“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 29, 2014

Review: THE FREE by Willy Vlautin

I had the pleasure of interviewing Willy Vlautin yesterday, who was in town to promote his latest novel, THE FREE (Faber). I reviewed the book for the Irish Independent last weekend. It ran like this:

Once best known as a singer-songwriter with the alt-country outfit Richmond Fontaine, Willy Vlautin has garnered an increasingly impressive reputation as a novelist since the release of his debut, The Motel Life (2006). His fourth book, The Free, is set in the American northwest, and opens with wounded soldier Leroy Kervin, a veteran of the Iraq conflict, attempting to commit suicide during a rare moment of clarity.
  Leroy fails in his bid but remains in a coma in hospital, which allows Vlautin to introduce characters who are directly affected by Leroy’s actions. Pauline, a hard-pressed hospital nurse who cares for her housebound father and tries to help a vulnerable patient, the teenage girl Jo, to escape the clutches of a group of heroin addicts; and Freddie, who works a nightshift at the group home where Leroy lived while also holding down a day job at a paint store. Meanwhile, Leroy’s comatose mind drifts into the realms of fantasy as he imagines himself on the run in a post-apocalyptic America, where vigilantes roam the streets killing people stained with ‘the mark’.
  The Free is an ironic title here, given that Vlautin’s story revolves around characters who live regimented lives in which every minute and every last cent must be accounted for. The hardworking Freddie and Pauline are victims of the economic crash and personal circumstance: Pauline supports her helpless father, while Freddie remortgages his house twice to pay for his daughter’s medical bills. Told in the ‘dirty realist’ style that evokes the spirit of Raymond Carver, the novel is a litany of tiny tragedies that brilliantly evokes the soul-destroying monotony of functioning poverty.
  If it’s a bleak read in that respect, The Free is nevertheless an uplifting tale. Not only do the debt-ridden Freddie and Pauline rarely complain about their daily drudge, they also find it within them to stretch their personal resources to breaking point by investing themselves emotionally in other people. Pauline’s repeated attempts to rescue Jo add an unnecessary strain on her already overloaded schedule, while Freddie finds time to visit Leroy in hospital, and further tries to help out an old friend who is going to prison.
  There is a danger, of course, that Vlautin’s variations on the theme of the kindness of strangers might render Pauline and Freddie secular saints, but he never mistakes sentiment for sentimentality. Both characters are aware of their own failings and shortcomings, and are likeably honest about their limitations.
  The downbeat, fatalistic tone (and the dystopian strain to Leroy’s sci-fi fantasy) suggests that Vlautin has in mind here a commentary on how the US government has abandoned its responsibility to its own citizens over the last decade. What makes The Free a compelling read, however, is the way in which he celebrates the indomitable spirit and invisible heroics of those refuse to accept an imposed bondage in the land of the brave and the home of the free. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Independent.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

A River Twists Through It

Siobhan MacDonald (right) will publish her debut, TWISTED RIVER (Exhibit A Books) later this year, the first signing by new Exhibit A editor Byron Quertermous. It’s the first of ‘two gripping, psychological, stand-alone thrillers’ (the second, THE BLUE POOL, will be published in 2015). To wit:
Kate and Mannix O’Brien live with their two children in a quirky house overlooking the Curragower Falls on the Shannon River in Limerick – a city where the haves and have-nots live cheek by jowl.
  On the other side of the Atlantic, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Harveys own a fashionable brownstone on Riverside Drive.
  When American Oscar Harvey arrives in Limerick and opens the boot of the car his hosts have loaned him, he finds in it the body of a woman … and from this shocking beginning the story spools back to the roots of the house swap, which no one suspects will end in tragedy.
  For all the details, clickety-click here