ANTHOLOGY: LIZ MCMANUSreviews Sunday Miscellany: A selection from 2008-201,
Edited by Clíodhna Ní Anluain New Island, 450pp, €17.99

SUNDAY MISCELLANY is not just a radio programme. First broadcast on RTÉ radio in 1968 its blend of prose, poetry and music has lasted through the decades and, although its formula is simple, the programme has developed into a national institution. It is like The Rose of Tralee, Clonakilty black pudding or the Horse Show – a quintessentially Irish phenomenon. For those of us who live a post-Catholic existence, it provides a replacement Sunday morning ritual while offering stability in a world that has become disturbingly capricious.

It makes no apology for appealing to a middle-aged listenership – after all, what young person would be awake at 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning? – as it exudes its pervasive whiff of nostalgia.

Such iconic status creates a challenge when it comes to reviewing this book; a selection of essays, poems and stories broadcast on Sunday Miscellany from 2008 to 2011. The writing is for radio and the work is written to be read aloud by the author. It belongs in the oral tradition of the seanchai. It is not literature in the literary sense. In fact, the writing is intrinsically bound up with the voice and personality of the writer. This gives the programme its charm.

Read, for example, Effing Songs, Brendan Graham's essay on how his songs are created and when he reads the same words on radio, listen how they are transformed by the passion in his voice.

Appropriately, in the last essay in the book Stories Like The Light of Stars, Eilís Ní Dhuibhne elucidates the value of good recorded stories: "They are the light in the eyes of a storyteller and of those who love stories, the creative spirit that does not go out as long as people want to be entertained and know how to entertain themselves by weaving words and memories and ideas into interesting patterns.

In this collection, the sheer range of contributors makes for many intricate and interesting patterns. There are contributions from major writers such as John Banville, Mary O’Malley, Claire Kilroy, Joseph O’Connor, Kevin Barry, Mae Leonard, Mary Rose Callaghan and Val Mulkerns.

At its core, however, Sunday Miscellanyis not about the big names of literature. The real delight is generated by writers who are not well known, who care deeply about life, or who have a quirky slant on its vagaries, or who project a personality that outshines their work.

Radio has that kind of intimacy, as if a neighbour has dropped in for a chat and, over a cup of tea, discloses a hidden talent for storytelling.

Cyril Kelly is a good example of those contributors who could be called the “known unknowns” and whose work form the backbone of this collection.

In his biography he describes himself as serving time as a scribbling apprentice but his contribution, The Colour Of Words, was the first I sought out because I had enjoyed it so much on radio. That said, the comedian Kevin McAleer's contribution, T ravel Broadens the Mind, is memorable as a short, pithy, funny reflection on ageing, on rural versus urban existence, on father and son relationships.

The poetry benefits particularly well from being published. The reader has a chance to pause over a word or phrase without losing the overall sense of the poem.

Scattered through the book are poems that are satisfying to read. The Kiss, by Grace Wells, made our cornflakes sit up when she read it on radio and it's a pleasure to see it now in print.

Capturing the moment in printed form, as this book does, gives the Sunday Miscellanyaficionado the opportunity to revisit, and the newcomer to discover, points of interest. Inevitably the quality of the work varies. The writing ranges from the thoughtful to the inspired, from the entertaining to the banal. There are some reminiscences that pall and some stories that fail to catch fire but overall, the choices made by Clíodhna Ní Anluain stand the test of publication.

There is only one significant loss in translation from radio to print. Regrettably, it is not possible to transpose the selection of music that shapes and colours the Sunday Miscellanyprogramme each week. We'll just have to keep listening.

LIZ MCMANUSis a novelist and short story writer. She is a former TD and minister of state.