Goldengrove - by Patrick McCabe (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

'Wild, anarchic, and wonderfully head-spinning' Neil Jordan, award-winning film director

A dark theatrical comedy about the vexed and violent relationship between Britain and Ireland, from twice Booker-shortlisted author Patrick McCabe.

It's the summer of Brexit, and in a seedy hotel room on the South Coast of England, Chenevix Meredith finds his old comrade Henry Plumm murdered in the bathtub. Piecing together their shared history, Meredith looks back at the years they spent in Dublin half a century ago, running a theatrical agency and rubbing shoulders with actors and assassins alike in the swirling smoke of public houses. What their clients didn't know, is that the flamboyant pair were undercover agents of the British state, posted to identify terrorist networks.

Goldengrove is a deeply immersive, satirical novel in which nothing is as it seems and no one is who they say there are. Steeped in film noir, classic crime and popular culture, McCabe blurs the lines between what's real and what's staged in this absurd game of cat and mouse.

'Yet again Patrick McCabe summons the ghost of Flann O'Brien in this wild rollick of a novel . . . Wonderful, shape-shifting stuff' Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon

'Thunderously compelling and downright ecstatic . . . This is nothing less than the work of a genuine master, a must-read' Billy O'Callaghan, author of Life Sentences

'One hears Joyce and Beckett and Paul Muldoon in the background. Not because there is any borrowing, but because all alike draw from that same dazzling tradition of oral storytelling' Mark Bowles, author of All My Precious Madness

Review Quotes

"Wild, anarchic, and wonderfully head-spinning." -- Neil Jordan, award-winning film director

"Yet again Patrick McCabe summons the ghost of Flann O'Brien in this wild rollick of a novel. McCabe has his finger on all the perceived and unperceived witticisms of our times, and he manages to entice them into the treasury of our minds. Wonderful, shape-shifting stuff." -- Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon

"A new novel from the hugely gifted Patrick McCabe is always an event worthy of celebration, and it's been a long time since I've read anything as thunderously compelling and downright ecstatic as Goldengrove. McCabe's scintillating prose makes most of the rest seem like they're standing still. This is nothing less than the work of a genuine master, a must-read." -- Billy O'Callaghan, author of Life Sentences

"Sure, one hears Joyce and Beckett and Paul Muldoon in the background. Not because there is any borrowing, but because all alike draw from that same dazzling tradition of oral storytelling. I loved it because, in part, this novel is, in love with language, its barely containable surplus of invention over prosaic truth." -- Mark Bowles, author of All My Precious Madness

Reviews for Poguemahone:

"Poguemahone is like a high dive: The toughest part of reading it might be convincing your feet to leave the board. Once you've done that, gravity does the rest." -- John Williams, New York Times

"Poguemahone [is] an immense, audacious novel [...] a volcanic spray of vernacular, Gaelic-infused memory fragments and character sketches." -- Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"If you're looking for this century's Ulysses, look no further than Patrick McCabe's Poguemahone." -- The Guardian

"McCabe draws the reader into a rambling web replete with Gaelic folklore, IRA agitation, and a soundtrack of glam and progressive rock. Lively and ambitious in form, this admirably extends the range of McCabe's career-long examination of familial and childhood trauma." -- Publishers Weekly

"The vernacular, drunken verse format may be daunting at first, but after a few pages the narrative develops a hypnotic rhythm, as if one is sitting on a barstool listening to the narrator unspool his story over a pint (or three). At this point, the reader has merely to hang on and enjoy the ride. A moving saga of youth, age, and memory--by turns achingly poetic, knowingly philosophical, and bitterly funny." -- Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Patrick McCabe was born in 1955 in Clones, County Monaghan. He is the author of The Butcher Boy, which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction, The Dead School, Breakfast on Pluto, Poguemahone and others. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into feature films by Neil Jordan. Winterwood was named the 2007 Hughes & Hughes/Irish Independent Irish Novel of the Year. He now lives in Clones, Ireland.