Contemporary Authors

‘Me, Myself and Them’
By
Rose Rushe -
May 25, 2017
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Air traffic controller by day, Dan Mooney treads the boards with College, and Torch Players
Air traffic controller by day, novelist Dan Mooney treads the boards with College, and Torch Players

Dan Mooney launches his award winning novel ‘Me, Myself and Them’ this Friday 26 at O’Mahony’s Booksellers, O’Connell Street at 6.30pm with a wine reception and Alan English officiating.

Winner of the 2016 Luke Bitmead Bursary, the Limerick based work suggests a theme of emotional, social and romantic conflict. A major publisher has contracted it for release in the US next year.

Dan Mooney is a writer, air traffic controller and overly enthusiastic amateur actor.

Me, Myself and Them
Struggling to cope with a tragic loss, Denis Murphy has learned to live a bit differently. Both his friends are used to it – the only problem is his monstrous housemates.

When his enigmatic ex-girlfriend comes back into his life, she threatens to shatter the finely crafted world around him.

As Denis begins to re-emerge from his sheltered existence and rediscover the person he used to be, things turn nasty, and he is forced to confront the demons that share not only his house, but also his head.

The Great Unexpected
“If you’re going to end it, you better make it big. No slipping off bridges, it’s undignified for men of our vintage. Go big or don’t bother.”

Joel lives in a nursing home and he’s not one bit happy about it. He doesn’t like being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to take his pills. In fact, he doesn’t like living at all, and he’s decided he’s going to end his life on his terms.

When he tells retired soap-actor Frank about his dark plan, Frank urges him to go out with a bang. Together, they embark on a mission to find the perfect suicide, and along the way, discover the strength of friendship when you really feel alone.

Me, Myself and Them @danielmoonbags @Legend_Press #QA

Me, Myself and Them - High res.jpeg

Winner of the 2016 Luke Bitmead Bursary

‘I’ve never quite read anything like it… funny, moving and terrifying all at once’ Rick O’Shea

Struggling to cope with a tragic loss, Denis Murphy has learned to live a bit differently. Both his friends are used to it – the only problem is his monstrous housemates.

When his enigmatic ex-girlfriend comes back into his life, she threatens to shatter the finely crafted world around him.

As Denis begins to re-emerge from his sheltered existence and rediscover the person he used to be, things turn nasty, and he is forced to confront the demons that share not only his house but also his head.
My Q&A with Dan Mooney
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Dan Mooney

Dan Mooney is a 33 year old Air Traffic Controller, amateur filmmaker, theatre enthusiast, rugby fanatic, would-be chef and cat-friend. Ever since writing his first piece of fiction for a kid’s newspaper at age ten, he’s been writing in some form or other. Me, Myself and Them, his debut novel, is the culmination of five years of writing, and editing and learning. When he had finally had enough of editing the same manuscript over and over, he self-published his novel, but not before submitting it to the Luke Bitmead Bursary Award. To his absolute astonishment, he won the award. Since then the American rights have been sold to Park Row Book, an imprint of Harper Collins, and Dan is still trying to get over the shock.

In his spare time, he can be found writing, acting the maggot, drinking pints or performing for the stage in Limerick City in Ireland.

Describe yourself using three words?

Very annoying man.

What inspired you to write your first novel?

I’ve been writing for a long time now. It was always going to happen in one way or another. For Me, Myself and Them it was an overheard conversation that planted a little image in my head. When I couldn’t shake that little image, I started to tease it out. Several years later we have a book!

What time of day do you like to write?

Night time. Later the better. I need dark and quiet and the particular atmosphere you only get in the small hours of the morning. It’s probably a good thing that I don’t sleep much. Very productive.

What is your favourite book and why?

What a question. We could talk all day about this one. Different moods, different moments in your life demand different books, and there’s one for each occasion. If I had to pick one and one only, I think I’d probably go with Stephen King’s 11/22/63 or Ursula Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness.

How did you pick the title of your book?

I didn’t. I’m awful at titles. I had picked this dreadful, never to be repeated title. A mate of mine used to cringe every time it got mentioned. Eventually, he very delicately suggested a change of title and offered Me, Myself and Them. I owe Phil for that one.

