Why a Booktrail?
A slow discovery of a man behind the myth and the claustrophobic setting of a creative writing class
All Names Have Been Changed
What you need to know before your trail
Set in the 1980s in a Creative Writing Course at Trinity, it mirrors Kilroy’s own experience of attending the same school. Naming each chapter after a great work of Irish literature, plats and songs is a playful nod to Kilroy’s place in that canon and the book is certainly peppered with plenty of references to Irish writing.
This is a campus novel through and through. Structured in three parts to reflect the academic year, the book is narrated by Declan, the only male in a group of five mature students who have signed up to take a writing class with their literary hero, the infamous and celebrated PJ Glynn.
Travel Guide
Some of the best scenes in All Names Have Been Changed take place outside of the rarefied halls of Trinity and the cosseted world of literature, as Declan strikes up an odd friendship with Gaz, a drug addict who lives in his block of flats. I found myself yearning for scenes between the two as they count among the best writing in the book and providing an interesting counterpoint between the two worlds co-existing in Dublin in the 80s.
Kilroy does have some great insights into the nature of artistic endeavour and the toll that the pressure of writing can take but the book at times feels over-written.
All Names Have Been Changed is a very literary novel. Kilroy clearly relishes language and the book is dense with literary allusions andself-concious references. The comparisons with The Secret History (campus setting, intellectual student and charismatic teacher) are inevitable but add nothing to understanding either book
Booktrailer Review
Unlike his adoring students, the reader sees a man who is never less than human despite his flaws. Kilroy creates and entire ouevre for her central character featuring novels, essays and interviews and what emerges is a fascinating, interesting man who becomes even more relatable as his ego deflates in the eyes iof his adoring students.
It’s a shame then that the other characters in the novel aren’t so well rounded. Declan and his four companions – troubled Aisling, snooty Antonia, worrier Faye and the beautiful Guinevere spend most of the year fighting for Glynn’s approval, forging friendships then testing them and of course, falling in love, but none of them come across as real people.
It also doesn’t help that very little happens here. This is not a plot driven book, but when your characters aren’t particularly strong then there is little for the reader to get their teeth into. They drink Guinness, start and scrap novels, sleep with each other and inevitably mess things up and it rains a lot. There is a pervading sense of tension and doom that never leads where you expect.
This is a book about emotions and mainly about looking back on those key moments in your youth that didn’t merit their own significance at the time.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: All Names Have Been Changed
Author/Guide: Claire Kilroy Destination: Dublin Departure Time: 1980s
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