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Here are the ribald, picaresque (choose your own hackneyed adjective) adventures of Sebastian Dangerfield in Ireland and London, as he drinks & scrumps & sponges his way through life. Perhaps it is unfair to Donleavy, but I happened to read this at the same time as I am listening to the audio version of Angela's Ashes , so I just didn't find it amusing when danger drank the family's food money & beat his wife and girlfriends & so on. But even taken on it's own terms, it's just not a particularly entertaining book. (Reviewed:) Grade: (D) Tweet Websites:Comments:Donleavy is probably my favourite author - and one of the most underrated writers around. The Ginger Man is his most well-known but his best are A Singular Man and A Fairytale of New York. He veers from broad comedy to pure poetry, although admittedly his overtly masculine style won't appeal to lots of people and will certainly alienate feminists. Also his books all tackle similar subjects, so if you don't like one, you won't like any of them. Conversely, if you love one of his books, you'll want to devour them all. I guess his style could be summed up as the concerns of Hemingway in the style of the more accessible elements of James Joyce. - AGN - May-13-2003, 09:21 ******************************************************* |
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