John Creedon: This Boy’s Heart

Set in a city-centre household bustling with humanity, the cast includes a dozen children and another dozen adults, including aunts, an American writer, an African doctor, and a Scottish bookie. The streets outside overflow with brewery horses, beat clubs, dance halls, nuns, priests, a Turkish delight shop and a pub where a child could sit up on a high stool and smoke his cigarette in peace.

John spent the sixties striding the streets of inner-city Cork, with summers ‘farmed out’ to friends and family in the countryside. His stories are set in wildly contrasting worlds, from urban exotica to spacious meadows, from tales of the open road to his classroom of over fifty boys.

‘A thing of beauty. I adored it. Full of heart and warmth and humour, this is a book to lift your spirits.’ Donal Ryan

Quote from John’s book: ‘Hypnotised by the buzzing of bees and birdsong, I stepped through the boredom portal into a world of contentment where I could be distracted by life’s insignificances – the great unnoticed. I could get five minutes following a bumblebee from flower to flower, stuffing yellow pollen into his back pockets. I wondered if his furry Kilkenny jumper felt fuzzy like the velvet curtains in our sitting room. Sometimes, Mick the dog and myself would fall asleep in the heat of a haycock out in the meadow. The hay was dry and warm and sweet-smelling like a woman’s cardigan. Other times, I’d lie on my back and look up at the sky, wondering what was wrong with me and if God was trying to send me a message through the shapes of the clouds.’