There is an exactingness about Caroline Hennessy that is, well, exacting. Put her in a room of people and she makes most everyone else around her seem half asleep, half awake. Her star is brighter than other folks', and she burns at a higher intensity.
Most people, for example, when they are doing demonstrations, do them one thing at a time. Ms Hennessy will do two or three things concurrently – bake brownies from scratch, explicate about beers, serve a room of people – and make it look easy, make it look as if everyone could do it. Don't be fooled: Caroline Hennessy can do it, and you can't.
She is a journalist, a blogger, a broadcaster, and the clarity of her voice in all three mediums is striking – her prose and her voice and her opinions come out at you, come at you, as if they are targeted at each reader, each listener. As a writer she has perfect pitch, perhaps best seen in her blog, bibliocook, which is exceptional in its confidence and clarity, the ease with which she moves between subjects – cooking, commentating, critiquing. She is curious, and never complacent, always working to get to the heart of the matter, to get to what matters. She is a graduate of the Ballymaloe School and, with her nous, we suspect she could be a valuable contributor to those exacting, inspiring courses. Someday soon, she will write that great book.