McCarthy's Bar

The late Pete McCarthy was a staple of TV and radio comedy throughout the 80's and 90's but it was with this travel book that he finally found real fame. A chronicle of his travels around Ireland in search of.....well he's not really sure himself. A sense of belonging? A search for his Irish roots? Whatever it is, he tells the tale with great good humour and a fine eye for the absurdities of Irish life.

Travelling around in an old blue Volvo with no real plan other than to sample Singapore noodles in as many Irish towns as possible, McCarthy encounters a strange mix of the old Ireland and the new Celtic Tiger Ireland (this was published in 2000, before it all went tits up). He paints a picture of an Ireland adjusting itself to a greater influx of tourists from all over the world. A land of stunning landscapes and unpredictable weather. And a people with their own unique attitude to life and how it should be lived (which boils down to “what's the rush?”).

His prose is witty, warm and extremely readable. There is a great deal of affection for the country his parents came from, but he's still the Englishman outsider and it's that distance that makes his observations ring true.

This book really does have some laugh out loud moments, so if you're reading it in public, be prepared for some strange looks. I really enjoyed it.

This was a wildly entertaining book. A lot of people here have complained that McCarthy is “too English” for this to be a good book about Ireland but I think that's why I enjoyed it so much. I'm not Irish (unless you count ancestry like just about everyone else in America does) so this is a witty, charming look at Ireland from an outsider's point of view. Sure he has immediate family there and had been over the sea many times, but it still felt like this was the first journey and I could use this to help map out my own visit to Ireland. Who wants to see the same cities and things every other tourist does when you could take something like this book along and see a more behind-the-scenes Ireland.
I enjoyed the fact that, while McCarthy does take some undue cracks at Ireland and her people, he takes just as many cracks at himself and his own world view. This is an experienced traveler who isn't writing a travel novel, but is just talking to the reader as he goes on his own adventure. I like that he's not talking at you but to you through this, as if you're there with him. It made this book so much more enjoyable than the more academic travel books I've read before.
I would recommend this to anyone with a sense of humour and an interest in Ireland, even if to just expand their world view.

McCarthy, son of an English father and
and Irish mom, decides to travel to
Ireland to search out his roots. In
the process, he also decides to visit
all the McCarthy's Bars he runs across
during his trip. McCarthy has been
described as “an Irish Bill Bryson” and
this description is apt. Great fun.
Recommended.