“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, April 22, 2013

Red Sky In Early Evening

If you’re going to be around Dublin city centre next Thursday, April 25th, you could do a lot worse than get along to Dubray Books on Grafton Street at 6.30pm, where Paul Lynch will be launching his debut novel, RED SKY IN MORNING (Quercus).
  Opening in Donegal in 1832, the novel follows land labourer Coll Coyle as he suffers the consequences of a single ill-judged act of rash violence. It’s a compelling tale, not least because of the power of the language, which put me in mind of Cormac McCarthy’s early work. There’s also a kind of epic, cinematic sweep to the events, which shouldn’t really be surprising – Paul Lynch was for many moons the film critic for the Sunday Tribune.
  I know Paul, so you may want to take my opinion with a pinch of salt, but I think RED SKY is a terrific piece of work. I particularly liked the tone, which seems to be pitched somewhere between the bleak fatalism of noir and the Fate-hounded tales of classical Greek tragedy.
  So there it is. RED SKY IN MORNING by Paul Lynch: it’s early days still, but I’d imagine it’ll be hailed as one of the most impressive Irish debuts of the year.

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