Knowing Women by James Lawless 2013

Knowing Women by James Lawless made me think of one very good book I read a year ago, and two poems, one I have read several times in the last few months, and one I have not read in decades.  That Knowing Women brought these three powerful works to my mind is a very high tribute to its artistic depth and high intelligence.  I will explain what I mean in a bit.  

The central character in Knowing Women is Laurence Benbo, thirty seven, a bachelor getting over a so so relationship, living in Dublin.  He is bashful and has had difficulty finding women in the past.  He likes to go for walks around Dublin, when he is not at his job as a graphic artist.  He notices an attractive woman sitting outside reading Anna Karenina.  He is intrigued by her and begins to follow her on his daily walks.  Not wanting to give away to much plot, he follows her, she is from Eastern Europe to the club where she does lap dances.  He gets to know her, she is not really a prostitute but she does begun to take gifts from Laurence and they do start a romance of sorts.  Laurence wins a big lottery prize.  Now a subplot begins involving his brother and his family.  The brother has always up until now considered the better adjusted and more successful of the two.  Something nasty happens to Laurence, caused by his brother and sister-in-law, who I did come to emphasize with.  I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled.  There is sex, fascinating plot twists, and it does feel like Dublin is being well depicted.

The first book Knowing Women reminded me of was Occasions of Sin:  Sex and Society in Modern Ireland by Diarmaid Feriter.  Feriter depicts a culture of sexual repression, of joyless sex, late marriages and old virgins with the church and the state in everyone's bedroom.   I see Laurence Benbo as clearly emerging from  this.   His girlfriend might as well be a prostitute.  Recently I read for the first of now numerous times Patrick Kavanagh's majestic poem, "The Great Hunger".  Benbo made me think of the men in this poem who never really mature sexually or discover their sexual nature.  Men with a hunger they don't understand.  Lastly, and this reaction is probably quite off the wall, I was at once brought to mind by the hesitant character of Benbo, "The Love Song of Alfred J. Profrock" by T. S. Eliot.  

Knowing Women is observationally and psychologically acute.  It is also a lot of fun.  You knew this middle aged graphics artist with an Eastern European bisexual lap dancer girl friend was headed for trouble and I enjoyed observing his tribulations.  

I recommend this book very much and hope to read more of the work of Lawless in 2014. 

Biography

James Lawless was born in Dublin and divides his time between County Kildare and West Cork. His first novel, Peeling Oranges, a paternal quest set in the Liberties of Dublin and Franco’s Spain, was published in 2007. His prose and poetry have been broadcast and published in various magazines and anthologies in Ireland and abroad including Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Fish, Revival, Windows’ Publications, Crannóg,Boyne Berries, Boho Press, Ragged Raven Press, The New Writer, Route, the French Literary Review, An Gael (USA), The Stony Thursday Book and he was the featured writer in the Spring 2011 issue of the ezine Minus Nine Squared. Awards include the Scintilla Welsh Open Poetry competition 2002, the Cecil Day Lewis Play Award 2005 for What Are Neighbours For? a Hennessy Award nomination and the WOW Award for fiction 2010 and a Biscuit International Prize for short stories 2011.

He has broadcast his work on RTÉ radio and performed at many literary festivals, including the West Cork Literary Festival, Fermoy Poetry Festival, Baffle, Castlecomer, Boyle, Clifden, Galway festivals, the Cultúrlann in Belfast, the Dublin Books Festival and The Kildare Readers’ Festival. His story, “Jolt”, was shortlisted for the Willesden Prize and appeared in New Short Stories 1, edited by Zadie Smith (London/ New York, Willesden Herald, 2007). A play, The Fall, was performed in the Source Arts Centre, Thurles, the same year, directed by Donal Gallagher of Asylum Productions. A second novel, For Love of Anna, a story of love, ideology and corruption, was published in 2009 as was his book on modern poetry, Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a way of seeing the world (‘a linguistic ballet, learned and lively on behalf of poetry’ — John Montague), and for which he received an arts bursary award. A third novel, The Avenue (‘A work of passion and truth’ — Declan Kiberd) was published in 2010. Clearing The Tangled Wood has been released in paperback and his fourth novel, Finding Penelope, about a woman’s growth in self-realisation and set amid the expat drug culture on the Spanish Costas, and a collection of poetry Rus in Urbe were published in 2012. His much praised new novel Knowing Women, about a vulnerable man tainted sexually, was published in March 2013.

For further information, please visit James’ Amazon author page, or find him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. orLawless, James | Irish Writers Online or James Lawless at The National Library of Ireland  and James Lawless –Wikipedia, 

From author's web page.