The Dead School (Paperback)

by Patrick McCabe (Author)

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.

From Publishers Weekly
Tensions at a small-town school erupt into tragedy in the latest from Irish novelist McCabe.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Delta (May 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038531423X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385314237
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,177,872 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 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 (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another masterpiece, November 4, 1998

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

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Warning !, November 25, 1999

By	D. P. Cahill (Wexford, Ireland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An amazing book, it kept me in my room for hours straight with its perfectly real version of Ireland. Its highs were dizzying, hilarious, but its lows - be prepared ! This is something I noticed in none of the reviews, but it's TOTALLY depressing.