suppose it depends on the age of the book; I wouldn’t dream of dog-earing pages in an old tome.
A book that taught you something important?
As a child, Anne McCaffrey’s science fiction novel Decision at Doona made an impression on me, though I was probably too young to fully understand it. It’s a ‘first contact’ novel about humans meeting cat-like aliens on a distant world that both species have chosen to settle on; the tension is resolved through cooperation and cultural exchange rather than armed conflict, but not without difficulty.
I came away from the story with the idea that the fairest solution to a problem is sometimes the hardest one to reach – but that’s not an excuse to stop reaching for it.
A book that makes you laugh?
The last visceral gut-laugh I had from a book was at the climax of Séadna by Peadar Ua Laoghaire. The sheer absurdity of trapping the Devil, and then proceeding to solemnly lecture him about how it’d be more in his line to apply his intellect to something better than evil, is priceless to me. The Devil’s reply, which Séadna fails to recognise as withering sarcasm, is brilliant too.
You can save one non-book item: what is it?
Leaving aside the obvious (money, computer, change of underwear etc), I’d save my dad’s guitar.
