Out After Dark

by Leonard Hugh

This is a companion volume to Hugh Leonard's "Home Before Night" containing anecdotes and stories of Leonard's childhood and growing up in Dublin. Leonard aims to reveal a picture of Irish habits - social, cultural and religious.

Genres: Memoir, Ireland

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Bryan Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

A simple, declarative memoir with some very witty turns of phrase, but for some reason, I wasn't super engrossed - it just doesn't, for lack of a better word, pop . I realize that the ostensible purpose of a memoir is to be relatively true in its recounting of the author's life, so it's not like one can fabricate "big ticket events" so as to write about them. But I felt like there wasn't a clear enough voice here, or that some things were being left unsaid - it felt like a memoir that would be read and treasured by those who know the author, but of marginal use to the rest of us. Perhaps it would have helped if the author had been more honest with himself, and the reader, in the sections concerning his feelings about those around him, because in these matters, it really seemed as though he glossed over them.

[Victoria & David Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

" In setting down these words, I took as my brief
the part of one's life that is a kind of waiting room."

So neither 'twixt nor 'tween. A (almost) middle. A (almost) muddle. A disappointment.
A meandering among standard Irish tropes without a through line.
A writing in great need of an editor.
And I really really liked the Hugh Leonard of 'Da", his great play about his father and his father's son.
And the 1988 movie starring Barnard Hughes and Martin Sheen.
(I should have known when the Gooodreads gremlins inverted his name that it wouldn't turn out as I liked.)

[Eithne Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book so many times and it never fails to entertain. Hugh Leonard must be one of our most underrated writers. His prose is as polished as that of Wilde.
"He could be genial, but no Dublin street was wide enough or long enough to be shared with another writer." A description which probably apply to the author himself.

His description of the am dram festivals are side splitting, not to be read in public for fear of being locked up for inappropriate laughter.

It's also minutely descriptive of the era. Brother Bercjman's flapping cloak will long remain in the mind.

[Niall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe that I got to my mid-fifties without reading this very funny book. Maybe being from Dublin means that I get the humour more, but not many books have laugh-aloud moments. Here is one of my favourite vignettes:

He acquired an invisible wheelbarrow which he trundled around Dun Laoghaire, asking ladies to hold open shop doors for him and it as he wheeled it through. Often, caught off-guard, they did so and stared at him as, half-stooped over and with fingers clasped around shafts that were not there, he would say “Thank you” and go past them at a half run. Once, in the Carnegie Library, an assistant paid him the ultimate compliment of saying: “You can’t bring that thing in here”

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The days of adolescence and young manhood in Dalkey and Dublin as the author tries, like all young people in all times, to break free of the bonds of home and parents. Not as good as Home Before Night, but still very enjoyable.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second book of his autobiography