“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

Friday, May 24, 2013

Norn Iron In The Soul

There’s a very interesting interview with Adrian McKinty in the Wall Street Journal, in which McKinty speaks about the influence of his childhood and growing up in Northern Ireland on his new series of novels, ‘the Troubles Trilogy’. To wit:
“Imagine if you had a bombing like [the Boston Marathon attack] every week for 30 years,” says Mr. McKinty, 45. The novelist grew up during ‘the Troubles,’ the euphemism commonly used to describe the decades of bloody sectarian violence that ravaged Northern Ireland throughout his childhood in the 1970s and ’80s. “That’s what it was like back home. I was born the year the Troubles began, in 1968. That world of violence was all I knew—people murdered, maimed, kneecapped, bombed. I don’t remember a time without a major atrocity of some kind every week.”
  For the rest, clickety-click here

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