“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 16, 2011

On Psychological Thrillers And Catullian Verse

Here’s a rather interesting prospect, as noted in the ‘Loose Leaves’ section of the Irish Times last Saturday. Simon Ashe-Browne won the 2011 Dundee International Book Prize with NOTHING HUMAN LEFT, a prize awarded to the best unpublished novel in the UK, and which scooped him £10,000. So who is this Simon Ashe-Browne? Quoth the Lisa Richards Agency blurb elves:
Simon Ashe-Browne is a writer and actor based in Dublin. He was Overall Winner of The Sean Dunne Young Writers Awards in 2003, and is a contributor to THE IRISH CATULLUS, or ONE GENTLEMAN OF VERONA, a trilingual volume of Catullian verse edited by Ronan Sheehan.
  Crikey, etc. Anyway, Simon’s debut novel sounds like it might well be a right belter. To wit:
Kids can be so cruel. One minute you’re the class clown and the next - you’re nobody. Jonathon, a.k.a. ‘the Doc’, stopped being funny months ago. Think he’ll give up without a fight? That’s not how the Doc operates … Instead of ducking gracefully out of the limelight, this clown is scrabbling for centre stage. Watch the Doc as he walks the tightrope between comedy and tragedy, tumbling into an increasingly dark world of pranks gone wrong, fuelled on the dark circus of movies, pop culture and schoolboy bravado. Is the Doc a born performer or a natural psychopath? You decide. A fearless psychological thriller from Dundee International Book Prize winner Simon Ashe-Browne.
  So there you have it. Yet another debutant Irish author, yet another intriguing prospect, and damn fine cover to boot. I mean, ‘a fearless psychological thriller’ from a writer of Catullian verse? How, pray tell, could you possibly resist?

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