Are the characters in your book based on real people?

Physically yes. The Monsters are monstrous, so that was easy, the rest of the characters were modelled on friends of mine. Sometimes unflatteringly. It’s funny. They all seem to think they know who’s modelled on whom. Most of them are wrong.

What’s your favourite word?

Plinth. Don’t know why. Just like it.

If you were a colour what would it be?

Yellow. Because then I could be a Simpson’s character.

Do you plan your story beforehand or go with the flow?

Plan. Always. I once tried to write without a plan, it did not go well for me. I need structure and a format for things to fit in. I need the story and the characters to make sense. I need to know where they’re going and why. Sort of like the exact opposite of my life.

Who is your favourite Author?

Ursula Le Guin. Genius. Stephen King a close second.

You are attending a dinner party with four fictitious book characters who would they be and why?

Estraven from Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, Pi from Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Whiskeyjack from Steven Eriksen’s Malazan Book of the Fallen and Sparhawk from David and Leigh Eddings’ Elenium. The conversation would be strained, and I’d annoy them all endlessly with questions, but I’d be happy.

What book are you reading at the moment?

Sarah Moore Fitzgerald’s The Apple Tart of Hope. It’s a YA novel and it’s warm and lovely and beautifully written.

Where in the world is your happy place?

Ha. That’s like the book question. There’s different places for different times. Thomond Park would be one. The Curragower Bar would be another, as would Charlie Malones. The Pollock Holes in Kilkee on a sunny day for a swim, City Island New York… So many happy places.

If you had one superpower what would it be?

I already have one. I always find convenient parking spaces, no matter how busy town is, no matter the traffic, a space always seems to turn up for me. I don’t know how I ended up with this power, but I routinely abuse it.

If you could give any literary villain a happy ending who would you chose?

Mr Hyde from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Two happy endings for the price of one.

Are you working on a new project?

Loosely titled A Rock and A High Place, I’m about halfway through the first draft of my second novel. It’s progressing. I don’t want to say it’s progressing well, but as someone recently told me: Done is better than perfect.

Do you have any upcoming events our members can attend?

I’ll be attending the Felixstowe Book Festival at the start of July as part of a panel of author’s discussing men’s mental health and the role of literature. Very excited about it. Martin Bannister and Matt Johnson will also be attending and I’m looking forward to hearing their thoughts. They’re both extremely interesting authors

Dan Mooney

Dan Mooney is an amateur filmmaker and air traffic controller, and a friend to many cats. He wrote his first piece of fiction for a child-operated local newspaper at age ten and has been writing ever since. He lives in Ireland.

Genres: Mystery

Novels
Me, Myself and Them (2017)
A Rock and a High Place (2018)
The Great Unexpected (2019)

Planning or ‘Pantsing’: Me, Myself and Them by Dan Mooney
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Article by Dan Mooney ©.
Posted in Resources (Better Fiction Guides, Plotting and Planning).

The vast majority of writers have always been writers. All their lives they’ve been telling stories, looking for an audience, creating characters and then placing those characters in peril. They did it in games with their friends, in games on their screens, in games with their toys. The writer-to-be looked for stories wherever they could, and they played with those stories, made friends with them.

Life experience informs the direction the writer will inevitably take. That’s why there are so many writers and so many diverse stories: because none of us lived the same life, saw it through the same eyes or could have ever looked at one another’s experiences from the same perspective.How strange then that there are, basically, and put in its simplest form, only two ways to write a book. For all of these writers who have been writing since their earliest days, but whose experiences and lives are so vastly different from one another, we have settled into two camps, staring suspiciously across a divide at one another.

Camp Planning, or the pejoratively named Camp Pantsing.

Life in Camp Planning is strict. It requires careful, meticulous planning. The writers here arm themselves with as much information as they possibly can, they know their characters inside and out, they understand them in their bones, they can tell what they want and when they want it.

Their stories are plotted, mapped and every twist and turn that the reader could never see coming was a trap laid out well in advance by a cunning author who wanted to ambush them.

Their stories are crafted, initially labour intensive but then flowing quickly. And at the end of it all: a book, a film, a play, a poem. Some finished project that’s been hard and terrifying and awful and lovely.

