Books are My Business: Quay Books' Pat McMahon
Pat McMahon of Quay Books greeting some young readers at his shop at 11 Sarsfield Street, Limerick
I was a librarian for 40 years. I started in Limerick city library in 1972 and then I worked in libraries in Clare, Carlow, and Mayo, before becoming chief librarian for Galway City and County in 1995.
I always remember an old civil servant telling me when I started that it was an honour to work in the public service. I have always been guided by that advice and it is something I never forgotten.
When I retired in 2013, my sister asked me to join her in her small book business in Limerick city. I was delighted to accept because this has given me the opportunity to remain involved in the world of books.
As well as supplying a general stock, we especially try to offer the unusual and the offbeat. What we want in our shop is for browsers to feel encouraged to lose themselves among the shelves, to keep searching until they come across that one book that has been patiently waiting for them.
Yes, during the lockdown, we spent quite a bit of time trying to establish an online presence. Obviously, we are not Amazon.
But what we are trying to do with our website is to create the feeling of a small neighbourhood bookstore that fits in your smartphone or tablet.
It has really extended our reach and we are delighted to have had orders for books from people living as far away as Korea and Australia.
Although it is only 26 square metres, we want Quay Books to be a little paradise of letters, to be a place where you get those books that no one else has, with a selection as careful as it is unexpected.
Jeff Deutsch, who runs a bookstore in Chicago, in his recent book, , said that no phrase is more dreaded by the good bookseller than “Do you have ‘X’ or ‘Y’ title in stock?”
I was surprised he admitted this, but it is very true, it is the dreaded question. We are regularly asked for particular books but because our shop is so small, we probably won't have the book.
We are not strictly a bestseller bookstore or a supplier of the latest new books but we do invite readers to fall in love with something which perhaps they did not know existed.
One of the most influential people in my life was Tadgh Kelly, the teacher I had in fifth and sixth class in Saint Patrick’s National School in Limerick.
One November day in 1961 or 1962 he recommended a book of English essays to us.
I remember going home that evening and asking my mother if she would give me the four shillings to buy the book.
Money was very tight in our house and she was at the kitchen table, making an apple tart.
However, without a moment’s hesitation, she found the four shillings for me.
I remember getting on my bicycle, and cycling along the Canal Bank, where we lived and along the mall, up Patrick Street and O’Connell Street to O’Mahony’s bookshop. I came home with that book.
Today, I still often think of the late Tadgh Kelly. I have been to secondary school, university but it is what I discovered in fifth and sixth class at St Patrick’s National School that will remain with me forever.
One of my favourite writers is Albert Camus, and most of what I learned about art and literature I discovered in his writings. He felt that we should try “to understand rather than to judge” and I think that is what books enable us to do.
Another writer that I greatly admire is the playwright Tennessee Williams. I have read or seen almost all of his plays and his short stories. In there is that great line from Blanche DuBois: "I don’t want realism, I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people."
When I open the door of the shop every day, that is what I hope to do. Not to provide the routine but to provide magic.
