`How was I supposed to know?" Ernest said. "I've never been outside Dublin before. How was I supposed to know the countryside was full of madmen?" In a post-Father Ted age, such a line may be interpreted as a post-modern comment on the fecklessness of Celtic Tiger youth. On the other hand, a culchie joke is a culchie joke no matter how you dress it up - and even the best-dressed culchies would surely baulk, these days, at "red faces, thick woollen jumpers and brown protuding teeth".
The above encounter takes place in a pub in rural Galway, where Ernest and Jon have come with the intention of robbing the landlord who has recently evicted them from their Dublin flat. They are bemused by what they find in the big bad land of Ireland - but then, Ernest (a poet, unsuccessful) and Jon (an actor, unemployed) are bemused by pretty much everything. The Runts of the Litter is a dialogue-heavy quest novel which takes them through a series of comic setpieces/learning experiences: an encounter with city-centre drug dealers; a drinkathon with an old friend who has sold out and gone into banking; and then there's the very strange farmer with the very, very big cows. It's hard to quibble with a book whose heart, so blatantly right-thinking, is stamped so firmly on its sleeve. Ireland has lost its way, runs the subtext; the old values are past their sell-by dates, the new ones bland, pointless or non-existent. Despite their adolescent idiocies, Ernest and Jon are oddly likeable; and for a book written by a young Irish male, The Runts of the Litter is utterly and somewhat remarkably free of gratuitous vulgarity. Its dreamy tone and wacky logic are reminiscent of Flann O'Brien - its pacing and punchlines, alas, aren't. With the right cast it could be brought to extremely vivid life in another medium. As a comic novel it's not the runt of the litter, by any means: but it's not exactly an alpha male, either.
Arminta Wallace is an Irish Times journalist
