Malachi O'Doherty

As you can see, this is a bit of a tryout. I’ll drop in some of my journalism as I go and shorter comments too.

I have just finished reading David Park’s outstanding novel, The Truth Commissioner and while I rate him a genius in melding the personal and the political I have to take issue with his sex scenes.

I had thought the briefest sex scene in modern Irish literature was Danny Morrison’s in The Wrong Man.

It can be quoted in full: He lay on top of her and she put it in.

But Park’s love scenes don’t happen at all. Couples get into bed and the next paragraph begins: ‘Afterwards …’

For a writer with such an eye for detail this is surely remiss.