J the R Sindo Review
“(The author) has acknowledged the influence of books such as Pat McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, the American gothic style of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories and the dirty realism of writers like Raymond Carver on John the Revelator. He also cites Arthur Rimbaud as one of the heroes of his 20s and Rimbaud’s famous “Merde a Dieu!” graffiti is woven into the Revelator narrative. But in his first novel Murphy has absorbed and moved on from his influences and pushed form to exciting potentialities.”