“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, January 30, 2008

On WHAT WAS LOST, And Losers

Sinead over at the very fine Sigla Blog has been raving about Catherine O’Flynn’s Costa Award-winning WHAT WAS LOST for some time now, but even though O’Flynn is second-generation Irish we didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon in case the novel was a literary effort (given it won a literary prize) that simply utilised crime tropes, an issue that has unduly exercised the elves of CAP Towers over the last few weeks. However, with Mark Lawson in The Guardian claiming WHAT WAS LOST as a mystery story, and Karen Meek reviewing it at Euro Crime, it’s starting to look like WHAT WAS LOST is due some very belated and entirely useless congratulations from the CAP crew. Three cheers, two stools and a resounding huzzah, then … Incidentally, O’Flynn was one of four women to scoop a prize at the Costa Book Awards, and the utter absence of disgruntled men complaining about the (non-)issue stands in stark contrast to the outcry about the lack of women nominated for the Edgar’s ‘Best Novel’ category, if this Sarah Weinman-sponsored thread is anything to go by. Are men better losers than women? Or just losers, period? Answers on the back of a used €20 note to the usual address, please …

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Get John Waters on board and you could start a bona fide anti misandry revolution. Seriously though, no one wants to be a token and there happen to be loads of male crime writers, which is why they made it to the Edgars, while there are more women (I think) writing literary fiction, which is why they dominated the Costa. Simple. (I think)

Declan Burke said...

Fine as far as it goes, Claire - but the most recent Anthony Awards had an all-women line-up for Best Novel nominees, if memory serves, all of whom would have been deserving winners ... Certainly in Ireland there are more male crime writers than female, which - given the sharp rise in male-on-female crimes in recent years, is a little surprising.

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the blog nom, by the way...