Of all the delicious pop-culture puns that Paul Howard has used as the titles of his Ross O’Carroll-Kelly books, Don’t Look Back in Ongar, as he has called the final instalment, feels the most fitting. Howard has been as forthright as his protagonist when talking about where his iconic series began: in anger and confoundment.
In The Miseducation of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, from 2000 (and in the Sunday Tribune columns that preceded it), Howard crafted his characters to take aim at the often ludicrous world of affluent south Co Dublin, with its cult-like devotion to schools rugby. There was an air of anger to those early books, and an unlikeable quality to most of the characters, that could have cut the saga short. But they didn’t.
Far from having his targets up in arms, they instantly became his biggest fans. The rest of Ireland followed, eating up Howard’s biting satire, which held a mirror to the excesses of the Celtic Tiger, sending up almost every Irish stereotype along the way.
In Don’t Look Back in Ongar, Ross is hitting 40 and feeling that he has very little to show for it. He’s about to be divorced, his rugby-coaching career has stalled, and his “old dear” Fionnula is slipping away in a nursing home. His father, Charles, presides over the ruin of the country as the taoiseach who brought in “Irexit”, while his 14-year-old daughter, Honor, struggles with love and an alcohol problem. His eldest son, Ronan, continues to take the flak for Ross’s previous sins, while Ross’s three younger sons appear to have had personality transplants and gone from walking nightmares to well-behaved book lovers. There’s more, of course, such as Ross’s sister-in-law possibly having his baby and his beloved Castlerock going co-ed.
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The plot is farcical on the surface, but, as with most of Howard’s books, the absurdity of Ross’s life cloaks the relatable beneath. Here it’s the midlife crisis and what it means to still perceive your teenage triumph as the pinnacle of your life.
At its heart this farewell book is an exploration of the decline of our parents and the pain it brings to see the people we knew so well turn into unfamiliar versions of themselves as we look on helplessly. Ross’s complicated relationship with his mother, seen through the prism of mental decline, is an emotional thread that hits harder than expected, especially in the final pages.
Beneath Ross’s bravado and insanely funny one-liners, of which there are many, the book is filled with unexpected touching moments – between him and his original Castlerock crew, certainly, but also, particularly, between him and Honor, as he lovingly guides her. By the close, Ross comes to realise that it may be fatherhood that has defined him, not the 1999 schools-cup rugby victory that he still mentions at every opportunity.
There’s a sense of things coming full circle for Ross and for us as readers. The story may have begun in anger, but we won’t look back on Ross that way. He will remain one of our great literary characters.
