“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, December 12, 2007

One Good Nocturnes Deserves Another

John Connolly’s collection of short stories, NOCTURNES, is being re-released with an additional tale tucked inside, and to celebrate he’s been maundering on about being an honorary woman and interesting stuff in locker-rooms over at his interweb thingy. Quoth John:
“To coincide with the publication of the new edition of NOCTURNES in the UK next month, with its lovely Rob Ryan-designed cover, we’ve added a new short story, “The Cycle”, to the ghost stories section of the website, as that’s one of the new additions to the collection, and we don’t want to gouge money from those who bought NOCTURNES when “The Cycle” wasn’t included. “The Cycle” was originally written for a collection entitled MOMENTS, which was published in Ireland to aid tsunami relief. The brief was that all of the stories should be written by women, but the editor asked if I’d like to sneak one in and see if anyone noticed, and then my story could be used to help with publicity. As it happened, the collection sold out, so they didn’t need to reveal the fact that I was one of the authors. Thus I ended up an honorary woman, but without any of the interesting locker-room stuff that my brief deception might otherwise have permitted. Sigh.”
Ladies? Any idea of what kind of ‘interesting’ locker-room ‘stuff’ John might be talking about? We can only presume he means towel-snapping and suchlike …

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wishful thinking, that's all.