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Mulligan's Pennies: Peeling Fact From Fiction
Topics: Pennies, Mulligan's Pennies, Bakotopia, NL Belardes, Irish, Novelist, St. Patrick's Day, 2008, russo's
Posted by thenovelist Mon Jul 31, 2006 10:57:03 PDT
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'Mulligan's Pennies': Peeling fact from fiction
Read the review and meet author at Russo's Books on St. Paddy's Day - 3/17/08!



By NL Belardes, Bakotopia.com contributor

Sometimes it’s hard to peel fact from fiction. Especially when delineating the fine line between a novelist and a semi-autobiographical work of art. Sure, the art could be entirely built on a truth. But such a truth might just be a philosophic idea, like a meaningful brush stroke—the confidence and truth in artistry is there, but the reality compared to such truth might be somewhere else. I ask myself when meeting certain artists if there are aspects of life where the line of illusion practically fuses with reality, as in the case of intriguing novelist Robbie Byrne.

Sometimes authors present readers with the challenge of figuring out just where a fictitious character in a novel may separate from the tangible person on which a character is based. In the life of author Robbie Byrne, real life is intertwined with a novel loosely based on reality in a character named Eddie Mulligan. Reality then becomes an exploration to prove or disprove events uncovered from the pages of a book.

Byrne sat at a table covered with mostly glued pennies, a fitting spot to talk about his novel, Mulligan’s Pennies. Other coins were glued to the tabletop, but for the most part the surface reminded me of the main themes of his work: that life is filled with discovery and experiences. It’s like what happened to Byrne himself. In real life he stepped off an airplane in America and saw a shiny penny on the ground, his inspiration for the novel, Mulligan’s Pennies. Such discovery was a symbol that life is what it is—whether shiny or tarnished depending on the moment—and if worth anything at all, should be pocketed with the rest of life’s pennies of experience to sort over.



A story about Irish tragedy and triumph:

I had just finished reading Byrne's novel the day before. I was drawn into the story because I knew the book was autobiographical to an extent: a story as tragic as it is hilarious, a journey within a harsh Irish childhood, and the naivety of Irish youth becoming an Irishman amongst a predominantly British Scots Guard (British elite division of soldiers deployed to Northern Ireland several times in the 1970s). Mulligan's Pennies is also a love story, a tale of Irish struggle and survival with specific Irish Protestant-Catholic issues that range from spiritual to political and psychological, all wrapped within tragedy of losing loved ones in a world often more tarnished than pennies left in the cold for months.

(read the full article)
(get more from nlbelardes.com)

Author Robbie Byrne will be signing "Mulligan's Pennies" at The Marketplace on St. Paddy's Day, Monday, March 17th, 2008, at 1pm. Byrne will also be jammin' on the bagpipes!

Story also featured in Bakotopia Magazine, issue 23, 3-6-08

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Comment From: Bakontributor

Thanks NL! This just goes to show you. Irish themed novels are timeless!!