Paperback

There were artworks in your face, in the till and at the back of your mind. They were stepped over and veered around, ignored and delighted in, carried about in pockets and under tongues, releasing their minor potency slowly or fizzing up sharply before disappearing. Art was made from leftovers and undercurrents, influxes and overflows; it was functional like the dishwasher and as extravagant as drunkenness. Beer poured from work, and work from beer, and art from beer and work, and work from art, and thought from talk, and talk from thought or beer. Artwork and beerart were indiscernible from celebrations, intermingled with popular secrets; all around was a showy volley of private magics.

‘Help In Cucumbers is no still life. If the genre O’Reilly has created here has a name, let it be Tipsy. The text flows in perfect pub time, serving up potent comic shots of pub life. From the nimble narrator spills prose that goes listing and trimming around pub lore and folk; gleeful, rascallish, unctuous sentences swish through the mind of the reader like the sticky beaded fronds between bar and galley kitchen. When our narrator claims, “The pub performed itself beautifully,” she is spot on. This little book is funny, clever and enviously stylish. I loved it.’
– Rachel Genn