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Dubray Review

It is fifty years into the future. Bohane, an isolated city on the west coast of Ireland, is run by venal, self-serving politicians and tabloid journalists. But the true ruler is Logan Long Fella Hartnett, the violent yet compassionate head of the Hartnett Fancy gang. The Fancy control everything that is illegal in Bohane, especially in Smoketown the dark slum of the city. Up on the Rises, the Families decide they want control of Smoketown and are set on war with the Fancy. Into all this comes Logan's old nemesis, Gant Broderick, who has returned after a twenty-five year absence but why? This is a novel of the future with echoes of the present. It is a story of intrigue, violence, love and the vagaries of loyalty. It is also one of the most startling, imaginative and innovative novels in contemporary Irish fiction.

Matthew Ziruk, Dubray Books Galway

Description

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award. Forty years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the Northside Rises and the eerie bogs of Big Nothin' that the city really lives. For years, the city has been in the cool grip of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. They say his old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight...And then there's his mother. City of Bohane is a visionary novel that blends influences from film and the graphic novel, from Trojan beats and calypso rhythms, from Celtic myth and legend, from fado and the sagas, and from all the great inheritance of Irish literature. A work of mesmerising imagination and vaulting linguistic invention, it is a taste of the glorious and new.

Reviews

"Sweet Baba Jay, what an unforgettably wonderful novel: hilarious, unique, utterly believable. It's Joyce meets Anthony Burgess, and as funny as Flann O'Brien. We Kevin Barry fans have known for a while that he is a writer of rarest gifts, but this book is an electrifying masterpiece" -- Joseph O'Connor "City of Bohane testifies to, and beautifully illustrates, the mad glory of the human imagination. It should be met with parties and parades and pyrotechnics" -- Niall Griffiths "Unforgettably wonderful...an electrifying masterpiece" Irish Independent