Life in Camp Pantsing is different. Here things are more free, more liberal. Their name was given to them to insult them, they were told that they “write by the seat of their pants” as though this was some kind of tremendous faux pa. Hence “pantsing”.

Yet they can lay claim to more artistic merit than their fellows over in that stuffy sister-camp. No planning for them, the story, like all true art, happens to them, not they to it.

Their stories are written in burst of energy and enthusiasm and sometimes stifled, though not for long, by indecision and an expectation of inspiration. And at the end of it all: a book, a film, a play, a poem. Some finished project that’s been hard and terrifying and awful and lovely.

So we’re back to where we started again, the writers end up in the same place, because they started in the same place; they were writers first, before joining their respective camps.

For me, I’m in Camp Planning. It might be nine years of working in Air Traffic Control has crept into my head and lives there now; it might be that this is just the kind of person I am – but I need a plan. I need to impose myself onto the story, shape it the way I want it.

I start with the idea, I let it rattle around in my head for a while (I almost never write them down, if they’re good enough, I’ll remember them). I tease out some of the concepts and I let them marinate. The very best ideas for stories won’t leave you alone: they’ll follow you into the shower, into work, into the pub. They’ll wake you up at night. Eventually you’ll just have to do something about it. That’s where my chapter plan comes in. I start imposing some story on the idea. If it feels wrong, I change it. If it feels good, I build on it.

The plan never survives the story. I don’t think that’s how stories work. At some point, the story will go its own way, but you adjust, you fix the plan and you continue on.

There are always four documents open when I finally start to write the draft: master document, chapter plan, timeline and clean-up sheet.

The first one is self-explanatory, I think. The chapter plan details what will happen in every chapter and why. It marks introductions for new characters, turning points in plot, motivations and pretty much everything I need to know. The timeline document places the date for each event so I can understand the pace of the story and the clean-up sheet marks the moments where the story has changed the plan and I need to go back to fix plan and previous chapters. By the time I reach the end of the draft, the clean-up sheet is my worst enemy.

This is the system that works for me. It gets me from idea to finished draft. It helps me to understand what I’m doing and why. By the end of this process: a book, a film, a play or a poem. Something that I love that’s been hard and awful and terrifying and lovely.

It works for me, maybe it works for you too, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe this is a stifling mess and you couldn’t possibly work under such ridiculously strict conditions. The crucially important thing is to identify which method suits you best, what things you need to reach that final moment for yourself, what’s going to help you get all the way over the line.

Don’t do it one way because you heard it’s best, or another way because your favourite author does it that way. Find the way that works for you, find the method that suits your personality, the best means to express who you are. Then write, dammit! Write, and don’t stop until you’re done.

At the end of the day it’s your story, and writing it your way is the only right way to write.

(c) Dan Mooney

Books: Limerick author Dan Mooney on finding humour in dark places
Author and air traffic controller Dan Mooney speaks to Nikki McKeown about suicide attempts met with black humour, monsters in the mind and his debut novel Me, Myself and Them
Books: Limerick author Dan Mooney on finding humour in dark places
Limerick-born author Dan Mooney: Why is mental illness so massively overly affecting men?

Nikki McKeown
15 June, 2017 01:00
Topics

Dark humour fiction Legend Press ME Men's health mental health Myself and Them suicide

Books: Limerick author Dan Mooney on finding humour in dark places
Me, Myself And Them, the debut novel by Dan Mooney, is published by Legend Press

ARE we having the wrong conversations about mental health? Limerick-born author Dan Mooney raises the question with his debut novel Me, Myself and Them and shows that humour can be found in many places, even if it is very dark.

The new novel by the 32-year-old – whose day job is an air traffic controller – is a story of male mental health, friendship, loss and the lengths we go to in order to cope.

Dan tells me how he dealt with his own mental health issues and about his two very different jobs.

“I went a little down the poor mental health road myself and, weirdly, I always found the bits and pieces that I did talk about were typically quite humorous. When you're discussing things, you tell a little joke and it’s a bit easier, particularly for young men – it’s kind of a coping mechanism,” he says.

