The Irish comic novel has become a bit like the fairies: something everybody sort of believes in, but nobody has - at least, not in living memory - actually seen. Grandiose claims have been made; books have materialised; and still, as the lady once said, we are not amused. Well, here's a slim and charmingly unpretentious volume which may yet have the last laugh. More of a novella than a novel, The Little Hammer creates a mood of sustained intensity yet is mercifully free of the grit-and-grin hysteria which infests so much Irish "comic" writing - perhaps because its author (yes, it is that John Kelly) spends so much of his time listening to seriously laid-back music? To give away anything at all of the plot would be a crime, but the narrative references range from El Greco to the Child of Prague, Action Man to Shirley Temple; the use of language is deft and original; the ornithological sub-theme is, well, light as a feather - and the narrator makes of the word "unreliable" a whole new ball game.
