Kenny’s Bookshop

I mentioned yesterday having bought a book from the online store of Kenny’s Bookshop in Galway. Some nagging thought in my mind spurred me to spend a little time looking at their site. Hadn’t Kenny’s been in the news recently? The “About Us” page explained all: though the business thrives online, Kenny’s Bookshop of High Street, Galway is no more. Having spent my student days, and the beginnings of my bookshop-haunting in Galway, I was saddened to read the news. Well, news is stretching it, the shop closed in January. That I became aware only now illustrates the length of my absence from the city where I spent several formative and often blissful years.

Oddly enough, I don’t remember ever buying a book in Kenny’s. To be honest with you, it was a bit dear. Very much the impoverished student of cliché, I preferred the more wallet-friendly Charlie Byrne’s (like Dublin’s Chapters, only much, much better) over on Middle St. But the actual buying of books didn’t matter with Kenny’s. The whole point of Kenny’s was simply knowing it was there. You could spend a good chunk of a day in there too, between the Art Gallery, the antiquarian books, and the more conventional fare. Not only was it chock full of first editions, signed copies and what-not, but it was presided over by the magnificent Mrs. Kenny. A Galway institution, she was erudite, regal and ever so slightly stern, and it was she in large part who made Kenny’s special. It was fun to hear her, when asked if she had some impossibly obscure book, reply instantly “yes, we have two copies, one signed by the author, second floor, third shelf on your right???. Clearly she had a catalogue and floor plan inside her head. She also knew the author personally, and had read the book at least once. A wan undergraduate, who couldn’t (and God help me I tried) remember, even for exam purposes, the basic plot of The Faerie Queen, I was staggered by such powers of recall. She had, like myself, once been a UCG student, and met her future husband and business partner on their first day in college. So when our alma mater gave her an honorary doctorate, I was pleased that finally they were giving the honour to someone who not only deserved it, but to whom it would mean something.
Later, in a typically undergraduate access of misplaced self-confidence, I appointed myself art critic for the college radio station. This involved turning up to an opening in Kenny’s, drinking as much of the free wine as I could get hold of (art gallery wine being just a tiny bit more palatable than college debating society wine) and later giving my on-air views on an exhibition of which I only had vague, wine-blurred memories.

By the time I left Galway, the internet was only beginning to make its existence known in the wider world, but Kenny’s were already selling books online, only the second bookshop in the world to do so. Ten years later, they realised they were selling three times as many books online as from the shop, and without the overheads. They did the sensible thing I suppose, and closed up to concentrate on what had become their core business. The fact that they were closed nine months before I even knew about it shows that I’m not unduly (or, in fact, at all) disadvantaged by the change. This post is more of a vague whine about the inevitability of change and the passing of youth. The Kenny family are still in the book business, their redoubtable matriarch is alive and well, and my copy of An Dúanaire will arrive in the post in a few days. All is well.