Galway centre stage in new novel ‘58% Cabbage’

Karl MacDermott graduated from UCG in 1984 with a degree in commerce.  Commerce was strange choice, he agrees, for someone who’d go onto make his living from comedy and storytelling.  “I was like a fish out of water in the course,” recalls the Salthill man, who has lived in Dublin for more than three decades, and who has just published his second novel, 58% Cabbage.

Arts might have been a more logical choice but a BA wasn’t on Karl’s radar as he was making his CAO submission.

“I went to secondary school at St Joseph’s (The Bish) and, after the Inter Cert, when we had to pick subjects, I settled on Commerce and ended up doing it for the Leaving Cert.  There were very few people [in my year] veering towards doing Arts in college,” he recalls.

Karl knew almost immediately he’d made a mistake but stuck with it. However, he invested most of his energy in DramSoc and other events on and off campus, including the Castle in Salthill, now long-gone, where Noel McHale (now a promoter) ran entertainment nights.

Karl grew up in Salthill, where his parents had settled in the early 1960s. His father, Charlie, who died in 2005, was originally from Oranmore and his mum, Philomena, was from Glenamaddy. His sister, Eithne, still lives in Salthill.

Karl was a regular visitor to Galway until his mother died in 2018, but less so since then. He has “a slightly conflicted view of the place”, he observes.

For one thing, he dislikes the expectation that “you have to be proud of it and wear the jersey”.

But Galway features in 58% Cabbage – it’s home to the book’s anti-hero, Roddy Bodkin, whose life goes from bad to worse after being dumped by his long-suffering girlfriend.  And it’s not an idyllic place. No surprise there.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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