“Limerick humour is quite black; there is a certain element of that in the book. A friend of mine attempted suicide by jumping off one of the bridges on the Shannon but the tide was out and he sank into the silt and broke both of his legs. When he went into the hospital a bunch of his friends brought him up a fisherman’s almanac and they circled the times for the tides.

"There is humour to be found in a lot of places, even if it is in very, very dark places."

Dan reassures me that there's no overlap between what in popular imagination seems like a stressful job – that of an air-traffic controller – and his writing about and experiences of mental health issues. If there were, he wouldn't be allowed to do his job, he says. For nine years, he has been keeping international flights safe over Irish air space; when he goes into work, he leaves his writing and the outside world at the door.

“By the time you finish your training you know the very second you sit down where your focus levels have to be at. You put your head into that space and you work. And one of the things I love about air traffic control is the second you plug out you're done: you can't take it home."

In contrast to writing, "every new air traffic situation that presents itself is different," Dan says. "Stressful things happen," he admits – though he is contractually bound not to elaborate. "It's difficult and you move on.”

In Me, Myself and Them, main character Dennis Murphy is literally living with four monsters, which he created in his mind in an attempt to control what is going on around him.

“That was the point of the story. Here is a guy who can present to his friends and family that he has a measure of control over his life and they see a man who is too controlling," Dan says.

“They don’t realise that he has very little control; he is almost completely out of control. I wanted to create a character that on the surface is completely in control."

Similar to Dennis, Dan at one point became quite neurotic; there were only certain places that he would go to meet friends and these places represented comfort and safety.

He explains that friends too, have to find their way to be comfortable with your illness.

“Friendship is a two-way street and for them it may be difficult; you can’t just say 'I’m this way and you all have to deal with it',” the author says.

“Mental health has become a topic that people talk about a lot. The stigma has gone away and that’s fantastic. But I’m worried people are having the wrong conversations. It’s like, if you just talk about it everything will be fine and if you just tell people you have a mental health problem you will be great.

“Why don’t you get more exercise or why don’t you do this? Everyone has become an expert [but mental illness] is more than all of those things; it is very serious, life-ending stuff.

"Why is it so massively overly affecting men? It’s huge and this has to be coming from somewhere."

Dan has been writing in some form or another since he was 10 and in an ideal world he would write full-time.

He jokes that his ‘mammy’ won't stop ringing him since copies of the book were sent to members of his family, which he admits he is a little worried about. He tells me that since Me, Myself and Them was published, a former colleague of stopped him on the street to check if he "needed to talk to someone".

“I’m fine but if you’re worried about me now you may not want to read book number two,” he replied.

Saturday, 8 July 2017
Book review : Me,Myself and Them - Dan Mooney

At some point in their lives, most people have a few personal demons to deal with, along with the odd skeleton in their closet. Denis Murphy, the central character of Dan Mooney's Me,Myself and Them, takes this to a whole new level though. He shares his house with an evil clown called Plasterer, a zombie Professor, Deano, who is a living furball, and Penny, a humanised cat. The freaky foursome take great delight in shoving Denis around, bullying him and trashing his house, but he manages to keep them out of his friends' way.

This is made easier by the fact that he actually has very few friends - not many people would be able to put up with Denis's antisocial habits and severe OCD. Denis exists but it would be a push to say he is really living. Then the sparkling, vivacious, beautiful Rebecca comes back into his life - his ex girlfriend, who knew the old Denis, before the accident that killed his best friend and his sister and threw him into this new, unsettled half-life, peopled with abusive, controlling monsters.

Many people use the expression "black dog" when referring to depression, so it is pretty clear that the cat, furball, zombie and evil clown are all figments of Denis's imagination, that he uses as coping mechanisms in his daily life and to cover up his own destructive (and self-destructive) behaviour. Denis sees them as very real and very frightening though, and I love the way the book ends with someone else catching a glimpse of a clown, giving leeway to the possibility of Denis not actually having imagined them at all.

