“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

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Booker, Danno

It’s far from crime fiction Anne Enright (right) was reared, but it’d be entirely remiss of us not to mention the fact that her fourth novel, THE GATHERING, scooped the Man Booker prize last night. Quoth the Irish Times:
In what the judges said was a tight decision, Enright’s “powerful, uncomfortable and even at times angry book” saw off the competition from highly fancied works by Ian McEwan and New Zealander Lloyd Jones … Chairman of the panel of judges Howard Davies said it had been a very close decision but at the end the judges came to have enormous respect for her “emotionally-charged novel of family life” and came to “appreciate its careful structure and character development”. McEwan’s ON CHESIL BEACH and Jones’s MISTER PIP had been joint favourites to secure the €72,000 (£50,000) prize.
Fabulous stuff. The last Irish Booker prize winner, John Banville in 2005, immediately turned to crime fiction, penning CHRISTINE FALLS (the follow-up, THE SILVER SWAN, is due early next month). Can we expect Enright to follow suit? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Did you read The Gathering, Declan? What did you think?

Oh, Rick O'Shea may be in touch with you about a cinema idea he has...