The Book That Never Stops Changing

When I was a kid, the axis around which Dublin revolved was a huge Doric column that had stood at the center of the city since 1809. On the top was a statue of the English naval hero Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson. Even to a child, his presence seemed anomalous. It was as if Washington, D.C., were dominated by a giant memorial to King George III.

One day, when I was 8 years old, my father and his cousin Vincent led me and my brother up the 168 steps that wound through the hollow interior of the monument we Dubliners called Nelson’s Pillar. I had never before seen the city from a vantage point so high that you could take in the whole place, the bay to the outlying mountains.

But there was, for me, an edge of unease. Vincent had bought half a dozen plums in a fruit shop. When we got to the top of the pillar, he opened the brown paper bag and gave us each one.