Book Review: Billy O'Callaghan's The Paper Man is absorbing and satisfying

Author Billy O'Callaghan with his new book The Paper Man set in Cork's Jewtown. Picture Dan. Linehan

• The Paper Man 
• Billy O’Callaghan 
• Jonathan Cape, £16.99 

Billy O’Callaghan follows his superb novel Life Sentences with another exploration of the unusual stories that lie behind the lives of the working class people of Cork. A native of Douglas, O’Callaghan has quietly established himself in the very top rank of English-language novelists.

This time the setting is “Jewtown”, an enclave of small terraced houses behind the docks of Cork, home to Cork’s Jewish community, many of whom ended up in this busy port after fleeing the Lithuanian shtetls ahead of the Russian army. It is both a love story and an exploration of the curious way that the great events of history have an impact on individual lives.

It opens at a football match in Vienna in 1938, as Austria, which has been annexed to Germany in the Anschluss, sees its national team play Germany for the last time. The blow-by-blow account of the match is superb. Their star player, Matthias Sindelar, known as ‘The Paper Man’ or ‘Mozart with a football’ because of the skill with which he slips through the opposition, takes his time before putting Austria in the lead with the first goal. Hitler is rumoured to be watching, and it would be bad form to score too many goals.

The chapters alternate between Vienna 1938 and 1980s Cork. Jack Shine, a married stevedore, living in Jewtown, is clearing out his cousins’ small house where he was born and reared before putting it up for sale. He discovers a box of newspaper clippings and letters in German addressed to his mother, Rebekah, who had fled Vienna in 1938, some months before he was born. There are two photos of an older man, a footballer, who was perhaps his father. Rebekah died from TB while he was still a child, and had never revealed his name.

Jack’s quest for the truth unfolds in counterpoint to the story of the love affair between the famous footballer and the young Jewish girl from a country village. It is a simple story, but beautifully told, rich in descriptive detail.

The Paper Man, by Billy O’Callaghan

Rebekah Schein, aged nineteen, is working as a waitress in the village inn in Kaumberg, a rural distract near Vienna. Sindelar comes in with two younger players, relaxing after an exhibition match against the local team. The friendly banter leads to a more serious attraction as the older man and young Rebekah become aware of a strong attraction.

She does not hesitate when he suggests she move to Vienna where he has found her a small apartment and an office job, even though her parents disown her. He has a larger apartment in a better area, and they enjoy Viennese night life, and each other.

Although Sindelar is not Jewish, the team he plays for, Austria Vienna, is known unofficially as Judenklub and he believes that the rise of Hitler will end in war and put Rebekah in danger. He has, quite literally, seen the writing on the wall, in the form of anti-Jewish slogans. Some of his teammates are leaving, and he believes Rebekah should too. When he discovers that she has cousins in Ireland, he decides that will be her destination. She arrives in Cork unaware that she is pregnant, but finds a loving home where both she and her child are made welcome.

Much of the pleasure of the novel lies in the detail of its descriptions — ‘…the fresh gluey smell of newly-spread sawdust’, ‘… the skies above Vienna are greased with smoke and turned the fatty buttermilk pallor of church candles’.  

The precision of the writing and the carefully told story, which concentrates on its humble protagonists, not the bigger arc of history, make this a sweet and gentle novel, and an absorbing and satisfying read.