It’s not every day that you hear Mary O’Rourke – former Fianna Fáil TD, three-time cabinet minister, one-time leader of the Seanad, Ireland’s grand-aunt – joyfully exclaim that thumbing through the pages of Ryan Gatiss’ All Involved awoke a previously unknown desire within her to be a gangbanger.
Though, as she hastened to add to the gathered panel members of the Eason Book Club on The Pat Kenny Show, “I don’t want to be known as ‘Gangbanger Mary’.”
This month’s book, selected by O’Rourke, was All Involved, an ambitious and engrossing look at life in Los Angeles in April, 1992. Three white LAPD officers have just been acquitted for the use of excessive force when arresting Rodney King, a decision that would ignite the city in six days of violent rioting – leading to more death, accounted and unaccounted for by a beleaguered police force failing to cope with warring gang members using the turmoil as a smokescreen to violently settle old scores.
Actor Rory Cowan, speaking from a studio in Leeds while on tour with Mrs Brown’s Boys, said he thought the book was terrific and terrifying, immediately gripping and incredibly well plotted given that it covers the point of view of seventeen different characters.
“I’d give it to anyone who wants to be a writer,” Rory said, “Because it’s a workshop in how to develop characters.”
Musician Brian Kennedy was also swept up into the narrative of All Involved, remarking how the rioting and gangland storytelling reminded him of growing up in Belfast during the troubles. He loved the characterisations and playful and meticulously researched use of language – and was so entranced by Gatiss’ descriptions of food that he just had to have a Margarita cocktail when leafing through the final chapter the evening before the broadcast.
Pat Kenny offered some information about the writer, who spent two years interviewing LA gang members to get to grips with the gritty reality of what that life is like. Gatiss himself is no stranger to bloodshed, having required facial-reconstructive surgery when his nose was ripped off during a brutal tackle in a game of American Football when he was a teenager – and the panel agreed that his descriptions of violence and injuries were brilliantly detailed and visceral.
Speaking to the panel on the telephone was Deirdre O’Connor, a listener who emailed in to the show to say that the Eason Book Club had become a part of her maternity leave, and how she’s using it as the perfect way to exercise her mind and broaden her horizons as she gets on with the time-consuming job of raising her six-month-old son John.
“I was glad to read All Involved,” she said, “Because it’s not the kind of book I would normally read.”
All the panellists agreed, with Rory Cowan saying that he was delighted to be a part of the segment as it pushed him to read completely different genres of literature.
“That’s why I chose it,” an excited Mary said. “It was so far away from my comfort zone, and my culture zone. And if you want raw sex go to page 102!”
The next Eason Book Club will come live from the studio in Newstalk in late July, and the book will be Brian Kennedy’s choice. Brian will make his selection on Monday from the following titles: Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill, The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernières, The Night Stages by Jane Urquhart, and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Tune in to The Pat Kenny Show on Monday to hear which one Brian picks, and you can listen back to the Eason Book Club’s critique – particularly at the lack of snacks in studio – below:
