Irish for beginners

Roger Boylan is a writer who has a number of books to his credit, and he maintains a web site to tell the world about them.

The web site, Roger says, is maintained from Tokyo on an on-again, off-again basis. Because he lives in Texas, not Tokyo. (Look, I don't make this stuff up, OK? I just tell you what people tell me.)

Anyway, Roger is author of the Killoyle Trilogy, part one of which is Killoyle, published by the Dalkey Archive; part two is The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad (Grove Press); and part three is Killoyle Wine and Cheese, which is being published this summer in Germany. In fact, says Roger, the other books have sold better, and had a better critical reception, in Germany than elsewhere. Which is a bit of a puzzle really, because they look to me as if they would be the divil to translate.

And you can't complain about a lack of opportunity to taste before you buy. Roger's web site gives lots of extracts to choose from. And I must say it all looks highly entertaining; though possibly something to be taken in small doses, like Irish whiskey, rather than swilled down like the Guinness.

In his spare time Roger writes real serious stuff about the likes of Ian McEwan, in an equally serious journal called the Boston Review. This is all several storeys above my head, and I get vertigo in the lift, so I don't go there. But there's more, I understand, in the archives.

In a possible attempt to ingratiate himself with a Wiltshire man, Roger tells me that in the late '70s he passed out under a tree in Warminster. Yes, a lot of people do, Roger. It's that sort of town.

I wonder if Roger is any relation to Blazes?