Bookwitch

I’ll have to start a fan club for authors’ wives. And possibly one for really good publishers’ publicity people. I met Frank McCourt’s wife Ellen yesterday, and it didn’t take long until we were fully into poison ivy and stuff. And Geraldine from Harper Collins was as beautifully efficient and friendly as last time I saw her. Frank himself was also nice and entertaining and funny. He and Ellen ended up meeting us wearing their travelling clothes, and I’m glad because anyone who travels so elegantly shouldn’t be allowed to change into something even grander. Ellen’s a dab hand at dusting Frank off when necessary.

The Limerick style weather apart, their visit went very well. We started off with tea (or was it coffee?) and conversation. Simply Books had hunted out Irish music, but Frank would have preferred jazz. Well, he counts himself as a New Yorker. We talked about going without food, which was something Frank wanted the children who came to hear him learn about. In the end he didn’t quite manage that, as it turned into a farce about bananas and crispy chicken and cooking over a fire in the garden.

When I read Angela and the Baby Jesus last week, I thought it was a nice little book. When Frank McCourt reads it, it turns into something very special. (Maybe an audio book would be good?) He stopped reading at a crucial point midway, to entice his audience to spend money. Canny. The Q & A that followed were among the most hilarious I’ve come across, and the adults present didn’t even pretend not to laugh.

Frank taught 12 000 pupils during his thirty years as a teacher, and trained dogs for the US army for a couple of years. And it shows. He’s good with an audience. As he showed last year when Son and Daughter and I saw him in Gothenburg, he can handle poor interviewers quite well, too. He just takes over, and is very charming and very Irish.

On the side Ellen and Geraldine compared Blackberries. Ellen has a frugal streak and is into switching SIM cards to save money. Just like the witch. Her hand bag is very heavy, possibly due to too many mobile phones, though she blames it on our British coins. Too much money, then.

Over the red wine (Frank can’t drink beer…) we discussed War Horse, which the McCourts went to see at the National the previous evening. We all agreed we liked the goose.

And there’s the poison ivy. Ellen was itching because their dog has a tendency to get close up to the poison ivy first, and to her next. Ouch. I hadn’t realised it was as contagious as that. Then we swiftly moved on to ticks, of the Lyme disease variety. It makes a change to talk to someone who understands. And there’s the issue of why the British have light switches outside their bathrooms.

They’re going on to Limerick from here, where apparently you can go on an Angela’s Ashes tour for €40. According to Frank, Angela’s Ashes is worse than Dickens. Unlike with Dickens there’s no hope at all, and no aristocracy to sort things out. And he says there’s no use being happy. Having had a miserable childhood is very good for an author. Though strangely enough Frank feels the film of Angela’s Ashes was too serious, with no humour at all. He explains that it was made by an Englishman. Though he likes the English. And potatoes, and Italian food.

Last night Frank talked a lot about his teaching career, to the extent that everyone wanted to buy copies of Teacher Man, and they ran out. Geraldine could work out a solution to the problem though, so everything was OK in the end. When Frank had signed his way through hundreds of books and been photographed with his fans, Ellen allowed him to eat a selection of the Irish food on offer. But only that which won’t make Frank ill.

And after that it was hugs and handshakes all round. Come back soon.