Mr. Dynamite (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) [Paperback]

Meredith Brosnan (Author)

Book Description

Series: American Literature (Dalkey Archive) | Publication Date: August 2004

Jarieth Prendergast is an ex-pat Irishman, an aging punk rocker, a film snob, a copy-shop employee, and a truly desperate man. His marriage is in tatters and his career as an avant-garde artist is a non-starter. As the book opens, Jarleth receives a letter from his lawyer about a possible inheritance from his Aunt, and promptly falls into fits of delusion as hilarious as they are utterly pathetic. An extraordinary first novel that melds an Irish writer's high style and penchant for belly laughs with the grotesque smash-and-grab energy of pre-9/11 New York.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An unruly Irish ex-pat and aging punk rocker living in New York City squalor hopes to improve his pathetic existence upon word of an unexpected inheritance in this first novel by expat Irishman Brosnan. Jarleth Prendergast is desperately in need of the money to produce his experimental puppet film, but predictably it slips through his fingers. The lawyer who informs him by letter of his inheritance suddenly dies, but Jarleth can't let him go, narrating his adventures to the dead man in rambling, whisky-sodden stream-of-consciousness prose. A few weeks later, Jarleth is informed that a new will has appeared and that his bequest is now a bone china teapot. But Jarleth is already embarked on a world-class bender, kicked out of his apartment by his wife when she discovers proof of his infidelity, and obsessed with murdering the Frenchman whom his pathological liar girlfriend says raped her. The misshapen plot careens forward as Jarleth takes up secret residence at the Kwik Copy where he works, buys a gun and stalks the Frenchman. His determination is maniacally strong, but like everything else in his life, the project is doomed to end in failure. Brosnan has a touch of Irvine Welsh's brilliant recklessness, and Jarleth can be blisteringly funny, but his voice isn't consistently engaging enough to carry this shaggy tale.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 1st Dalkey Archive Ed edition (August 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564783537
• ISBN-13: 978-1564783530
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,371,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Perils of Love (and Other Things), November 9, 2004

By 

Donald F. Dal Maso (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mr. Dynamite (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

So exactly what horrible fate hovers over Jarleth Prendergast, the madcap protagonist of this irresistibly funny tale by Meredith Brosnan? Does ruin gnaw at our hero's genius (self-imagined or otherwise) because his minimum-wage job, his screaming spouse and his groaning board of alcohol and hallucinogens conspire to undermine his magnum opus, a film saga of the Irish Troubles rendered into great art by the miracle of animated clay figures?

Alas, Dear Reader, Prendy is threatened by his own Sense of Justice. I don't mean his sudden deprivation of a tidy inheritance by two of the Norns back in the homeland, or the unconscionable antipathy of every merde-slinging philistine in New York who tries to turn him into a reverse Baudelaire. No, Prendy's life is set on the course of tragedy when he discovers that the one person he has truly loved, a sex-worker named Amelia, killed herself because of her abuse years ago at the hands of her stepfather.

What is a man to do when those who are powerful destroy what he loves? Forget about swearing out a complaint at the local police precinct. Prendy is a man of action and he has a gun which, at the very least, he will not discharge into his own foot. And Prendy has the vibrant catacombs of New York, from Lincoln Center to the Lower East Side, to plot a denouement worthy of an urban Hamlet on drugs.

The slapstick vividness of Prendy's discourse (delivered in a slightly warped epistolary fashion with his back-home attorney, himself the subject of a surprising change of fortune early in the book) results in a story that I find utterly engaging, especially as Prendy's boisterous antics gradually unfold the core of tragedy.

By the way, not by chance is Prendy's lover just one inch shorter than Dolores Haze, that haunted presence from another great love story. Just buy the book, Dear Reader, and tremble.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wickedly Hilarious!, March 29, 2006

By 

John L. Morace "John Morace" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mr. Dynamite (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) (Paperback)

Lusty, bawdy and totally off the wall, "Mr. Dynamite" had me bursting into laughter on a red-eye to New York from LA. I didn't realize how funny it was until the flight attendant came over and shushed me-- twice--and then threatened to take my book away. So, while I happily recommend this novel to other Amazonians, if you want to get to the end while on a red-eye, remember to laugh quietly to yourself.