Review: Kevin Barry and Colin Barrett light up Bantry

West Cork Literary Festival event resplendent in sunshine as Maeve Higgins guides the chat for budding writers

Colin Barrett and Kevin Barry were interviewed by author and activist Maeve Higgins at the West Cork Literary Festival's Bantry event. Picture: Karlis Dzjamko

On a mid-July day in Bantry some brave soul has decided to stage what is essentially a sophisticated book club in an outdoor amphitheatre at the National Learning Centre.

It’s July — have the last 17 days taught them nothing? ‘Prepare for sun, expect rain’ should be our national anthem for the summer. An earworm, top of the charts irritating us all.

As we wait for the arrival of authors Kevin Barry and Colin Barrett and discussion prodder Maeve Higgins, there’s even volunteers handing out bottled water for people who might be uncomfortable in the heat.

But I drove down from Cork City in the mist and rain earlier on. What are they thinking, I silently mutter, wondering where we'll go when it starts lashing in five minutes.

This cynicism betrays the knowledge that West Cork has its own microclimate and Bantry, Allihies, all the best spots have their own microclimates within that. Met Éireann go through the rigmarole of predicting the weather out west, but there’s not much point in it.

Locals don’t need weather forecasts; they intuitively know the sun will be out for the hour, before a bit of rain later on.

And lo and behold, here come our triumphant trio, blinking into the dazzling sunshine to take their seats in front of another sold-out West Cork Literary Festival gig.

'As we wait for the arrival of authors Kevin Barry and Colin Barrett and discussion prodder Maeve Higgins, there’s even volunteers handing out bottled water for people who might be uncomfortable in the heat.' Picture: Karlis Dzjamko

The hour that follows is gold for aspiring writers and fans of the authors’ work. There are many gathered to listen and it’s not hard to see why.

Kevin Barry’s brilliant latest  The Heart in Winter is perfect fodder for the budding authors and the setting we’re in, given it explores lost souls, poets, and ruffians living in Butte, Montana who hail from this neck of the woods (Barry: “I was thinking how many books I’d sell at the West Cork Literary Festival when I wrote it”).

He can also do the accents, knows his surroundings intimately, and so his reading resonates and generates plenty of laughs.

Barrett is there to discuss Wild Houses, his debut novel. The Mayo man has short story prowess in his back pocket and judging by the audience comments here, has struck gold with his novel.

Barry used to give himself six months to see if his writing was going anywhere, now it’s two weeks, he says. When he started to write this novel’s two main characters, 'Tom and Polly', over the two weeks, he knew he had a novel within 10 minutes of sketching the latter.

He insists work can be “robbed”, or inspired, from anywhere and talks about a passage from Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven which was stuck on his wall while he wrote and helped to flesh out ‘Polly’ in his novel.

Barrett talks about swathes of writing he has that has never been published and sits at home on a computer. He’s not giving up on the latter passages. In fact, he’s hopeful they’ll become something in future. Unpublished work isn’t wasted work, he is telling people looking for that big break.

Both writers point to the discipline required to keep on the straight and narrow. Barry says most people are great storytellers in their dreams and that writing comes from the same part of the back of our brains, writers train it to produce something and he aims to sit down at the same time and write each day

Colin Barrett, Maeve Higgins, and Kevin Barry with West Cork Literary Festival's festival director Eimear O'Herlihy before their wildly entertaining interview. Picture: Karlis Dzjamko

Maeve Higgins chairs the session with the budding writers in the audience in mind, drawing out some genuinely interesting discussion from the pair who she thanks for being helpful, generous and for their “humility” in discussing their writing.

The audience gets an hour of gems, anecdotes, accents and more. When a hand in the back asks for another reading there's no time, but audiobooks are highlighted. Still there's a queue for signatures on the printed pieces fleshed into the hands of a happy crowd.

Tomorrow, Colm Tóibín will bring the curtain down on this year’s frankly superb West Cork Literary Festival week when he discusses his new work  Long Island, his follow-up to the acclaimed novel  Brooklyn (you may have heard of it).

The good news? The sun is shining on Bantry and you’ve time to get there, still. The bad news? It’s yet another sold-out event, so better start planning next year.