It's a gut-wrenching, poignant read that really helps highlight certain aspects of mental health issues, that still remain taboo in modern society. It is heart-warming to see that, however awful his behaviour, Denis can count on his friends to try to pull him through the other side. Recovery is a long and difficult process but the book ends on a positive note, after playing with your nerves and making you expect a completely different ending - this will-he-won't-he tension highlights the precarity and fragility of recovery.

It's a slightly outlandish read, which may put some people off, but if you look beyond the weirdness, it is an enlightening and poignant account of one man's inner battles with his mental health issues. It is original and well crafted and it is well worth a read.

star rating : 4/5

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Legend Press (1 Jun. 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1785079255
ISBN-13: 978-1785079252
Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 2.7 x 13 cm

Disclosure : I received a review copy of the book.

Dan Mooney: Me, Myself and Them
June 1, 2017

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I received a free physical copy of this book from the publishers as part of their Legend100 Club in exchange for an honest review.

Struggling to cope with a tragic loss, Denis Murphy has learned to live a bit differently. Both his friends are use to it – the only problem is his monstrous housemates.

When his enigmatic ex-girlfriend comes back into this life, she threatens to shatter the finely crafted world around him.

As Denis begins to re-emerge from his sheltered existence and rediscover the person he used to be, things turn nasty, and he is forced to confront the demons that share not only his house, but also his head.

My, Myself and Them is a work of literary fiction all about mental health. Denis Murphy has a mental illness where he hears voices in his head that manifest themselves into entities before his very eyes. After a tragic incident during his early 20s, Denis has shut himself away in his mind where everything is safe and he can keep control of the world around him. However, when his ex-girlfriend returns from her travels, it throws Denis’s life askew as she inserts herself back into his life believing that she can help him overcome his issues.

I found it perfectly apt to have read this book during Mental Health Awareness week in May, and it was definitely an eye-opening and thought-provoking novel that shows the extremes mental illness can send a person into. I won’t deign to try and name Denis’s mental illness as I am fully aware that there are a variety of mental health issues that have similarities but, Denis’ mental health causes him to manifest his own personal demons into people that appear before his very eyes. No-one else can see these people, and it is clear that any events that happen as a result of these demons are purely Denis at his lowest points. As the novel progresses and you begin to fully understand Denis’ mental illness and why they are there, it becomes clear that each and every “demon” is a part of his personality that he has put behind him in order to live in this new, controlled environment. Plasterer is the sad, brutish man who likes to dominate and command those around him; the Professor is the articulated and knowledgeable demon who is a bit passed his time; Penny O’Neill is Denis’ more feminine side; and Deano is the voice inside his head that tells him it is alright to do things a bit differently. However, not only are they Denis’ personality, they hold similarities to the people around him and as changes are made in his life, the narrative makes these subtle hints.

I felt that this novel was very poignant in highlighting the importance of mental health and the way in which people react and deal with these issues. Denis’ friends Ollie and Frank use Denis’ illness as an inside joke, making light-hearted quips about his cleanliness, attention to detail, and control which, in his darkest moments, do truly hurt Denis and his demons. Rebecca, coming from the outside, is the person who, ultimately, helps Denis to realise that the old him is deep inside, hidden and locked away by these more dominating personalities that show through in his demons. Rebecca frequently reminds Denis that she is there for him, that nothing has changed but his outlook on life and that his way of dealing with grief, though different to those around him, is exactly that. In her bid to help Denis see the truth and realise that nothing is his fault, that he does not need to feel guilt about anything, Rebecca gets herself hurt in trying to understand why Denis is hurting himself and destroying everything, and every relationship around him, not fully understanding that it is the demons inside his head that cause him to act out in this way.

I couldn’t put down Me, Myself and Them as I was so intrigued by Denis and his progress in becoming the person he wanted to be. The novel also highlights how little people are aware of mental illness and those that are more hidden away inside of the mind, with all of the characters deeming him eccentric and weird – not taking in the full extent of what is going on behind closed doors. It is only when Denis reaches the lowest of the low and things are looking grim that action is taken and his friends and family begin to understand how badly Denis was affected by the events of his past. So many times Denis wanted to announce the truth to Rebecca, to reveal all about the demons that resided in his house and ran riot, but he could not for fear of how Rebecca would take that information, that she would stop loving him knowing how far he had fallen. This reminds us that people may be calling out for help in subtle and hard to explain ways and that we should be aware of these situations so that we can help them in their time of need.

