jenks
thread death
Sooo
I don’t think it matters what Dan is, I do think it’s an ambitious and brilliant way to deal with dementia, the weight of memory, loss, guilt…
The voice, its cadences, verbal tics and rhythms are totally believable.
If you get a chance see me f you can hear McCabe read it himself, it’s a fucking tour de force.
So glad you like it. I think about it quite often a month or so after finishing it. Even started listening to early King Crimson! For someone with Irish relatives in London whom I used to visit in the 70s it was particularly evocative.Finished Pogue Mahone after Covid put a dampener down, few spoilers
There haven’t been many books where, after reading the final line, you place the book down and think wtf was that? Its lingering presence of Una Fogerty, a donkey with hooves stuck in buckets, Lady Ocean, jfc what a character. V v v v v
The exact role of the gruagach - is it autonomous and a physical presence or a subconscious manipulation? Lord Offaly of Down’s end, intercut with humour eg the ghost hunter and caretaker Alex Gordon’s repeating line “look at the bristols on that”. Or Mike Yarwood
My favourite lines are Brendan Behan’s’ “cough softening blue jaysus of a walloping“ and Alex Gordon as a kid in the sports shop. He’s picked up a cricket bat or something and then he sees a bright pink shape bobbing in the air back and forth (phallic undertones) where it stays forever in the back of his mind, “just waving”. Killer
Dan Fogerty, I stopped caring that no-one ever saw or spoke to him but his shapeshifter qualities are rendered even more troubling by his wee birdies, or presencing as a blackbird, or the more sinister presencing like the old lady, grasshoppers behind vents and ploc, ploc, ploc
If it had a linearly driven temporal plot, it wouldn’t work. Instead its cyclical rounds have each aspect building on or expanding upon a character or plot which further cranks up the tension. So, you get the first few deaths but they’re elaborated and extrapolated until a greater totality of events exist. It never lets up, eg Troy Mclory’s fate. Best book I’ve read in years
I don’t think it matters what Dan is, I do think it’s an ambitious and brilliant way to deal with dementia, the weight of memory, loss, guilt…
The voice, its cadences, verbal tics and rhythms are totally believable.
If you get a chance see me f you can hear McCabe read it himself, it’s a fucking tour de force.