Oh Mia God, he’s back!

I’M not going to
lie to you reader, and pretend I managed to finish

‘Nama Mia’, the latest
outing from that Southside legend, Ross O’Carroll Kelly, by the time it came to
sit down and write about it.

So I won’t
pretend I know how the story goes or how it ends.

It’s not that I
didn’t really have enough time either but in my defence it’s also pretty hard
to sit quietly to read something for the purposes of reviewing it when you’re
trying hard not to burst out laughing.

I tried in a
coffee shop and spluttered my café latté at lines like:

“She dabs at her
eyes where the mascara is spilling out, then she looks at me sort of like,
side-on, and asks me if her face is okay and I tell her it’s fine, roysh, even
though it actually looks like a focking tanker disaster.

?

I tried at home
while my wife was watching television but I kept interrupting

?¦

“having sex with
him was like being trapped under rubble with no hope of the Red Cross coming.

?

And:

“Erika and
I are moving in together,

? Fionn goes, as happy as Coolock on supplementary
welfare allowance day

? which was an even happier coincidence for me as I had
been waiting on a taxi at the Northside Shopping Centre at the time.

So I didn’t
finish Nama Mia in time to make my deadline considering the distractions of, to
steal a quote from Hot Press about a previous Ross tale,

“a smile per
paragraph, a chuckle per page and at least one belly laugh per chapter

?.

Only one per
chapter Hot Press?

But it doesn’t
really matter whether I finished the book or not.

Because you know
what you are getting when you pick up a new Ross O

‘Carroll tome. Fans will be
rewarded for their loyalty with the same cutting humour they have been enjoying
for the past 11 (11??!) books. And dedicated followers of Ross and his world
will know what comedy gems to expect when they embark on this latest hilarious
episode.

It will suffice,
I hope, to bring you up to date. Ross, the former Celtic cub, is all grown up
as he celebrates his 30th birthday in, where else? Krystle nightclub, and
contemplates the uncertain future of an Ireland devastated in the wake of an
economic recession that has utterly transformed his world.

“You know what I
miss most,

? his fiend Oisinn reflects, having returned from a self imposed
exile abroad, having run up enormous banking debts,

“restaurants where they
stacked your chips like Jenga pieces and charged you twenty Euro for the
privilege

?.

As Ross points
out:

“Everyone laughs, which is fair enough, as it is one of those lines that
is true, and funny.

?

Later he admits
to his mother how his wife Sorcha, who he has split from, has started feeding
their young daughter, Honor,

“Tesco’s own brand Thai fish cakes

? – which Honor
rejects as food for

“knackers

? – and his
mother replies:

“And I bet social services do absolutely nothing.

?

But behind the
entertaining rise and fall of that social class which has been so well
documented in the Ross O’Carroll Kelly series over the last decade or so, in
just a few pages I sense a deepening pathos.

As Sorcha tells
Ross when he boasts of his latest sexual conquest.

“I don’t know, it’s just a
bit sad. Sad as in you’re thirty years of age and you’re still behaving like –
oh my god – a teenager. Do you want to end up like Johnny Ronan?

?

So I have yet to
find out what happens in the end but first here’s another line..ah, go buy a
copy yourself, you

‘ll probably finish it before me anyway and then you can tell
me the best bits

?¦