Leonard and Hungry Paul

...a lovely, quiet novel

More than once I’ve received a rejection for a novel I submitted to an agent or publisher that contained the phrase “lovely, quiet novel” …followed by “but.” Invariably, the “but” has to do with marketing. As in, who would want to buy a lovely, quiet novel?”

Me, for one!

I love crime fiction. I love contemporary novels that dig deep, revealing something new about life (or about myself). I love historical fiction that makes me feel alive in another time. I adore clever comedies of manners.

But there’s nothing quite like a lovely, quiet novel that peeks through the keyhole at quotidian lives. Lives like our own, lives like those of people we know and love. The characters’ dramas may seem small but they’re life-changing and perhaps more likely to bring insight to our own lives than louder novels about the kind of people we’ll never know.

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession begins “Leonard was raised by his mother alone with cheerfully concealed difficulty...”

Cheerfully contained difficulty. I love that so much. I know everything I need to know about her.

Sadly, she’s recently died and Leonard, her only child, is struggling with the loss. A quiet, imaginative child, he’s become a quiet, imaginative man in his thirties who writes children’s encyclopedias. He lived happily with his mother until her death, a congenial relationship for both of them as they had many interests in common.

One lonely evening, Leonard takes refuge in the company of his childhood friend Hungry Paul, who lives with his parents at Parley View, the house where he grew up. He works very part-time as a postman, with no plan to look for a better job. His successful, perfectionist, soon-to-be-married sister Grace worries at his lack of ambition but Hungry Paul is happy with the life he has. Their parents Helen and Peter, a happily married, recently retired couple in their sixties, have no problem with him staying until he decides what to do with his life.

On the evening Leonard visits, Helen is working a jigsaw puzzle of an Impressionist painting while watching “University Challenge” with Peter on TV.

“Peter’s style was to sit in readiness and then shout machinegun guesses once a contestant buzzed: ‘Thomas Cromwell, NO, Oliver Cromwell, NO...’ In contrast to Peter’s machine gun was Helen’s sniper rifle.” She worked on her jigsaw, pretending she wasn’t listening. Then she’d offer the correct answer, barely looking up.”

Lots of things in Leonard and Hungry Paul made me smile.

This, for example: “Hungry Paul lived on a knife edge between a passion for board games and an aversion to instruction booklets.”

And board games are a big part of Leonard and Hungry Paul do for entertainment. They play most evenings, as they’ve done since they were boys, choosing from a vast array in Hungry Paul’s kitchen pantry.

“Their conversations combined the yin of Leonard’s love of facts with the yang of Hungry Paul’s chaotic curiosity.”

Of course, Leonard and Hungry Paul have problems. There wouldn’t be a book, otherwise.

Leonard is shy and living with his mother all those years made it easy to avoid dating. Now he’s scared to death at the prospect. When he’s attracted to a girl with cherry-colored hair and a clipboard, he has no idea what to do about it.

Hungry Paul is anxious about Grace’s upcoming wedding. He’ll have to wear a suit and perhaps be given some part in the service he’s pretty sure he’ll mess up. He’s doing poorly in his martial arts class, to which he wears a bathrobe and tracksuit bottoms until his sensei suggests buying a gi would be a sign of real commitment.

Leonard gets up the courage to ask the girl with cherry-colored hair out on a date. It’s awkward, but nice. She has a seven-year-old son, it turns out—complicating things. Leonard makes mistakes. Then tries to muster up the courage to make them right.

Hungry Paul enters a preposterous contest sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce to create an appropriate sign-off for emails to be used by its members nationwide—the outcome of which triggers a surprising turn of events involving the National Mime Association.

Meanwhile, the wedding grows near. Grace is driving her family crazy, and not only about the wedding itself. Trying to explain her worries to Hungry Paul, she says, “No matter what life I build with Andrew, all the problems of Parley View will land at my doorstep saying ‘Here Grace—fix this.’ I can’t be some kind of superhero.”

“Who asked you to be that?” he responds. Then makes a lovely, compelling case for the life he’s chosen.

Leonard and Hungry Paul is about family, friendship, love, and work during a season of change in the lives of its essentially happy characters. Will Leonard win the love of the girl with cherry-red hair? Will Hungry Paul ever get it together? Will Helen and Peter travel, as Grace thinks they should, or are they perfectly happy as they are? Will Grace be able to let go of her self-imposed duty to oversee her parents and her brother and enjoy married life?

A lovely, quiet, very satisfying novel.

Except for one thing: if you give a character a weird name like Hungry Paul, you really need to let your readers know how he got it.

Thanks for recommending this one,

Christine Sneed