Me, Myself and Them is a novel that should be high on everyone’s lists and is a great topic of conversation surrounding mental health. It is insightful, heart-breaking and, at times, hard to bear as you try to understand why Denis is this way without knowing the full reasoning behind what caused his mental health issues. I’m so glad I read this novel, as it wasn’t one I fully understood heading into it but it has really opened my eyes up to the more hidden forms of mental illness.

Me, Myself and Them by Dan Mooney
Review published on July 20, 2017.

Denis Murphy is a little different. He counts numbers and is obsessively neat. Anything slightly out of place or dirty can ruin his whole day. We know Denis has had trauma, but what it is takes its time to rear its ugly head in this book. In the meantime, we are introduced to Denis’ four flatmates, who are even stranger than he is. His ‘real’ friends, Ollie and Frank are used to Denis’ strange ways and accommodate him, adhering to a strictly regimented routine when they meet up with him so as not to upset him. But the flatmates are … well … very whacky indeed.

Denis is a strange character and I must admit on reading the first few chapters I was confused by his housemates, who are an evil clown, a feline femme fatale, a mad professor and a mute furball. Yes … exactly. These four make Denis’ life even more complicated by wrecking the flat and moving things about just to wind Denis up. They’re intimidating and upset him at every opportunity.

However, as I read on in the book, I began to like their strange set up. Rebecca, Denis’ ex-girlfriend, turns up from travelling and the whole of Denis’ life starts to take an unwelcome turn. He is safe in his own, new little world but Rebecca wants her old Denis back. And so we begin to see the ‘real’ Denis Murphy – The Guy Before Things Happened.

This is a clever book, never sentimental but keeping just that side of humorous without laughing at the central character, who is struggling with his mental health through an event that has severely traumatised him. Denis can’t accept affection and he even keeps his own mum at arm’s length. Human contact is kept to a bare minimum with only those who Denis trusts implicitly. He simply can’t deal with anyone or anything else in the here and now.

Through his friends’ help, we see a different Denis emerge. The author handles this delicately and with compassion. Denis is fighting with his inner demons and it’s horrible, fascinating, touching and frightening to behold. For a book that I took a while to get into, I ended up absolutely loving it. You won’t have read anything like this before and by the end I had a tear in my eye. Yes, I did.

This is an unusual, quirky and bizarre novel, but only in the best possible way. It’s a debut novel and perhaps one that I wouldn’t have chosen ordinarily. Tell your friends to read this. It’s also the winner of the Luke Bitmead Bursary award so don’t just take my word for it.

Tragic and comic are hard to weave together but Dan Mooney’s done it. And then some. Highly recommended.

K.C. MacKenzie 5/5

Me, Myself and Them by Dan Mooney
Legend Press 9781785079252 pbk Jun 2017

As witty as it is unsettling, Dan Mooney offers a story with the potential to open up public conversation around mental health and the human response to distress and trauma.

Disclaimer: I missed my train stop, twice, because of this book. Yes, Dan Mooney's writing is so captivating that I managed to zone (excuse the pun) out of London's juddering tube backdrop and right on into the wrong zone. I was then terribly disgruntled to have to close the book to make my way back to the correct stop. I could end the review here, because this feat alone should suffice to say that this book is one for the reading list.

A zombie, a clown, a feline cat-lady and a furball. Not, as one might presume,the opening cast of a weird joke, but Denis Murphy's four housemates. By day Denis holds down a number-crunching-data-producing job, but this day is also scheduled into set tasks, set times, footsteps required; it's scheduled right down to the exact gram of cereal to be weighed into his breakfast bowl. And through this all, waiting, are the four monsters he lives with.

They have a whole life together based around this schedule. And they have a relationship of mutual convenience too; they crave chaos and mess and Denis craves tidiness and order. So, each day they wreak havoc throughout the house and Denis finds personal calm in repairing the mess and damage. And this is the undisturbed rhythm of their everyday life.

