Emerald Germs of Ireland (Paperback)

by Patrick Mccabe (Author) "Pat was coming walking down the road whistling when he saw Mrs. Tubridy up ahead in her head scarf..." (more)
Key Phrases: lovely lassies, little tin soldier, pum pum, Butty Halpin, Timmy Sullivan, Patsy Traynor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
McCabe's jokey verbosity and energetic narrative voice are on full display in this messy but manically vibrant novel. Pat McNab's social position in the dully parochial Irish village of Gullytown ranks above village idiot but below town drunk. Few of his fellow citizens would suspect the wild tales he tells are true, much less entertain the idea that he could be a serial killer. Norman Bates, however, has nothing on the middle-aged, reclusive Pat, who enjoys a beyond-Oedipal relationship with his mother (she recurrently appears long after he has dispatched her with a frying pan) and tallies up a final body count estimated "around the fifty, fifty-five mark." Over the course of McCabe's fluctuating, episodic novel, Pat's victims number fewer than two dozen, but each is linked with the popular songs and traditional ballads that reflect Pat's pathetic dreams of becoming a pop singer. The teetotaling, intrusive Mrs. Tubridy is downed with alcohol to the tune of "Whiskey on a Sunday," and a land-swindling neighbor is burned in Pat's barn with "Old Flames" for background music. At other times, Pat's hallucinatory fantasies transform his mundane life into a spaghetti western, sci-fi epic or gangster movie. While Pat bears more than a casual resemblance to Francie Brady, the sympathetic, psychotic hero of The Butcher Boy, this novel's heavy irony, mock verbosity and genre-juggling are more reminiscent of McCabe's recent "serial novel," Mondo Desperado. Although the Grand Guignol humor wears thin after the first several deaths, McCabe gives occasional revealing glimpses into Pat's damaged psyche and the stifling mindset of village life. The mixed results are a thoroughly Irish stew of pathos and bathos, deep melancholy and wild humor, cutting observation and pure blarney. 8-city author tour. (Mar.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Potential readers of the two-time Booker Prize finalist's latest novel are advised first to eat a big bowl of Lucky Charms laced with psychedelics; doing so may be the only way to swallow this jarring musical tragicomedy. In it, our hero/villain, aspiring actor/singer Pat McNab, 45, of Gullytown, Ireland, commits matricide and other heinous murders, each fitted with a theme song (e.g., in "The Turfman from Ardee," the turfman from Ardee bites it). However, the point of all the bloodshed is unclear. Violence for violence's sake doesn't make for great literature or gut-splitting comedy. Because Pat is such a surreal concoction, it is also difficult to gauge how much empathy and sympathy he deserves, if any. McCabe has a gift for creating bent-brained yet fiendishly human outcasts ? la Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy (LJ 5/1/93) and Patrick "Pussy" Brady in Breakfast on Pluto (LJ 12/15/98), but with this Pat he falls short. An optional purchase.
-AHeather McCormack, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006095678X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060956783
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #697,287 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Patrick's lost it, April 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Emerald Germs Of Ireland: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ever since The Butcher Boy, I've been buying McCabe's books, hoping he'll come somewhere close, but I've been disappointed (although The Dead School was a decent read). However, "Germs" has left me disgusted that I shelled out good money for this book. It reads like McCabe simply got stinking drunk one night, fell asleep, and wrote this book after waking in the middle of the night. Not much of a story, not any where near as engrossing as Butcher Boy and Dead School. It got so bad that I stopped reading half way through. Not recommended in the least.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Moving on......., September 14, 2003

By	J. Guild (Toronto,Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

After reading "Breakfast on Pluto" and not liking it,I thought I'd try something else by McCabe.I soon found this was much the same kind of writing ;I plodded to page 180 ,then packed it in. If dark,troubled,tortured,twisted and morose fiction that doesn't seem to go anywhere is what one enjoys; there's pleanty of it here.I note that other reviewers have rated it very high or very low;which to me doesn't say that it was good or bad ;but that some liked it while others didn't.This can often be determined rather quickly by opening a book and reading a couple of pages at random.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Smart black humor, June 18, 2002

By	Porter Crane (Wokingham, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This is about as dark as you can get: a funny tale of an accidental serial killer. Accidental, you say? What could you mean? This poor man does not want to be a serial killer. Blood, guts and gore do not arouse him. He simply wants to be left alone and kills the people who get in the way of his dreams. Ah, black humor...So wonderful and so misunderstood!