Declan Lynch's novel about the lapse of an AA attendee is a rare and important exploration of alcoholism in the arts, writes Brian Boyd

A man walks into a bar. He orders a drink. This is how Declan Lynch's novel, The Rooms, begins and ends. In between you learn a lot more about the man and an awful lot more about the drink. You learn about what has brought him to this bar at this time and what this drink means to him. You learn about his last seven years as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and about his relationships, his passions, and his aspirations. You learn enough - you would think - to predict how the tale ends. But in learning everything have you understood nothing? Is this just a man walking into a bar and ordering a drink?

The man in question is Neil, a fading Dublin rock star. After getting up close and personal with his own rock bottom, he is now in the titular "rooms" - the place where Alcoholics Anonymous hold their meetings. He's assiduously working his way through the 12 steps, even if he has yet to fully confront some of his more diabolical drunken behaviour.

He meets and falls for a rich, young and beautiful bohemian fashion designer called Jamaica, who is deeply attracted to but simultaneously repelled by Neil's continuing abstinence. Some men have been known to give up the drink for the love of a good woman, but has anybody yet gone back on the drink for the same reason? Neil is about to find out.

Billed on its back cover, rather giddily, as "bringing you inside the biggest secret organisation in the world", The Rooms delves into what happens (to the character, Neil) at AA meetings, and as such has attracted some attention over its fictional depiction of the organisation.

"The tradition with AA is you don't say you're a member," says Lynch. "But I don't think AA should be the only thing in the world that you're not supposed to write about - in fact you could say that you're in some sense supposed to write about things you're not supposed to write about.

"I'm hugely aware that this is a highly sensitive area. I certainly did not go in to the AA rooms to see how it works for the purpose of this book.

"The problem is that the fellowship is seen as this institution, this monolithic thing. It's not; it's all individuals. The way it is structured is that there is no chief executive, there is no board of management. The meetings are open to anyone with a desire to stop drinking. I am not speaking for AA and you won't get a person saying: on behalf of AA, I denounce this book. That's not how it works. I know people in AA who have read the book and loved it.

"That doesn't mean AA loves this book. There was a letter published about the book (in Hot Press magazine) which, I believe, claimed that this book would put people off AA, because the character in the book seemed to be having a very hard time, and there was a depressing image of 'the rooms'. But I would argue against that."

For research purposes, Lynch, who is a forty-something journalist from Athlone, Co Westmeath, but now living in Wicklow, says he just used his own life. "I don't think research has a place in fiction," he says. "Research is something you do if you're asked to do an article for Trucking Monthly or if you're writing a book about submarines. I know something about this stuff and this area is generally not written about. That gave me a certain energy and I actually wrote the main draft in four weeks, although it took me two years to fix it up. I didn't want to write a generalised book about alcoholism, it's a real book about a certain character. I was concerned about bringing him on this journey. It's about one man's struggle to understand himself.

"It's got substance, it has a heart. This guy is aware of his condition.

"He's trying to find his voice. He has grown up a lot and become a better person. In his relationship with the fashion designer, I'm looking at how he is intoxicated by her in the same way as he was by booze. And for many people who have alcohol problems it is a love affair, it has all the characteristics of a love affair."

Given the disproportionate amount of alcoholism in the arts, Lynch is surprised by how little work there is on the subject. "It does seem that popular culture deals with it better. In film you had the hugely powerful Days Of Wine And Roses and on television shows such as Hill Street Blues you had an AA storyline. In literature, most books about drink are written after the fact - the this was my drinking life type memoir - or else they are written as moral tales in which our hero emerges from alcoholism."

In the book, the character Neil makes the assertion that Shane MacGowan isn't an alcoholic. "Anyone with a drink problem will tell you that drink changes them in some very important way," says Lynch. "I simply don't think it changes MacGowan in that way. He has other problems, I believe, not least health problems. The problem is this image of an alcoholic as someone who just drinks a lot. It's not the quantity, it's what it does to you. A guy can have three bottles of beer and go bananas; Shane can have 20 bottles of something and it won't have that sort of effect on him."

Despite the fact that he ratchets up the dramatic tension in the book about the reason why Neil finds himself back in a bar ordering a drink after seven years dry, Lynch has a surprising attitude to the book's very well-played-out denouement. "Whether he has the drink or not is not the point," he says. "It's not whether he succeeds, it's how hard he tries. Some people love the ending, others don't. I didn't know how it would end - that would have fatefully prejudiced all that had gone before. I think the ending is the right one. I feel that what happens is true. There isn't anything there that isn't completely plausible."

The book is by no means written, or intended, as an educational tome. "I wonder if you placed this book alongside an Eastern Health Board pamphlet on how many units you can drink, which one would be more helpful or be taken more seriously?" he asks. "I honestly believe it is uplifting - albeit in an odd sort of way."

The Rooms by Declan Lynch is published by Hot Press Books, €14.99