Stranger than fiction — lessons to be learned from real-life tall tales

Won’t you come into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly.

The spider was Joe Duffy. The fly was Kathy O’Beirne, whose book, Kathy’s Story, is an international Mis-Lit bestseller. Mis-Lit, short for Miserable Literature, consists mainly of accounts of God-awful childhoods.

Think Nuala O’Faolain’s first book. Think Paddy Doyle’s ‘The God Squad’.