Oisín McKenna’s ‘Evenings and Weekends’ and the legacy of Joyce

Bloomsday (16 June) is a day to celebrate the life and works of James Joyce, in particular his magnum opus Ulysses, which was set over the course of this midsummer day.

This year, we reflect on the incredible foundation Joyce built at home and abroad for generations of Irish writers to come, with echoes of his idiosyncratic, playful language still found in contemporary Irish writing.

Joyce’s international reputation helped to provide a platform for Irish writers throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries to gain the recognition they deserved, well beyond the four corners of the island of Ireland.

Bloomsday and Beyond

In this spirit, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Irish Embassies around the world looked at how Joyce’s legacy can be celebrated through the outstanding output from Irish writers around the world.

Oisín McKenna: a rising star of Irish contemporary literature

The journey from Ireland to London is a familiar one to many Irish writers. Embassy London is privileged to champion such a wealth of Irish writers who have made this great city their home away from home.

One such writer is Oisín McKenna – a London-based Irish writer whose kaleidoscopic debut novel ‘Evening and Weekends’ has Joycean echoes.

Evenings and Weekends and its echoes of Ulysses

Though expansive in both length and storyline, Ulysses spans just one day. Similarly, McKenna’s book is set over a limited period of time, just one weekend in summer during which the lives of Londoners implode, merge and rebuild themselves again. In both books, the city is a character in its own right: An unsuspecting force dominating the narrative throughout.

As Ulysses is with Dublin, readers of Evenings and Weekends easily develop a fond familiarity with the environs of London as the book’s narrative traverses the Thames, skirts along the quays to Greenwich, and sails through cycle lanes to Hackney.

We spoke with Oisín about his writing and the influence Joyce has had on him personally and professionally. Our conversation meandered through a range of subjects, from the remarkable impact Irish writers continue to have globally and the universal resonance of their words to the creative freedom living in a city like London provides.

Oisín also read a passage from Evenings and Weekends which elicited such a heightened sense of the magic and madness of a London summer’s day.

As we celebrate ‘Bloomsday and Beyond’, we hope you join us in re-Joyce-ing in the power of a good book.

"Meanwhile, in London, Ed and Callum travel north up Kingsland High Street, which heaves, a catwalk: fashion queers strut past the station, dressed like early-2000s pop stars and characters from The Matrix.

On the corner of Ridley Road, old communists distribute leaflets and berate the working class of Hackney for failing to grasp their revolutionary potential.

Kind-faced women sing hymns and pass flyers. They want to explain that Jesus loves even you. Outside the Curve Garden, the patriarchs settle on benches and repeat what they have repeated every day of the past seven years, which is that since the Olympics, this place has gone to the dogs.

A tired drag queen smokes a hurried fag. She’s hosting her second of five brunches at Superstore this weekend and fantasising about a normal job."

"Up and down the street, people dart in front of traffic, no time to wait for a safe moment to cross. Up and down the street, people beg for money, for food, for fags, for energy drinks. Up and down the street, people buy hair extensions, phone chargers, SIM cards, baklawa, cheap houseplants from the Chinese supermarket, diamante mirrors, fibre-optic Big Bens, and sparkling silver tigers from the glistening homeware emporiums.

Everywhere Ed looks, someone is having the best day of their life. Everywhere he looks, there’s someone in terrible agony.

A bunch of teenage boys lose control of their football on the corner of Ball’s Pond Road and a passing man heads it back with spectacular finesse. The boys cheer, the man beams, and Ed thinks: Go on, my son!

A bus lets out a prolonged beep at a woman who stumbles in front of it. ‘Suck your mum,’ retorts the woman, defiant. It is hot. Fabulously hot. The air is parched, dusty, dry like cracked desert earth that rain hasn’t touched for years. The ground around every tree in Hackney Downs and London Fields is marshy with the piss of yesterday’s post-work boozers."