Ronan Hession

His name was Joseph, but for years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story. Panenka has spent 25 years living with the disastrous mistakes of his past, which have made him an exile in his home town and cost him his dearest relationships. Now aged 50, Panenka begins to rebuild an improvised family life with his estranged daughter and her seven year old son.

But at night, Panenka suffers crippling headaches that he calls his Iron Mask. Faced with losing everything, he meets Esther, a woman who has come to live in the town to escape her own disappointments. Together, they find resonance in each other’s experiences and learn new ways to let love into their broken lives.

Panenka

kyahluka

To him love was no union between two otherwise incomplete halves, but more like the gravity that locked two bodies into the same orbit…

He had thought his days of hurting those he loved were behind him, but when had he ever been able to promise that?

Love is like getting lost in the woods. Shouting aloud that you're safe might make you feel better, but it doesn't mean you’re not lost.

Why can't a woman have a deep affinity with a man, though? Perhaps even love him, and he can love her, but it doesn't have to become romantic. Then it's okay if you love the person. You don't have to pretend you don't, or hide any subterfuge about being more than friends. Why not? Isn't there something missing if two people can't love each other safely that way? Like the way it's possible to love Paris without owning it, or the way we love music. Appreciative love. We need to find people like that, who cultivate what's good in us, and who can help draw out our poison. Otherwise, it's almost like if you don't want to fall in love, then you're on your own

 'But why should we have to wait until we're happy before we can be loved? Before letting someone in? It's the hurt people who need love the most, who deserve it most, who understand it most.’

‘Once you name something, you have to define it: say what it is and isn't. Not to mention maintenance. All the relationships with names - parent, sister, husband, lover - come with maintenance. All that effort keeping it to what it's supposed to be. Shouldn't we allow ourselves at least one unnamed, undefined close relationship in our lives? A free-standing, wild-card arrangement. How about it, Joseph? How about you just try to make me happy, and Ill try and do the same for you?’

‘Other people's love is frightening when you're suffering. It's overwhelming. When you're consumed with the effort of processing internal pain, it becomes impossible to do anything else. It's like holding your breath under water: you realise that you need to breathe but if you breathe at the wrong time, you drown. I only survived thanks to the people in my life- people I repaid by letting them down. So that's how it has been... And then I met you.' 

You saw through me straight away,’ he said. 'You saw into me before you even knew me. There was something about you that cut through all that heavy, soupy history and snapped me back to now, woke me up again. Maybe unhappy people have a way of finding each other but, whatever the explanation, I am so, so glad it happened…

‘Whatever is lost, something else always grows back in its place. A big tree falls in a storm, a hundred-year-old tree that's utterly irreplaceable, and yet when the tree goes, so does its shade. And when it's gone, there's light for the first time and something diferent grows back in its place. Or maybe for a while there is just space, and a new way of looking at things. There's no philosophy in that - no answers. Just a new starting point and a quiet letting go of what's already gone'

Jasper

Humans are by nature romantic creatures. By that I don’t mean full of love: I mean that they like the idea of things more than the reality of them.

Panenka quotes

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