Customer Reviews

A Fairy Tale of New York (Donleavy, J. P.)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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I am actually a publisher and we have a line called Humour Classics, in which we reissue out of print classics of humour. And a book I read many years ago, that I loved (I love all of J.P. Donleavey - he is one of my all-time favourite writers) is Fairy Tale of New York. I was checking on Amazon to see if it was available and in print. It is. But I was amazed no-one had done a review. SO here goes: it's brilliantly funny, it would make a great film. The action sequences in the funeral parlour are superb. His prose style is pure magic. Read it!

My Irish father bought this book years ago, one rainy day in a department store, He dragged me up the the top floor, I remember because he was very keen to get the latest J P Donleavy novel. After he had read it, I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about, and I was hooked immediately! After this I moved onto the Ginger Man then all his others, but this one's the best for me, this book is a classic!

This is, without a doubt, one of the funniest books I've read. Donleavy's bizarre wit and lyrical style are superb. If you enjoy absurd humor, you will love this book.

The Fairytale is another of Donleavy's masterworks. This story is told with Donleavy's unique kind of stream of consciousness narrative style, changing lanes from third person long shots to first person details at the cutting edge of his narrator's second-by-second experience. This is a story teller in complete control of the telling, if not of the story itself, sad and funny by turns.

There is a line from a Joni Mitchell song: "laughing and crying, you know it's the same release..."

That's a perfectly succinct summary of the experience of reading this marvel of a novel.