“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

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Banks For The Memories

I don’t profess to know how prizes and awards are decided, or what the machinations are, but you certainly couldn’t accuse the folks behind the Orange Prize of not being up to speed. For lo! Aifric Campbell’s third offering, a timely novel set in the world of investment banking titled ON THE FLOOR (Serpent’s Tail), was officially published on March 1st, and here it is, on March 8th, already long-listed for the Orange Prize. Impressive, no?
  Anyway, Aifric is interviewed over in the Telegraph today, on International Women’s Day (hi, Mum!), speaking about what it’s like to be a woman operating in a male-dominated world. Quoth Aifric:
“I was always interested in writing about the City because it’s a closed world. But it took a long time because it’s difficult to make that world explainable to people outside it,” she said.
  “And I specifically wanted to write about women at work because I don’t think we read enough about that in fiction. If a woman is in a male-dominated world, what does she discover about herself?”
  Funnily enough, I was just thinking yesterday about the possibilities of a novel about an express parcel delivery dispatcher who takes a high-powered rifle and goes postal because she’s a woman in a mail-dominated world. Any takers?

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