Originally published in the Wexford People (29th August 2024 by Simon Bourke)
Such is the reputation of Wexford’s Red Books that it is now attracting international attention, visitors from as far afield as the Jilin province in north east China. Not content to sample the some 250,000 books on offer in its myriad of shelves, halls, and hidden areas, these two visitors to Wally O’Neill’s store arrived with their camera and microphones, ready to make a film.
“One of our customers is a Chinese girl who’s now living in Wexford,” explained Wally, “and the guy who’s making the documentary is her cousin. She was telling him about the place and he was coming over to Ireland and was enamoured by the idea of these bookshops because they don’t have shops like it in China.”
And so it was that on rainy Monday afternoon in Wexford, these two intrepid filmmakers arrived in Red Books to continue a project which also saw them visit Graiguenamanagh over the weekend for its Town of Books festival. With the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ bookshop constantly competing with the rise of digital e-readers, the documentary-makers were keen to sample life inside a literary emporium which continues to buck that particular trend.
“They would have a lot of new bookshops (in China), but they were telling me that, in a lot of instances, you’ll see people go in and read the books but you’d never see anyone buy anything because everyone reads on digital devices over there,” said Wally. “They were very interested in the culture of the book shop, the posters on the door, all the different events we run, and local people writing books and having them published. They said that wasn’t the norm where they live.”