“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, May 9, 2007

The Book Of Evidence: In Which Blandville Solemnly Swears To Tell Nothing But The Pseudonymous Truth

Is John Blandville's (right - nope, your other right) The Book of Evidence a crime novel? Hmmmmm ... The fact that it's as boring as a dog's ass suggests otherwise, but it does read like a Jim Thompson first-person psycho as redrafted by Oscar Wilde. So, maybe. The reviews gave it the the full Camus / Dostoevsky / Nabokov treatment ("Mix Dostoevsky and Camus with a little Beckett and Proust and add Banville's own originality and you have the above work of genius"), and Freddie Montgomery (very loosely based on the notorious Irish killer Malcolm McArthur) is a deliciously unreliable narrator. On the other hand, it was short-listed for the Booker and won the Guinness Peat Aviation Award, and we have the author's / narrator's knowing verdict on crime fiction implied on page 172: "The least I had expected from the enormities of which I was guilty was that they would change my life, that they would make things happen, however awful, that there would be a constant succession of heart-stopping events, of alarms and sudden frights and hairsbreadth escapes." And, well, there isn't. So, no - it's not crime fiction. Which means we still have to review Christine Falls. Bugger. Any takers?

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