“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, June 15, 2009

A Meaty Dish? Yep, It’s Irish Stu

Leaving aside for the moment the impact of his windswept and rugged features on the ladies of this parish, Dishy Stuart Neville’s debut THE TWELVE is kicking up quite a lot of dust at the moment, and quite rightly too, given that it is, if I may immodestly paraphrase from the review in last weekend’s Sunday Indo (see post below), “a superb thriller, and one of the first great post-Troubles novels to emerge from Northern Ireland.”
  Anyway, Stuart is being interviewed all over the place right now. To wit:
  Stuart tells The Observer’s Henry McDonald that, “I see this book primarily as a thriller with a paranormal element to it and one that explores the themes of Northern Ireland’s recent past.”
  My own fave, though, is Stuart’s response to the Book Depository’s Mark Thwaite when Mark asks, at the end of the interview, if there’s anything else Stuart would like to add. Quoth Stuart: “Keep buying books! The world economy is in a bad way, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the really valuable things. Books, whether highbrow or lowbrow, whether on paper or on an e-reader, are what made everything we have today possible.”
  Amen, brother …

2 comments:

Josephine Damian said...

"Leaving aside for the moment the impact of his windswept and rugged features on the ladies of this parish, Dishy Stuart Neville..."

Ha! I resemble that remark lol

Bet Stu won't be living that one down anytime soon.

Where is that Aerin Bender-Stone?

Malachi O'Doherty said...

Thanks for the mention. Just two corrections. The name of my website is ArtsTalk, not Arts Link. And it has no connection with the BBC.