That is until Rebecca, his enigmatic ex-girlfriend, comes crashing back into Denis' world prompting a mighty collision of his past and his present. Her arrival opens up the past Denis has spent years trying to live with, a trauma that has led to his obsessive-compulsive behaviours, and to the creation of his monster friends, the motley crew who have understood and helped him to cope. Denis has painstakingly built another universe, one of isolation and safety, which is suddenly under threat.

In the challenge of Rebecca, their contented existence is thrown out of balance and into flux. At risk of being discovered by the outer world, the formerly jolly monster crew take a turn for the menacing as they begin making demands of Denis in order to preserve their existence. This makes for an uncomfortable read in places as we watch Denis pulled between two realities and see his struggle to balance the demands of both, and his gradual descent into crisis.

As he straddles his past and present he must decide if the time has come to work through the pain and trauma and reclaim the life he has worked to forget. In the end Denis must wage war on his monsters, which ultimately means finally seeing that they are entirely of his creation, that they are facets of his own self.

A worthy winner of the Luke Bitmead Bursary, Dan Mooney has crafted a story of the strongest kind, that is, one that holds the power to prompt thought and dialogue. And this is a story much needed. Casting light on the reality of living with mental illness and distress, Me Myself and Them offers a wealth of understanding and empathy for professionals and the general public alike. Absolutely read it, share it, and discuss it.

‘Me, Myself and Them’ ~Dan Mooney
Date: June 19, 2017Author: thebookchiefblog 0 Comments

‘He watched the people walk by, studying their faces. As they poured by on the busy street he saw the whole gamut of human emotion. It was visible on faces of every age, and race and was specific to no gender. A river of people, carrying a river of emotion, driven by a great intangible force. It scared him a little.’

Me, Myself and Them by debut author Dan Mooney is many things. It is a tough read. It is incredibly sad. It is a tearjerker. Yet in parts, the laughs reminded me of Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project. Overall, it can be summed up as a stunningly original novel that uniquely deals with themes such as loss, friendship and mental health.

The novel centres around Denis Murphy and ‘his foibles.’ Denis plans his day to the minute and refuses to engage with anyone other than his two best friends and his mother. This keeps human contact down to the bare minimum. ‘The battle for conversation is fought in trenches of politeness and references to the weather.’ Denis only knows happiness when he is rigidly following a routine, cleaning up after his unruly housemates or surrounded by even numbers.

‘Attention to detail is something that the normal person aspires to, but as far as Denis Murphy was concerned; if you don’t iron your socks, you’re living a lie, hiding your gruesome lack of concern from the world.’

Did I mention his housemates? As Denis himself says, ‘home is where the hell is.’ This is because he secretly lives with an intimidating clown, an overtly feminine feline, a zombie professor and a mute furball called Deano. The novel could have gotten very weird here but somehow Mooney makes it work. He even makes it believable. He does this by turning the fish out of water technique on its head. Denis is clearly a fish drowning in his own insanity yet unable to see the water all around him.

You would think that this novel would have too much going on to work but Mooney keeps the story going with the gentlest of touches. As we read on, the author begins to drip feed the reader with details of a tragic accident. These scenes are the novel’s true heart and soul and I was greatly impressed with how they were handled.

The shining light of the novel are Denis’ friends and his ex-girlfriend Rebecca who try to help Denis become himself again. Like any battle with mental illness, the events are not all plain sailing. There are many setbacks along the way as Denis fights to conceal the true nature of his thoughts and we are kept guessing right up to the end. These friends steal the show with their patience and dedicated loyalty to Denis.

Mental health is the hardest of issues to write about compassionately but Mooney nails it here using the most unexpected of devices. To conclude, I can’t speak highly enough of this novel. You are just going to have to read it yourself and marvel at it’s brilliant ingenuity.

“I think if you examine yourself very carefully you’ll know why, but then, you’ve never been overly fond of introspection have you? It hurts, so you don’t do it. Eventually you’re going to have to. It shows you what you’re worth to yourself.”

Would I recommend this book to a friend?

Yes, but like I said above this is not an easy read. If you have a long weekend or a summer holiday ahead, I would recommend that you plough into this one to totally immerse yourself in Denis Murphy’s world. It is not a pleasant journey, but it is a necessary one.