‘Our national epic has yet to be written,’ all the young literary dudes opine in Ulysses. 'McCabe is attempting something different from the finely tuned gothic chamber music of his earlier work: he’s aiming for a kind of polyphony the effect is one of alienation-not that the book isn’t a tremendous pleasure to read, albeit at times slightly uncomfortable. A moving saga of youth, age, and memory-by turns achingly poetic, knowingly philosophical, and bitterly funny.” At this point, the reader has merely to hang on and enjoy the ride. “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). Lively and ambitious in form, this admirably extends the range of McCabe’s career-long examination of familial and childhood trauma.' 'McCabe draws the reader into a rambling web replete with Gaelic folklore, IRA agitation, and a soundtrack of glam and progressive rock. David Collard, Times Literary Supplement In its haunting strangeness and blazing originality, deserves far more than a cult following.' ' Poguemahone is, in content and execution, frequently astonishing, and galloping through a very long novel at the rate of three pages per minute is an exhilarating sensory experience. 'If you’re looking for this century’s Ulysses, look no further than Patrick McCabe’s Poguemahone.' ' Poguemahone an immense, audacious novel a volcanic spray of vernacular, Gaelic-infused memory fragments and character sketches.' Once you’ve done that, gravity does the rest.' ' Poguemahone is like a high dive: The toughest part of reading it might be convincing your feet to leave the board. Drinking song and punk libretto, ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is the devastating telling of one family’s history-and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dan’s mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger- and more sinister.Ī swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue, Patrick McCabe’s epic reinvention of the verse novel combines Modernist fragmentation and Beat spontaneity with Irish folklore, then douses it in whiskey and sets it on fire. Young Una’s search for love in a seemingly haunted hippie squat, and the two-timing Scottish stoner poet she’ll never get over.

Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England. Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a seaside nursing home, would be all alone without her brother Dan, whose epic free-verse monologue tells their family story. A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue by the Booker-shortlisted author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto.

Poguemahone by patrick mccabe