Join us on 9th September at 6pm to celebrate the publication of

Folly Lane by Damian Smyth

This is a free event.

Book your space here

Folly Lane  – a novel,  is a biographic novel skilfully weaving its weft of narratives and private text, all drawn from the public  world amongst the warp of a modern world in flux, tethered by histories of order chaos and failure. The novel reaches from imperial Rome to 21st century Ireland.

Folly Lane,  a place in Downpatrick, a ‘street’, is a cul-de-sac, a pathway, a side road – never a thoroughfare, but a mis-step- so maybe a metaphor , a fiction.

Nothing there is owned, not even ‘autobiography’ where “I” is a population of multiple selves, every ampersand reveals another diorama and even formulaic utterances – prayers, invocations, testimonies, mission statements, visions, strategies reveal mesmerising, ‘enchanting’ patterns of expression.

Memorable and telling – moreover, useful.

Within this fiction of self we discover stories, narratives, messages and lessons underpinned by irony, hyperbole and fable in a miasma of satire,

 Lord knows, even if we don’t look for one, there is inevitably a moral at work…