PATRICK MCCABE DOES IT AGAIN

“The Holy City”by Patrick McCabe No one explores the dark side of Irish life more chillingly than Patrick McCabe, and his latest novel “The Holy City” is true to form. Like its predecessor “Winterwood”, it is narrated by a psychopath whose cheery patter gradually betrays his unnerving obsessions. Chris McCool is the son of an adulterous liaison between a working man and the lady of the Big House; as an ageing hipster grooving to Burt Bacharach in the Mood Indigo bar, he looks back on his heyday in the Swinging Sixties—or what approximated to them in the provincial town where he was fostered.

But his posturing as Cullymore’s answer to Simon Templar masks a deep insecurity, and the strain of trying to reconcile his Catholic upbringing with his Protestant heritage finds a tragic outlet in his envy of another misfit, a half-Nigerian schoolboy. McCabe unfolds his tale with consummate skill, like a veteran fisherman paying out his line, and his observations on the changing nature of Irish society are darkly entertaining. But will he ever bring himself to write about normal people?

~ ANTHONY GARDNER

"The Holy City" Bloomsbury, January