“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 13, 2007

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 197: Sean Harnett

Yep, it's rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire pick-'n'-mix Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky or From Hell by Alan Moore.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I strangely never feel guilty about what I read. What I do feel
guilty about is all those books I haven't read, including most Irish
crime fiction ...
Most satisfying writing moment?
Launching my first novel, Aisling Ltd, in Galway last year.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, although I know that's
stretching the meaning of both 'crime' *and* 'novel' ...
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
My bad, but I haven't read enough Irish crime novels to offer any kind
of decent answer to this question.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: financial uncertainty. Best: imaginative freedom.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
He's just following in a long tradition of 'serious' writers slumming
it in the genre underworld (Cecil Day Lewis wrote detective fiction as
Nicholas Blake). Maybe it's also because he, by his own admission,
has 'never liked fiction'. Could it be that his crime novels are more
valuable to him than his literary novels? Could it be that Benjamin Black is the 'real' writer and John Banville the pseudonym ... ?
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Not yet profitable!

Sean Harnett's debut novel, Aisling Ltd., is available from Hag's Head Press

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