“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, August 1, 2007

All The World’s A Stage And Each Must Write His (Or Her) Part

Better known to the wider world for his stand-up comedy, TV work and acting, renaissance man Sean Hughes recently turned his hand to crime fiction with The Detainees. Which, by our reckoning, makes it Pauline McLynn, Tana French and now Hughes making the leap from full-on thespianism to wilful Irish crime page-blackening. It makes a certain kind of sense, we suppose: actors and writers both need to fully inhabit their characters to make them plausible, and both will go to almost any lengths to ensure they never have to do a decent day’s work. Anyhoo, The Detainees: “Irish comic Hughes loses the comedy in favour of a fairly clever piece of revenge fulfilment,” says one happy punter over at Amazon UK, while another adds, “I was deeply moved by this novel and highly entertained. If this had been printed under a pseudonym people would have been rating it up with the likes of Martin Amis. Totally excellent.” Ah, but what if he’d chosen ‘Martin Amis’ as his pseudonym? Makes you think, no? No? Okay, be like that …

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