Evenings & Weekends by Oisín McKenna
Well guys, it had to happen. It was inevitable that I would eventually run across a book that was just not meant for me, read as part of Jack Edward‘s new Book Club, Inklings.
Now, to be fair, this was Oisín McKenna’s debut novel and I wouldn’t write off his next book entirely, I do think there is a skillset there but … just definitely not my thing.
It’s funny, because 3 months ago I wouldn’t have been able to make this comparison, but this book really felt like a Mrs. Dalloway attempt, and Virginia Wolfe is even referenced in the text. The story follows the lives of a multitude of Londoners (so many characters) as they attempt to cope with their gayness, self-loathing, loose and continually slipping morality, drugs, directionlessness, impeding death and poor family relations… but like, there’s a whale so that was cool.
It wasn’t even hard to read, besides the insane amount of story lines, but there were so many opportunities to go in depth into really important issues that just ended up skirting shallow-level drama and emotional intelligence. No character development, zero good decisioning. Moral of the story seems to be, life is shit, we hate ourselves, everyone does drugs, we make bad decisions, run away from our responsibilities, and then life gets worse, everyone wants to die and then bam, your mom gets terminal cancer?
Just over all did not enjoy, but maybe I’m not the target audience?
That’s all I got for you guys today, at the very least, I’m interest to see what Oisín writes next.
Happy Reading!
-Anna R.
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The Weekend Readers 
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