“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, November 28, 2007

The Embiggened O # 1,307: Hope, Like Alice, Springs Eternal

Strewth! Bonzer news from Down Under, people, where Karen Chisholm of the rather fine AustCrimeFiction interweb thingagummy not only read our humble offering THE BIG O all the way through, but managed to stay awake for the duration! Fair dinkum, Sheila! Quoth Sheila / Karen (in excerpt, naturally, to spare you the boring bits about what she didn’t like):
“The style of THE BIG O is slightly tongue-in-cheek, very rapid-fire, slightly wisecracking, slightly brittle and surprisingly vulnerable in some places. There’s a lot of crossing and double crossing of everybody going on; there’s a lot of charging around as you’d expect from a caper style novel … the book clips along at a tremendous pace … the dialogue … is snappy, stylistic and sometimes laugh-out loud-funny, sometimes snicker inducing; and sometimes a bit tear-jerking … it’s one of my favourite styles of escapist reading – the slightly lunatic caper, albeit this time with a twist in the guts at the end.”
Thank you kindly, ma’am. In return, consider our fatwa on Marmite officially cancelled …

2 comments:

Maxine Clarke said...

Don't you mean Vegemite? That's the down under name for the mite of the Marm, as I understand it.
(Not that I am a fan, but I am forced to cohabit with quite a few of them -- it's the sticky knives on the worktop that really do the trick for me.)
Oh, and congrats on the review! Your due, naturally.

Sandra Ruttan said...

I like the upside-down book cover. Nice, subtle touch.