The Dead School [Hardcover]

Patrick McCabe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1995

From the award-winning author of The  Butcher Boy comes a new novel of  extraordinary power that, according to the San Francisco  Chronicle, "confirm[s] McCabe's standing as one  of the most brilliant writers to ever come out of  Ireland."

In The  Dead School, Patrick McCabe returns to the  emotionally dense landscape of small-town Ireland  to explore the inner lives of two men: a  headmaster and a schoolteacher, each man the product of a  soul-stifling culture, each battling his own demons  of loss and betrayal. Tension coils--until tragedy  strikes a young student in their charge, and the  latent despair and rage that has festered in their  hearts explodes onto the page. As in The  Butcher Boy, McCabe demonstrates his  remarkable command of the vernacular and an uncanny  ability to pinpoint the exact moment when ordinary  minds take flight into madness. Equally  compelling, equally heartbreaking in its impact,   The Dead School has established McCabe  as one of the most celebrated writers of literary  fiction today.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"All it takes is one thing to go wrong and then--well everything else decides to follow suit I'm afraid. Mr Sun, who a minute before was saying, 'Hello! I'm Mr Sun! I'm your friend on this happy picnic day!' is opening up a big sunny mouth full of razor teeth." Macabre humor, grisly horrors, likeable characters, madness and pathos, shrewd allusions to pop songs and movies, and a supple prose style that sounds like Irish speech when read aloud--Patrick McCabe does it all. The Dead School is a dazzling novel, more complex and even more gripping than McCabe's The Butcher Boy. Here are the stories of two very different Irishmen, from different generations, whose lives intersect for a brief and mutually destructive time, and then continue, in misery, apart. McCabe deftly avoids the easy or dramatic ending and delivers instead the saddest, funniest, most horrible ending of all because it is so true to life. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

McCabe's The Butcher Boy (Booker shortlisted in the U.K. and a critical success over here) was roundly praised as a "triumph of voice," and indeed the smart-alecky Joyce-drunk narration of Francie Brady was a steady delight throughout an otherwise harrowing portrait of rural Ireland. Now, in this new book, McCabe attempts to tame his own apparent gift for the novelist's rowdy blather and build a traditional novel, full of structure and dramatic tension; instead, he has produced a predictable story with stock characters, well-timed dreams and deaths whenever the pace truly lags. The Dead School is the tale of two schoolteachers a generation apart?Raphael Bell, born in 1913, and Malachy Dudgeon, born in 1952; the first the son of an IRA man killed by the Black and Tans, the younger the son of a cuckold who took his own life. McCabe has powerful material here, as the two different Irelands, revolutionary Ireland and post-colonial Ireland, with its TV shows, rock bands and Indian food, clash at St. Anthony's school in Dublin, where young Malachy teaches and Raphael is headmaster. The fates of these two are bound for mutual destruction, as the peculiar narration, in the form of a lecture to some children from yet another schoolteacher, baldly hints at from the start. Unfortunately, readers have to wade through long spells of madness from both characters before the inevitable and tragic clash. McCabe shows flashes of his lyrical brilliance and wild exposition, but his theme has fared better in the hands of countrymen Colm Toibin, John B. Keane and Roddy Doyle.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 286 pages
• Publisher: The Dial Press; 1ST edition (April 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385314205
• ISBN-13: 978-0385314206
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,548,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Even more engrossing than I expected!, April 16, 2001

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Dead School (Paperback)

Having already read McCabe's chilling book, The Butcher Boy, I was looking forward to a repeat of the damaged but sympathetic characters and the delicious horror one finds there. This novel, however, boasts a broader scope and more subtle characterization than The Butcher Boy. More ambitious, but just as seductive, it boasts two main characters of different generations and personalities, colliding with nightmarish results. Because the characters are so normal, even happy, at the beginning, and their deterioration seems so accidental and avoidable, the sense of sadness and loss one feels at the end is even more intense.

Malachy Dudgeon is a young man whose childhood, though not ideal, is not bizarre, either. As a boy, he experiences love and security within his family, which more than outweighs any damage from bullying he faces by older kids, even when his family situation changes. Eventually, he goes to college, falls in love, becomes a teacher almost by accident, and is hired to work in a private boys' school in Dublin. Raphael Bell is his Headmaster. We learn of Raphael's almost idyllic childhood, his great success as a student, his firm friendships, his early career, and his shy love and eventual marriage. Passages of great, lyrical beauty pervade these descriptions. Inexorably, however, Bell's conservative, moralistic, and formal approaches to life and education come into conflict with the casual attitudes toward discipline, structure, scholarship, and traditional values which Malachy represents, and the fabric of their lives unravels, then shreds.

McCabe creates wonderful, understandable characters facing conflicts not unlike those many of us face, and voices so real we can recognize even their inflections. By deliberately evoking the feeling that if only we were there we might be able to help, he cleverly involves the reader in the action. For a teacher, however, he may dredge up real nightmares--of rude or surly students, impatient and demanding parents, classes for which more preparation was essential, compromises made because there was simply Not Enough Time, along with pedagogical conflicts between strict standards and flexible, creative learning. All of these issues come into play here, and they will keep you thinking long after you finish the book. Mary Whipple

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another masterpiece, November 3, 1998

By 

T. Bundrick "Tboom49" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dead School (Paperback)

Once again McCabe astounds. More haunting portraits of madness. People who suffer from devastating mental illnesses didn't become that way overnight. The characters in this book, much like the characters in THE BUTCHER BOY, suffer numerous insults and injuries at the hands of others. A masterful presentation of universal impulses.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Patrick McCabe's "The Dead School" Exceeds Expectations, July 25, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dead School (Hardcover)

When I chose Patrick McCabe's "The Dead School" from the shelf at my local bookstore, I expected nothing more than an interesting summer read. I soon found that McCabe's grasp of plot, dialogue, and tone would disturb as well as delight me. The main action of the novel is set in the Dublin of the mid-1970s. Raphael Bell, principal of St. Anthony's National School, and Malachy Dudgeon, a new, and not-very-dedicated teacher clash in a spectacular and haunting way. McCabe's understanding of the psychological motivations of his characters, and his detailed analysis of the parallel deterioration of the two men is first-rate. McCabe also has an extremely skillful ear when rendering dialect. The narrator's voice, for example, could have been that of a number of my Dublin friends, although its ostensible charm covers a heart that seems to delight in the tragedy that befalls Messrs. Bell and Dudgeon. All in all a rewarding and riveting novel.