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'Love in a Damp Climate: The Dating Game… Irish-Style'

By
CAHIR O'DOHERTY,
Irish Voice Arts Editor

Published Thursday, July 9, 2009, 5:05 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:12 PM

 

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“Love In A Damp Climate: The Dating Game… Irish-Style” by Quentin Fottrell
“Love In A Damp Climate: The Dating Game… Irish-Style” by Quentin Fottrell

The Irish are famed for many things -- for their writers, their music, their hospitality, and even for their whiskey.

But what about for love?

It’s quite odd that we’re not known for it. Casanova may have been Italian, but goodness knows some Irish men, in their own inimitable way, could certainly give him a run for his money. The word on the street is that the Irish are a passionate lot, so where’s the list of the top 10 star crossed Irish lovers?

You could start with Diarmuid and Grainne, perhaps, and move on to Scarlett O’Hara and Oscar Wilde -- if ever two people wore the heels off Cupid it was those last two.

But rumors of social impropriety or epic dysfunction of one kind or another seem to have dogged the steps of every famous Irish coupling you can think of. Why is this?

Maude Gonne broke W.B. Yeats’ heart; Lord Alfred Douglas ruined Wilde’s life and career; Daniel O’Connell’s rumored affair with Kitty O’Shea concluded his life in politics; even James Joyce had a rough time with Nora Barnacle (who said no long before she said yes).

It’s a vale of tears, Irish coupling. It seems like drama is knit into our character, and that’s why Dublin-based writer and columnist Quentin Fottrell’s new book “Love In A Damp Climate: The Dating Game…Irish-Style” is such a compelling read. Anything that opens the window on how the Irish live and love, because it’s still so rare, is completely absorbing.

As the agony uncle on his Web site WorldWeary.com, Fottrell has been dishing out advice to lovelorn and confused Irish punters for the past seven years. In the process he has taken the pulse of where Ireland is now in affairs of the heart, and his book makes for a fascinating study.

Finding and keeping a relationship is always a struggle, heaven knows, but the challenges facing couples nowadays are nothing like the romantic trials faced by our grandmothers or even our mothers. These days, in the anything-goes liberal -- if slightly damp -- climate of 21st century Ireland, love is a whole new ballgame and the old maps won’t lead you anywhere.

Fottrell promises to take the reader to the coalface of the Irish dating scene and he genuinely does, from Internet booty calls to first dates from hell, to childhood sweethearts finally taking the plunge, it’s all here and it’s all as engrossing as you would imagine.

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