“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

Friday, October 26, 2007

Why I Write # 276: Eoin Colfer

“Once I get a story in my head, it circles round and round in there repeating on itself, like a demented endless row-row-row your boat until I can get it down on paper and give myself some closure. For me, stories are unfinished business that need to be given their due and made real. And characters are worse, they are not as easy to exorcise. You come up with a character, say a teenage criminal mastermind, and then for years you have nowhere to put him. You try to shoehorn him into whatever you have going on, but it’s not right and you both know it. So after a few years you have a light opera’s worth of characters haunting the space behind your eyeballs, distracting you when you’re trying to type. But then that sweet moment comes when your mind twists a few jigsaw pieces around and you see it so clearly and get a shiver down your spine and know that this is where the little bastard belongs. I love those moments. I’ve had about three.
“Of course, the money is nice too ...”

Eoin Colfer’s ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LOST COLONY is available in all good bookshops.

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