ENNIS is one of Ireland’s hidden gems. Tucked in at the end of the Shannon Estuary, where the River Fergus narrows to a pleasant crawl, the town’s rough proximity to Limerick and Galway makes it an easy skip for those seeking nightlife and urban adventure.
Pass it by in March, and you might just miss one of the most extraordinary events in the Irish literary calendar. The Ennis Book Club Festival – which runs from March 7 to March 9 – has been a mainstay of cultural life in the town since 2022.
Its aim, according to organisers, is to ‘promote and celebrate reading’ and in the short time it has been running it has hosted an eclectic mix of eminent literary stalwarts, including John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Edna O’Brien and Joseph O’Connor.
This year’s festival featured talks from two of the most respected names in contemporary literature – Ian McEwan and Andrew O’Hagan – alongside a plethora of other events relating to Irish debut fiction, ‘the art of the short story’, the intersection between poetry and film, and a commemoration of the life and work of the late, great influential Irish author Edna O’Brien.
Hosted in the town’s enormous, state-of-the-art glór venue – which boasts a restaurant, library, gallery and auditorium under the same roof – the highlight of the weekend’s festivities was undoubtedly Sunday night’s interview between literary critic John Self and novelist Ian McEwan.
McEwan played the role of elder statesman beautifully, waxing lyrical on his life and career before offering hard-earned nuggets of wisdom to audience members wishing to pursue novel writing as a vocation. At one point, he talked about how his near-obsessive commitment to research led him to regularly attend theatre with a neurosurgeon over a period of months when he was putting together the novel Saturday.
“I asked him if I could touch a patient’s brain,” he said. “And I was allowed to! I had gloves on, of course.”
The Atonement author opined that writers making their careers in the 21st Century do not have the same freedom he did during the 1970s, 80s and 90s. When asked what relevance literature might have in the ever-changing, confusing world of 2025, he referred to his own favourite writer, Saul Bellow.
“In one of Bellow’s books, there’s a scene where a character is on the verge of sleep,” McEwan said. “He hears dogs barking nearby and in his dream state he fancies that they are asking God to open up the Universe a little wider so they might understand more… I think literature does that for people. A good book opens up the Universe a little and allows us a glimpse of what it might be like to understand the whole.”
See More: Ennis, Ennis Book Club Festival, Ian McEwan, Literature
