The Irish biography, sports biography and GAA biography are three separate categories of book that are popular, particularly in the all-important run-up to Christmas.

A book about the Waterford hurler Ned Power is one that covers all three, but what are the characteristics that typify the Irish biography?

The one word that comes to mind when talking about the Irish biography seems to be “misery”.  There is a long, miserable list of sad stories that start off with a miserable beginning steeped in extremes of poverty and barefoot hopefulness.  The story then moves on to tell how the hero overcame such shortcomings and went on to become something special, something that rose above the seemingly impossible circumstances.  It’s a story of the triumph of the human spirit.  And there’s a picture of the author on the sleeve, wearing an expensive mohair suit, sitting in his large American home with a pipe in his mouth for literary-legend effect.

But not all Irish biographies are stories that go from destitution to riches.  For someone born in the 1920s in Ireland, there is always going to be a certain amount of poverty thrown into the mix, but these were times when material possessions were the preserve of the few in any case so most people would not have seen it as poverty because they had nothing to compare it with.  There were no Jones’ to keep up with and it’s only in looking back that the poverty emerges in retrospective relief.

From Abject Rags to Riches

Frank McCourt has a lot to answer for but I suppose that his was a miserable upbringing nonetheless.

So, Irish biographies can certainly speak of a simpler past, if not a poverty-stricken one.

“My Father: A Hurling Revolutionary, the life and times of Ned Power” is out on paperback at the end of November 2009.  Click here for further information, pre-order and excerpt.