… in the June issue of Library Journal.

“Beautifully humane and sometimes nightmarish, this incredible debut novel by a noted music and culture editor, journalist, and critic recounts the life and times of John Devine, a 15-year-old boy who lives in Kilcody, a village in southeastern Ireland, with his Bible-quoting, nicotine-addicted mother.
He whiles away his days obsessing about worms, crows, and sin until he meets Jamey Corboy, a “posh boy” who reads the French decadents, swills booze, and indulges in petty graft with local thugs. After a heinous bender during which the boys vandalize a church, John sells out Jamey to save his own skin, only to struggle with the guilt borne of his betrayal even as he tends to his terminally ill mother.
Repeated run-ins with an insidious neighbor, Mrs. Nagle, and the vicious pub-rat Gunter Prunty complicate John’s caretaking. VERDICT This work establishes Murphy as an author of tremendous imaginative and linguistic power who has mastered Flann O’Brien’s supernatural whimsy, Beckett’s grim irony, and McCabe’s unsparing brutality. Essential reading.”

J. Greg Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

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