“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, May 12, 2010

Just The Facts, Hack

A crime correspondent for the Sunday World, Niamh O’Connor gets to see the consequences of violent crime in a way that many crime writers don’t. What’s unusual is that she’s more than happy to talk about how her antipathy towards the criminals she encounters translated into her debut novel. Here’s a snippet from her blog:
“Went on TV3 this morning to talk about IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN, and realised how instinctive a hack anchor Sinead Desmond was when she started talking about the murder of the gangland boss, the Don.
  “Since IF I NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN began as an idea about a killer purging gangland to atone for an horrific crime against a little girl, it was an intuitive link. It may sound heartless, but now the Don is dead, what’s wrong with the feeling of good riddance?”
  For the rest of the blog post, clickety-click here. Meanwhile, the full interview with Sinead Desmond comes below, and makes for very interesting viewing indeed. Roll it there, Collette …

4 comments:

Fiona said...
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Josh Schrank said...

Dec, can you help me understand her comments a bit? With regards to her TV interview, she starts out by calling the anchor a "hack." I have to guess that means something different on your side of the pond than it does here. If an author here called a news anchor a hack, the author would probably wind up with a libel suit on her/his hands. It isn't a very flattering term in our vocabulary. What does it mean over there?

Declan Burke said...

Josh - 'Hack' would be considered a derogatory term on this side of the pond too, but then Niamh O'Connor is herself a journalist, so maybe she's just using it as shorthand for 'fellow journo'. Certainly the context of the piece suggests that she was impressed by Desmond's intuitive pick-up on the tone of her book ...

Cheers, Dec

Dinah Bee said...
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