Grabbing The Tiger By The Tale

Call of the wild…

s with the Celtic Tiger boom, there will no doubt come a time when we will look back on this pandemic as a lesson in living.

For Greystones author Steven Duggan, it was this long, long Covid weekend that gave him the time and the right twisted frame of mind to return to a novel he started back when Ireland was in the money.

The finished work, The Loss Of Ordinary Plenty, is out this week and tells the tale of a lost soul, desperately knocking on heaven’s door, and a demon who’s part American Psycho, part Navan Man.

“The Celtic Tiger boom was a time when we were throwing off the last shackles of Catholic Ireland and embracing a particularly self-centred form of capitalism,” says Duggan, “and I wondered what would happen if you threw a supernatural struggle between good and evil into that environment.”

Not that The Loss Of Ordinary Plenty is a simple angels and demons tale. For starters, our young, attractive sociopath has his rifle sights set on an old folks home – perhaps taking revenge on the rampaging OAP killers of Duggan’s recent offering, The Elder Terror.

To keep himself, and the reader, guessing, in amidst the end of days showdown is a cast of curious supporting characters, including, explains Duggan, a “flamboyantly gay writer facing old age and a fading reputation, a property mogul recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and a struggling young mother reuniting with a now well-heeled old school friend.

“There’s a lot of suspense in the book, but dark humour too…”

And quite a lot of that suspense for Greystonians will be trying to recognise the carefully disguised real-life figures from the town in Duggan’s book.

“Well, they say you should always write what you know. And I know Greystones. And plenty of the oddballs who live here.”

You can grab The Loss Of Ordinary Plenty at The Village Bookshop now, or be lazy and order it on Amazon and on and on…

You can also check out our May 2018 interview with Stevo right here.