Dolly Considine''s Hotel

A strange, original and unusual novel, which takes two unlikely worlds and yokes them together. Remarkable Ive never read anything quite like it Carlo Gebler

Dolly Considine runs a late-night drinking establishment catering to the needs of thirsty politicians and theatricals in Dublin's legendary drinking area, the Catacombs.

Julian Ryder (aka Paddy Butler) is an eighteen-year-old aspiring writer in need of shelter from his bullying older brother.

As the new live-in lounge assistant at Dolly Considines Hotel, Julian soon embroils himself in the shebeens gossip and the guests bedsheets and turns Dollys entourage into fodder for his literary ambitions. Reality quickly becomes difficult to separate from fantasy

Set against the run-up to the Pro-life Constitutional Amendment of September 1983 and moving fluidly between the 1950s of Dollys youth and Julians Summer of Unrequited Love, the hotel becomes a stage for farce and tragedy. Between Julians fictions, Dollys Secrets, and narrow party politics and featuring a papier-mâché figure of Mother Ireland giving birth and clashing sword-wielding dancers this rich cocktail threatens to blow them, and even Ireland itself, wide apart.