Mediation: why people fight and how to help them to stop, by Michael Williams, Poolbeg, 292 pages £7.99 pb
It is not often that a "how to" book is enjoyable for its author's literary style - shouting, gushing, smugness and gee-whizzery seem to be the order of the day in the self-help book industry. But Michael Williams's enjoyable Mediation: why people fight and how to help them to stop avoids all that.
The book has a conversational, rather laconic style to be savoured as Williams gives the reader the benefit of his deep experience as a mediator. The aim of mediation when relationships end is to enable people who are splitting up to do so in a way which serves their best interests when it comes to such matters as money, property and the care of children - topics on which it is hard enough for couples to agree at the best of times.
Mediation is seen as an inexpensive and effective alternative to legal bloodletting, with all the bitterness and costs which the latter involves. Mr Williams, in the words of Brendan Behan, "has had it both ways", having been a lawyer for 30 years before becoming a mediator.
When marriages break down, families are "colonised", Mr Williams convincingly asserts. The colonists are all those people who feel entitled to poke around in the couple's affairs: families, close friends, less close friends, therapists, social workers, legal advisers and, ultimately, judges.
Mr Williams's advice to all these colonists is that unless the couple are incapable of making decisions and the children are at risk of injury, these colonisers should mind their own business. "Even in the chaos of separating, I believe a normal family, perhaps with a little help, can look after themselves better than outsiders can live their lives for them..."
One of the banes of Mr Williams's life is what he calls the "absent warrior" who dispenses earnest advice from the outside and which the "advisee", for want of a better word, brings into the mediation session. The absent warrior is, of course, the bane of many a life. What negotiator has not been roundly and repeatedly condemned by the absent warrior who could have done a far better deal but who, unfortunately, could not be there at the time - due, perhaps, to having had an urgent appointment with a barstool? There again, which of us has not been that warrior from time to time?
Mr Williams has his own ways of dealing with them. Remarking innocently, "It must be frustrating to have your brother always interfering and telling you how to run your life" is one of them.
He has a dash of realism about him which can startle until the reader realises that he is, of course, right and that this is how we really are. He remarks, for instance, that if part of a separation deal is that the husband's pension will pass, on his death, to his first wife, his chances of getting a new wife suffer thereby - because he will not be able to use his pension to entice her into the nest.
Talk about the death of romance - whatever happened to swinging through the trees with a box of Milk Tray? Of course, the unromantic Mr Williams is right - given a choice between a pension and a box of Milk Tray we all know which is the more attractive (and less fattening).
Mr Williams is not, by the way, suggesting that men keep their pensions for their second wives or partners. It is just that he deals with real life and his job is to help his clients to face it and figure out what to do about it. For anybody involved in mediation, negotiation or conflict resolution, this book is valuable, will repay reading and will entertain all at the same time.
Padraig O'Morain is Social Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times