Leonard and Hungry Paul: A Novel

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His best friend, Hungry Paul is sort of the same; he lives with his parents AND lives off them as he doesn’t really have a 9/5 job.

Neither look to external matters to make them happy, they’re more or less content with their lot in life.Having lived with his mother all his life, her death leaves Leonard dealing with silence and loneliness in a way he hadn’t before, having been content with their friendship and their coexistence. Der Buchhändler*innen-Liebling aus England und Irland konnte mich bereits ab der ersten Seite in den Bann ziehen.

But he had now become awakened by the thought that, no matter how insignificant he was when compared to the night sky, he remained subject to the same elemental forces of expansion. Their friendship was not just one of convenience between two quiet, solitary men with few other options, it was a pact.It gave me some reservations about what the rest of the book might be like, but I didn’t get the same feeling subsequently, so perhaps I was just taking time to adjust to the author’s style. I know, I know, some of you are thinking that these guys are losers, but that's where you'd be wrong. Any conflict, such as it is, is handled with such loving, gentle truth, as Hession puts it towards the end, that even when any occurs it is smoothed over with barely a ripple. Equally, in other books minor tensions like Leonard missing game night for a date, or Grace trying to tell her brother he needs to move out of the house, would be spun into big dramatic moments which had repercussions and provided tensions throughout the book.

So when I shrugged and replied that we were all just having a nice visit he turned and walked away with a look of disappointment. For my tastes, though, Toby Litt’s Patience, also published in 2019, is a far more engaging story about appreciating the ordinary things in life.

There was so much interior drama in this quiet and unassuming book that I was often on the edge of my seat as I was reading, wanting these men and everyone around them to stay happy. His busy and successful sister, Grace, is planning her wedding and urges her parents to make the most of their upcoming freedom while they still have their health. There’s not a lot of action, or many other characters, so it does allow you to spend time with the two mains and Hungry Paul's sister Grace, and is all the better for it. At times, their happiness felt a little unearned, with Shelley slightly underdeveloped and Leonard too passive. Leonard and Hungry Paul charts the lives of two friends across a handful of weeks, two friends who have fallen into comfortable habits and routines with no desire to really change their happy lives.