{"title":"Books by Patrick McCabe","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781800181113","title":"Poguemahone","description":"\u003cp\u003e‘If you’re looking for this century’s \u003cem\u003eUlysses\u003c\/em\u003e, look no further … a stunningly lyrical novel’ \u003cstrong\u003eAlex Preston, \u003cem\u003eObserver\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘Pitched – deliriously – between high modernism and folk magic, between gorgeous free-verse and hilarious Irish vernacular, \u003cem\u003ePoguemahone\u003c\/em\u003e is a stunning achievement … profoundly affecting’ \u003cstrong\u003eDavid Keenan\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e‘A blistering, brilliant ballad of mad tales from rural Ireland to London Town. The characters are electric, the narrative fuelled with a brilliant frenetic energy. McCabe is truly original’ \u003cstrong\u003eElaine Feeney\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eDan Fogarty, an Irishman living in England, is looking after his sister Una, now seventy and suffering from dementia in a care home in Margate. From Dan’s anarchic account, we gradually piece together the story of the Fogarty family.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHow the parents are exiled from a small Irish village and end up living the hard immigrant life in England. How Dots, the mother, becomes a call girl in 1950s Soho. How a young and overweight Una finds herself living in a hippie squat in Kilburn in the early 1970s. How the squat appears to be haunted by vindictive ghosts who eat away at the sanity of all who live there. And, finally, how all that survives now of those sex-and-drug-soaked times are Una’s unspooling memories as she sits outside in the Margate sunshine, and Dan himself, whose role in the story becomes stranger and more sinister.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoguemahone \u003c\/i\u003eis a huge, shape-shifting epic from one of modern Ireland''s greatest writers. It is a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale Patrick McCabe has never attempted before.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205562859698,"sku":"9781800181113","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781800181113.jpg?v=1793377189"},{"product_id":"9781035065226","title":"The Butcher Boy","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA modern classic of Irish fiction, shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhen I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrancie Brady is a small-town rascal who spends his days turning a blind eye to the troubles at home and getting up to mischief with his best friend Joe – hiding in the chicken-house, shouting abuse at fish in the local stream. But after a disagreement with his neighbour Mrs Nugent over her son's missing comic books, Francie's reckless streak spirals out of control and gives rise to a monstrous obsession . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFearless, shocking and blackly funny, Patrick McCabe's \u003ci\u003eThe Butcher Boy \u003c\/i\u003ewon the 1992 \u003ci\u003eIrish Times \u003c\/i\u003eLiterature Prize and was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize. It is a modern classic of Irish fiction, a portrait of the insidious violence latent in small town life and of a frenzied young man lashing out at everyone, even himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54926313292149,"sku":"9781035065226","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781035065226_9ded8913-de47-4a95-b3f4-7c349ac38766.jpg?v=1786017619"},{"product_id":"9781800183599","title":"Goldengrove","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Wild, anarchic, and wonderfully head-spinning.\" — Neil Jordan, award-winning film director\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA dark theatrical comedy about the vexed and violent relationship between Britain and Ireland, from twice Booker-shortlisted author Patrick McCabe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s the summer of Brexit, and in a seedy hotel room on the South Coast of England, Chenevix Meredith finds his old comrade Henry Plumm murdered in the bathtub. Piecing together their shared history, Meredith looks back at the years they spent in Dublin half a century ago, running a theatrical agency and rubbing shoulders with actors and assassins alike in the swirling smoke of public houses. What their clients didn’t know, is that the flamboyant pair were undercover agents of the British state, posted to identify terrorist networks.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGoldengrove\u003c\/em\u003e is a deeply immersive, satirical novel in which nothing is as it seems and no one is who they say they are. Steeped in film noir, classic crime and popular culture, McCabe blurs the lines between what’s real and what’s staged in this absurd game of cat and mouse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Yet again Patrick McCabe summons the ghost of Flann O''Brien in this wild rollick of a novel . . . Wonderful, shape-shifting stuff.\" — Colum McCann, author of \u003cem\u003eApeirogon\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Thunderously compelling and downright ecstatic . . . This is nothing less than the work of a genuine master, a must-read.\" — Billy O’Callaghan, author of \u003cem\u003eLife Sentences\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"One hears Joyce and Beckett and Paul Muldoon in the background. Not because there is any borrowing, but because all alike draw from that same dazzling tradition of oral storytelling.\" — Mark Bowles, author of \u003cem\u003eAll My Precious Madness\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55412330561909,"sku":"9781800183599","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781800183599_773bcc0e-9c81-4fc0-a6bf-ec29bf71b9a7.jpg?v=1793377190"},{"product_id":"9781035091430","title":"Breakfast on Pluto","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom internationally acclaimed author Patrick McCabe, the Booker Prize-nominated novel that tracks the chaotic life of an abandoned orphan who escapes her hometown, braving the combustible streets of London in the 1970s.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith wonderful delicacy and subtle insight and intimation, McCabe creates Mr Patrick ‘Pussy’ Braden, the endearingly hopeful hero(ine) whose gutsy survival and yearning quest for love drive the glimmering, agonizing narrative in which the troubles are a distant and immediate echo and refrain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwenty years ago, her ladyship escaped her hometown of Tyreelin, Ireland, fleeing her foster mother Whiskers (prodigious Guinness-guzzler, human chimney) and her mad household, to begin life anew in London. There, in blousy tops and satin miniskirts, she plies her trade, often risking life and limb amongst the flotsam and jetsam that fill the bars of Piccadilly Circus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut suave businessmen and lonely old women are not the only dangers that threaten Pussy. It is the 1970s and fear haunts the streets of London and Belfast as the critical mass of history builds up, and Pussy is inevitably drawn into a maelstrom of violence and tragedy destined to blow her fragile soul asunder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56368480911733,"sku":"9781035091430","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781035091430_b1d27bf4-3e18-45c9-8128-e02829ce8b10.jpg?v=1786034637"},{"product_id":"poguemahone","title":"Poguemahone","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘If you’re looking for this century’s \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e, look no further’ - \u003ci\u003eThe \u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Wildly original’\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e - Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDan Fogarty is visiting his seventy-year-old sister Una, who is living in a care home in Margate. Una has dementia, but she is still able to recall her youth, spent in a hippie commune in South London. A picture of their family’s history begins to emerge; the Fogartys were evicted from their home of Currabawn in Ireland in the 1950s, and both Dan and Una have been haunted by this forced exile.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA sprawling, dazzlingly inventive novel in verse, \u003ci\u003ePoguemahone\u003c\/i\u003e cements McCabe’s status as one of Ireland’s greatest writers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57502278386037,"sku":"9781037404382","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781037404382.jpg?v=1786781099"},{"product_id":"goldengrove","title":"Goldengrove","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘This is nothing less than the work of a genuine master, a must-read’ - Billy O’Callaghan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Wonderful, shape-shifting stuff’ - Colum McCann\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChenevix Meredith, recently retired, is whiling away his time somewhere on the south coast of England, when his old colleague, Henry Plumm, is found dead. The discovery prompts Meredith to reminisce about their days in 1960s Dublin, where the pair ran a theatrical agency – except this theatrical agency was actually an outpost of the British state, and the duo were investigating the city’s terrorist networks as undercover operatives. Now, following the murder of his friend, Meredith is forced to contend with the buried darkness of their past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNow part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57502279172469,"sku":"9781037404405","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781037404405.jpg?v=1786781100"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-patrick-mccabe.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}