Product Description
Julian Ryder (aka Paddy Butler) is an eighteen-year-old aspiring writer fleeing his unlived Dublin life. Dolly McClean (née Considine) is knee-deep in running her Hatch Street hotel frequented by late night drinking politicians and actors. Dolly and Julian meet when Julian inadvertently rescues Dolly's barmaid-cum-cleaner from a balaclava wearing thug and is given a job in return. It doesn’t take him long to embroil himself in the gossip of the bar and the guests’ bedsheets. Dolly and her entourage quickly become fodder for his literary ambitions and soon it becomes impossible to extricate reality from fantasy.
Moving fluidly between the 1950s of Dolly’s youth and Julian’s 1980s Summer of Unrequited Love, the hotel becomes a stage for farce and tragedy. As statues give birth to fully grown men and sword-wielding Irish dancers celebrate constitutional change, it is Julian’s stories about Dolly’s secrets and her guests’ political intrigues, that threaten to tear the hotel and maybe even Ireland itself apart. All told in the run up to the Pro-life Referendum of September 1983.
All of our books are second hand, and while you may not get the exact copy shown in the picture, all of our books are in very good condition. Removing stickers from a book may damage it, so we refrain from doing so. If you see a price sticker on a book, please ignore it.