RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)Vlautin’s most satisfying book to date ... Vlautin intersects tender, torn and frayed episodes of wrecks, drugs and rock’n’roll into Al’s redemptive quest. The writing on music is superb; the underbelly of the working-band life, of the wannabes and never-gonna-bes rings so true here, you know Vlautin has lived part of it, seen a lot of it.
Patrick McCabe
PanThe Irish Times (IRE)McCabe has always seemed the sporting sort – a fine handicapper of his own books – which is apparent here, in his 14th novel, with his decision to carry the weight of 600-plus pages in a kind of free-form prose. This might be to your taste. This reader found little pleasure in it, though, and by the end found it infuriating, with its title chiming in the mind for all the wrong reasons ...Poguemahone is an achievement for the sheer effort of creating this waterfall of words, and to stick with its format, which I’m sure had McCabe questioning himself in the process. But a novel idea does not always give birth to novel expression, and a step back in style is sometimes required to appreciate the beauty of forceful writing; the book’s chaos leads to confusion for the reader, too, not complexity ... There is the expected McCabe combination of linguistic flights of fancy, doses of the supernatural and the thunderclaps of vernacular weighted with the mists of the old country. Yet the writing never reaches the hoped-for levels of ingenuity, wit or grace to fire the form. Discordant voices are fine if the language elegantly spins and wheels, but when it feels like one-note writing the riff becomes boring and reads like a weak Beckett monologue delivered from the bog by way of NW6 ... The characters do not feel drawn with much depth or humanity, so why should we care? This fault is partly down to Poguemahone’s structure – free-form prose does not give the writer, or reader, much chance to chew the cud – but there are other reasons. Too often the book lazily resorts to flinty flips back to \'blessed oul Oireland\' by these cliched exiled ruins ... The never-ending references to 1960s and ’70s pop culture also become tiresome ... when you get to the novel’s supposed pay-off, it feels middlin’ for the mileage you’ve put in ... Poguemahone is stuffed with rambles of blather; if you were on the receiving end of something similar at a Pogues tribute night in Cricklewood from some old boring soak with the green-tinted glasses on, you’d be drinking up and making your excuses to leave. You’re just expecting that bowsie Behan to be mentioned any minute, and…oh ... As a McCabe fan I had high hopes: I read Poguemahone in small chunks, in large chunks, intermittently, and still could not bring myself to care for it. If it was funny you might cut it some slack, but there’s little humour here; its approach to mental illness is also debatable.
Sally Hayden
RaveIndependent (IRE)[A] devastating, moving, and damning account ... This is a brilliant, layered testament to the circle of hell where vulnerable migrants find themselves trapped. Hayden never flinches in documenting human nature at its worst ... She builds the story around the plight of migrants, placing their unfiltered voices at its centre, adeptly threading their emotions through the sharp needle of her reporting ... My Fourth Time, We Drowned will leave you with little doubt that the system addressing the migrant crisis is not fit for purpose. We need a new discussion and approach to this preventable humanitarian cataclysm. Hayden’s book enriches that debate.
Helen DeWitt
RaveThe Irish TimesThis is a strange book, with strange charm, and DeWitt launched the literary kitchen sink at it. It should be read by everyone for its splash factor alone, although it will not be enjoyed by everyone. But, like all good samurai, it will finish you, before you can finish it.
