“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

Sunday, March 9, 2008

The Occasional John Connolly Update # 2,035: Hooray For Lollywood.

The answer to the question, “What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?” in our weekly Q&A is frequently, “Anything by John Connolly (right) – providing they get it right.” Well, courtesy of Connolly’s excellent blog, it looks like we’re finally going to find out if ‘they’ got it ‘right’ next year. Quoth John:
“This week, filming began on THE NEW DAUGHTER, with Kevin Costner and Ivana Baquero, based on the short story of the same title in NOCTURNES. For those of you curious to know, principal filming is taking place in McClellanville, South Carolina, under the guiding hand of director Luis Berdejo. I still haven’t read the script, which is a matter of choice (although someone who has read it was very impressed with it) but one interesting snippet of information reveals that a casting call went out for a thin, almost emaciated actor to play a “creature” role in full make-up, suggesting that John Travis, the screenwriter, has stuck to the original story’s central idea of something very nasty indeed hiding in the burial mound on Costner’s property. The film is due to be released in 2009.”
The name Luis Berdejo means nothing to us as of yet, but the good news is that he’s Spanish, and that Spanish-language writers and directors have been in the habit of concocting some superb supernatural tales for some time now, including Open Your Eyes (1997), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), The Others (2001), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and The Orphanage (2007). Will The New Daughter cut the Spanish mustard? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell.

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