I’m left with many questions (including how Hungry Paul got this moniker), but I think that’s part of Hession’s point. At times, their happiness felt a little unearned, with Shelley slightly underdeveloped and Leonard too passive. Early on in the book there’s a conversation between Leonard and Paul as they play one of their games, and I found the spoken dialogue a bit forced. I enjoyed it immensely, bidding farewell to our two friends with great reluctance, so it’s probably for the best that having come to it so late, I’m actually just in time for Hession’s next book – and, judging by the fact that the publisher had to reprint Panenka before it even came out, it’s safe to say that this one is also set to do well. The pair are quite awkward socially - Leonard is shy and low on confidence, while Hungry Paul displays some symptoms of autism, even though it is never explicitly mentioned.

I feel a little mean-spirited giving this book just 3 stars, as it does contain some funny lines, but for me Hession tries just a little too hard to please everyone, making it a little too much like a romcom script for my taste. Yani gercekten ilk sıraya koymak; sadece sevgililer günü kartına bir tanem yazmayı ya da buna benzer şeyleri kastetmiyorum. Rónán Hession highlights personal qualities that are so often undervalued - kindness and gentleness - especially in a world where people who lack a competitive edge are often seen as failures. And that was a balm to my soul because I find all the loudness of our today's reality to be overwhelming, unnecessary and ineffective. As with many novels, one of the main drives of this narrative is the lead up to a marriage – in this case that of Hungry Paul's sister Grace.Hızlıca bazı kalıplara sokabileceğimiz karakterler bunlar aslında, mesela pekala "başarısız" diyebileceğimiz tipler ama o stereotiplerin dışında / ötesinde kim olduklarını görmemizi sağlıyor bu tatlı roman. Leonard and hungry Paul are two slightly weird besties; Leonard eventually gets a girlfriend and Hungry Paul finds a job, while Paul's sister gets married. Leonard has the chance of a relationship with a woman, and Hungry Paul has the chance to forge a career. Leonard, who works writing entries for children’s encyclopedias, recognises that this represents a key turning point in his life and that he has the choice either to retreat further from the world (which he fears will turn him into a grumpy eccentric) or start to carefully engage with it (a path he embarks on when a single mother at work – her child a fan of his work - starts to show interest in him). The leisurely pace flags further when it comes to the subplots, which involve even less remarkable relatives.

These might seem like small events for most people, but for the two friends, they are significant, and this sets in motion a momentous few weeks in their otherwise quiet lives. I didn't believe in the competition that Hungry Paul enters, or the way the worthy hospital visits pan out.

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.

The grandaddy of the genre is George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of a Nobody (1892), and that took malicious pleasure in skewering the pretensions of its bourgeois everyman. And Hungry Paul has entered a competition to come up with a new sign-off phrase for the local Chamber of Commerce. I could also relate to both Leonard and Hungry Paul, having been in the same situation as them many times in my life. Compared to his good friend Hungry Paul, though (no, the name’s not explained, just go with it), Leonard’s virtually a human dynamo. Leonard and Hungry Paul is surprisingly engaging, and also filled with wonderfully humorous scenes, mostly involving Hungry Paul.

It helps that Hession has created an appealing narrator, one who seems just as idiosyncratic as the two men he’s describing. Maybe because real life these days seems to be a mine field, filled with stress and anxiety, a book like this is a balm for the soul. Leonard’s mother has recently died leaving him alone in trying to work out how to cope with his quiet grief.