Guardian Book Review

[RoddyRuddy]

http://uk.wrs.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTTksEeI ... en-changed
Quote "...
All Names Have Been Changed by Claire KilroyColin Greenland on a novel steeped in the Celtic literary tradition
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Colin Greenland
The Guardian, Saturday 8 August 2009 Article historyMichaelmas Term, 1985. Dublin languishes in a fug of tobacco and poverty. Chucking in his factory job in Leeds and sneaking back without telling his ma, Declan joins the Trinity College creative writing class run, in theory, by his idol, the appalling genius Patrick Glynn. There are eight of them, "a shower of messers" all in awe of the great Glynn, all vying for his erratic approval. Declan, narrating, tells us how their year wears on. Much Guinness is drunk, much whiskey. Souls are bared, hearts are broken. Novels are begun, savaged, abandoned. ................................Every chapter title is a quotation from Irish literature or song, from Maria Edgeworth to John Banville, from "Molly Malone" to the Pogues, so we know what a crowd Kilroy feels craning over her shoulders. The story itself isn't 14 pages old before Joyce and Beckett show up, with Wilde close behind. When he does finally materialise, PJ Glynn is not so much Godot as O'God: the biggest, fattest, most arrogant, truculent, lachrymose, lecherous, bibulous, cowardly bully ever to waltz the Hibernian muse through the vomit and broken glass of Nighttown........................." end quote