“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Monday, August 13, 2007

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Once upon a time there was a young boy who was fascinated with fairy tales, myths and legends (once upon a time, most young boys were). This young boy grew up to become the writer of best-selling novels that blend crime fiction and supernatural horror, whose most affecting novel to date has been The Book of Lost Things. Set in the early years of WWII, its hero – very much in the classical sense – is David, a 12-year-old boy mourning the death of his mother who, on the night of a German bombing raid, somehow slips sidewards into a parallel universe teeming with characters from the worlds of mediaeval folktale, Greek myth and Romantic legend, and not a few monsters dragged up from the pit of the Freudian abyss. If Andrew Lang had written a novel, it would very probably have resembled The Book of Lost Things: told in the form of a quest, the story also functions as a commentary on and deconstruction of myth and fable, subtly exploring the reasons why such story archetypes have remained so important to the human race. In David can be found race memories of Gawain and Jason and all the wandering princes of folklore, in particular – to this reader’s mind – the hunted hero of I Am David, Anne Holm’s classic children’s novel of WWII. The deceptively simple prose allows Connolly to convincingly inhabit his thoughtful young hero’s mind and mimic the direct thought processes of an intelligent and questioning mind on the threshold of maturity and only now beginning to engage with adult issues such as betrayal, compromise, love and death. The result is a modern classic, and the novel that will probably prove Connolly’s enduring legacy.- Declan Burke

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