Leonard and Hungry Paul: A Novel

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It had taken someone with the special insight of Hungry Paul to realise the answer to the problem, strange though it seemed, was to get people to do nothing. Downstairs, he took a moment to sit in stillness, listening to the silence and the gentle high frequency tingling in his ears that was barely audible except at quiet times like this.

Though his life had been largely quiet and uneventful, his choices had turned out to be wise ones: he had already lived longer than Alexander The Great, and had fewer enemies too. Leonard’s mother has recently died leaving him alone in trying to work out how to cope with his quiet grief. These 2 men are sweet, unconcerned about life, play board games together, and see the world differently. There was no pressure to report fourth quarter losses to the “higher ups” in HQ … His job, on the few days he did it. It is about those uncelebrated people who have the ability to change their world, not by effort or force, but through their appreciation of all that is special and overlooked in life.I have a long standing interest in meditation and there’s something zen like about this, particular in the monk-like Leonard. It is rare that I ‘get’ a book (usually it takes ten or so pages) when I read the first paragraph but it happened the second I cracked open Leonard and Hungry Paul. The world would be a better place if we were all to ask ourselves ‘What would Leonard and Hungry Paul do?

But there are also bits that are frankly unbelievable (a huge cash prize for a competition and only 3 entrants, getting a job with the mime association because you can’t think of anything to say in an impromptu speech? His sister’s despair over his lack of ambition is justified in a way as he doesn’t really want to get ahead – he just wants to help.They share the minutiae of their lives in the knowledge that the other will accept whatever has happened and move forward without assigning blame. Perhaps fittingly enough for the book, my life didn’t slow down so I was forced to carve my own bit of calm to make space for it. Birbirinizi yeniden bulmanız gerekecek -işte işin sırrı- eskiyi canlandırmaya çalışmak yerine ilişkinizi ve kendinizi yeniden oluşturmanız gerekecek. Overall a novel I would recommend, and although not quite to my personal taste (which errs to the bile of Bernhard, the apocalypses of Krasznahorkai, and to the unlikable female narrator genre rather than uplit), that is more a failing of mine.

It’s not long, at 240 pages exactly, but there is so much crammed in there you can’t finish it quickly. But when you read a book about two single men in their 30s who both have no “get up and go” (their idea of a “good night” is sitting at home playing board games and neither of them has ever left their childhood home) and then introduce other members of their families in stories that are also not very exciting, it is just not very, well, exciting. However, unaccustomed as he is to seizing the day, he wonders how to act when faced with the opportunity, uncertain as to how quickly he should move. It gave me some reservations about what the rest of the book might be like, but I didn’t get the same feeling subsequently, so perhaps I was just taking time to adjust to the author’s style.His mind became effervescent with pictures and stories of overlooked people who had simply lived their lives as best they could during the Roman Empire. This book was one of their 2019 publications – and one which featured in so many 2019 book of the year lists by bloggers/reviewers whose opinions I rate that I had to read it.