Written World

Art honours the world, and criticism honours art, even – perhaps especially – when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review is hardly ever written out of mere spite. In most cases, the motivation is disappointed idealism. Critics are people who love art and who hate to see it traduced. Hence the critic’s sempiternal cry: You’re doing it wrong. What the critic wants is for you to do it better.Since 2008, acclaimed novelist Kevin Power has reviewed almost three hundred and fifty books. Power declares, ‘Even now, cracking open a brand-new hardback with my pencil in my hand, I feel the same pleasure, and the same hope. That’s the great secret: every critic is an optimist at heart.’Art that thinks and feels at the same time – ‘good art’ – requires explication. The writing of criticism in response to such art is an activity that has taken place since Aristotle first sat down to figure out what made tragedy work. It is in the pursuit of this question – what makes good art ‘good’ – that Kevin Power found his vocation. During a ten-year stint as a regular freelance reviewer for the Sunday Business Post, Power fell in love with the writing of criticism, and with the reading of it, too, particularly by talented novelists who review books on the side. His conclusion is that criticism is absolutely an art. But it is never more so than when practiced by an actual artist.These pieces, ranging from reviews of Susan Sontag to the meaning of Greta Thunberg, apocalyptic politics, and literary theory, represent a decade’s worth of thinking about books; a record of the author’s attempts to honour art, and through art, the world. In The Written World, Power explains how he became a critic and what he thinks criticism is. It begins and ends with a long personal essays, ‘The Lost Decade’, written especially for this collection, about his mental and writing block after publishing Bad Day in Blackrock and his decade-long journey to White City. The pieces gathered by Power are connected by a theme – this is a book about writing, seen from various positions, and about growth as an artist and a critic.

Power is a writer's writer, and this collection of essays and reviews captures his sharp wit and incisive, fair critical eye like no other Dubray Staff Choice (Luke – Dubray Grafton Street, Dublin), Hot Press Book of the Year,  a remarkably perceptive literary critic and essayist ... The Written World is a testament to Power’s well-deserved status as one of Ireland’s most reliably engaging writers. Oh, and did I mention he’s often hilarious, too? Luke Warde Totally Dublin, Every essay here is a pleasure to read ...  The light touch with which Power deploys his wide and deep reading is illustrated by his extensive quotation, from the Roman dramatist Terence to Hannibal Lecter. It is a masterclass in and of itself ...  his book is metropolitan and cosmopolitan in word and spirit, enlightening and amusing, and across its pages art is happening too. Tom Hennigan, Dublin Review of Books, In this smart and funny collection of essays and reviews, Kevin Power doles out praise but isn’t afraid to put the boot in ... It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read either of his novels to hear that Power the critic embodies all these qualities — intelligence, good taste, humour and common sense — and that The Written World is criticism worth reading, for enjoyment above any other consideration. Pat Carty, Irish Independent  

Irish writer and academic Kevin Power is a lecturer at Dublin City University. His writing appears regularly in The Sunday Business Post’s book review section. His novel Bad Day in Blackrock was published by The Lilliput Press in 2008, and was later adapted to a film by Lenny Abrahamson, entitled What Richard Did (2012), which picked up five awards at the Irish Film and Television Awards. In 2009, Power received the highly coveted Hennessy XO Emerging Fiction Award and was also shortlisted for RTÉ’s Francis MacManus short story award in 2007. He was the winner of the 2009 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 2021, Power released White City, his much-anticipated second novel, to wide acclaim.