“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

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: Trafficked (18s)

Alone, frightened and unable to speak English, Tayo (Ruth Negga, right), a young Nigerian girl who has been trafficked into Ireland, escapes from the back of a van in a Dublin alleyway. Picked up off the streets by street-level Mr Fixit Keely (Karl Shiels), Tayo finds a place to stay, work in a lap-dancing club, and the possibility of happiness - which in Tayo’s case means earning enough money to allow her twin sister to come live in Ireland. But Tayo has reckoned without Keely’s capacity for double-dealing, the persistence of her would-be pimp to see his ‘property’ returned, and the relentless nature of a malign fate.
  Written and directed by Ciaran O’Connor, Trafficked is the closest Irish cinema has come in many years to a bona fide film noir. Although made almost eight years ago, and as such is something of a period piece examining the seedy underbelly of the Celtic Tiger, its subject matter is timely, and indeed timeless.
  While the classic noir trope of expressionist lighting is absent, and Tayo far removed from the glamorous femme fatale, the film contains many of the noir staples: bottom feeders scraping a living from the mean streets, star-crossed lovers on the lam, the depressingly inevitable sense that fate will have the final say despite the best efforts of the protagonists.
  O’Connor’s seedy Dublin is convincingly portrayed, although there is a preponderance of self-consciously poetic shots of the grim setting, while Negga and Shiels are convincing as a mismatched pair thrust together by circumstance, with the latter in particularly fine form as the charismatic lowlife Keely.
  That the couple manage to scrape some tenderness from their brutal lifestyle adds to the film’s appeal, but this is in the final reckoning intended as a slice of gritty realism, and diehard noir fans will revel in an ending that pulls no punches. *** - Declan Burke

  This review first appeared in the Irish Mail on Sunday

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