“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, June 10, 2007

We’ll Always Have Paris

Maybe we’re emotionally retarded degenerates, but we’re at a loss to understand why Eoin McNamee’s latest, 12:33: A Parisian Summer, is encountering such resistance in the mainstream press. It’s nothing to do with the quality of the writing, y’see; could it be because McNamee has targeted an establishment sacred cow? Quoth Amanda Brown in a Sunday Trib preamble to a McNamee interview:
“I can’t say I enjoyed reading 12:23: Paris: 31st August 1997, but then I was prejudiced against it before I began. A fictionalised story based on the real life events of that famous car crash in which Diana Spencer lost her life struck me as a bit tasteless, even if it has been 10 years since it happened.”
Meanwhile, over at the Sunday Times, John Dugdale was beating a remarkably similar dead horse:
“12:23 is strong on atmosphere and the seedy, humdrum reality of bottom-feeder spying. It seems indecently early, however, to be stitching its central event into fiction (most recent “faction” novels are set at least 25 years ago); and while reliance on a conspiracy theory for the portrayal of the crash is handy for shaping a thriller plot, it does little for the novel’s credibility.”
Hmmmm, smells like a conspiracy to us. Two questions, folks: One, it was okay for the Princess of Wails to spin the entire world a fiction while she was alive, but no one is allowed write about her now she’s dead, or at least not for 25 years after the event – is that correct? Two, how come Elton John didn’t get this kind of grief?

No comments: