RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksBohane is a cutthroat warren of sparring gangs and sinister alleyways, a hybrid place full of warriors and wastrels that can still, for all the infighting, speak with a collective ‘we’ that constantly gauges its own bad moods … Within Barry’s narrative world, it matters less who was betrayed and what was suppressed than that things are besmirched. History hurt; you learned it by rote; now get on with your dancing and dying. The plot of the novel, simple and generic but great fun, gets on fine … Barry has written a ripping good tale about dangerous people wrestling for control of an uncontrollable place, which is at once the best caricature of contemporary Ireland yet to appear this century and a book that seems willfully disinterested in claiming that title.
