“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

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE HURRICANE PARTY by Klas Östergren

Klas Östergren’s contribution to the Myths series is terrific in prospect. Set in a dystopian future society (is there another kind?), it concerns itself with Hanck Orn’s search for the truth of what happened to his dead son, Toby. ‘The Clan’ responsible for his son’s death are, in fact, the Norse deities, and Hanck’s quest takes him from the Norse equivalent of Olympic heights to the very depths of their Underworld.
  The Myths series has already featured the likes of Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and David Grossman, with Atwood, for example, offering a feminist take on THE ODYSSEY with THE PENELOPIAD. Östergren’s offering is less clearly a modern take on an old story than others, perhaps because the writer is attempting to achieve more than simply retell the old tales, perhaps because your correspondent isn’t as familiar with the Norse myths as he is with the Greek. A courageous blend of sci-fi, crime fiction and mythology, of genre sensibility and literary style, the novel opens beguilingly …
  For the rest, clickety-click here

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