I really teetered toward 5stars here, but the ending didn't blow my skirt up as much as the entire rest of the book. He recognises his social awkwardness, especially when he becomes attracted to the office fire marshal, Shelley. Hungry Paul takes judo lessons (he’s not very good) and works one day a week as a substitute letter carrier. Their discussion these days mostly revolves around the upcoming wedding of Grace, Hungry Paul's sister.

This is a novel where people are allowed to be themselves without fear of being left behind, and it’s a refreshing change. The story is often quite funny - some of the stuff Hungry Paul came out with made me chuckle, even though his humour was often unintentional.Leonard and Hungry Paul is a gentle, touching story and I reckon it can be classed as uplit, a literary genre which has become popular in recent times. I liked how Hession showed us these two men slowly and gently, revealing their strengths and flaws, as we got to know them. Compared to his good friend Hungry Paul, though (no, the name’s not explained, just go with it), Leonard’s virtually a human dynamo. Leonard and Hungry Paul are not portrayed as flawed or unreliable – on the contrary they have a clarity of understanding due to their clutter-free attitude to life. Ich persönlich hatte ein tolles Leseerlebnis in Bezug auf die Entwicklungen der beiden Hauptprotagonisten.

The grandaddy of the genre is George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody (1892), and that took malicious pleasure in skewering the pretensions of its bourgeois everyman. I have been saving it since then because all reports suggested that it was such a gentle, calm book that I wanted to find a time where things were quiet enough for me to savour it – where my outer circumstances would match my reading material. But I persisted, and finally I did warm - a little bit - to this gentle pair of friends, satisfied with so little.When the drip was done, I carried her to the park, put her down, and not even the amplified bass rehearsing on the Great Lawn for tonight’s concert could jar our peace. 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. Who remind us that silence can be healing, and that a steady friend supports just by being a friend. Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession, is a novel of wry intelligence wrapped around the quiet rhythms of ordinary lives as they are being lived. Their friendship was not just one of convenience between two quiet, solitary men with few other options.

The limited plot is mercifully free of coincidence or twists – if I had a criticism it would be that some scenes (an out-of-date chocolates incident and a IT-helpdesk colleague) seem to be lifted from a sit-com.Maybe because real life these days seems to be a mine field, filled with stress and anxiety, a book like this is a balm for the soul. He still lives at home with his parents, and his older sister’s wedding is a central focus of the plot. Bildiğimiz ezberlerin dışında tiplemeler ve bildiğimiz ezberlerin dışında gelişmeyi başarmış bir evlilik de var kitapta. I really liked the sound of this book; a celebration of nice gentle introverted souls, two loyal friends, more familiar with the contents of an encyclopedia, than societal norms.