Kilbrack: A Novel [Library Binding]

Jamie O'Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2004

A cast of rampant miscreants, brilliantly witty dialogue and dark imaginings make KILBRACK compulsive comic reading - an unforgettable encounter with Irish rural life and characters. O'Leary Montagu - tall, dark and normal, as Mary once described him - was born at the age of twenty-five, a difficult age, as he himself admits. He woke up in a hospital bed, a scarred amnesiac, and fell immediately in love with a young nurse, fresh from Ireland, Mary. Eleven years later and Mary, an alcoholic now and traumatized herself by O'Leary's neuroses, flees to her parents in Ireland. He finds himself homeless, impecunious and labouring under an ill-starred fate. But at least he has the memoirs of his beloved Nancy Valentine to guide him. He embarks on his life-long ambitition: to visit Kilbrack, her idyllic childhood home, and write her biography. The arrival of this stranger in the dilapidated village proves an unsettling affair, not least for the local pharmacist, J.D.Downey, 'dispenser of drugs and advice', and for Nellie Maguire, erratic spinster of the pub. The frenzied Mrs Cuthbert makes plans for O'Leary to marry her daughter, Livia, and restore the family fortune. But Livia, to spite her mother, vows to become a nun. The parish priest is busy cornering the Irish ham market; while from the big house comes a thin sardonic laughter as Valentine Brack composes his endless histories. What has happened to Kilbrack? As Nancy Valentine says in her memoirs, 'Love that dared to speak her name was forced to quit her home.' O'Leary's coming will change all that, but in a manner no one - in his right mind - could foretell.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Written a decade before Irish author O'Neill's breakthrough novel At Swim, Two Boys, this richly comic tale is at once a satire of Irish popular novels and exemplar of the genre. The book boasts a highly unusual hero, O'Leary Montagu, so named by the nurse who 11 years earlier found him, at age 25, facially scarred and wholly amnesiac after being struck by an automobile. Wracked by a host of strange compulsions, O'Leary is obsessed with an unpublished memoir he discovers, Ill Fares the Land by one Nancy Valentine, about her decaying hometown of Kilbrack and its endearingly odd inhabitants. After countless rereadings of the memoir (its title is rendered on O'Leary's copy as Ill Farts the Land, one of many such embarrassing "misprints"), O'Leary finally decides he must visit Kilbrack and the author to write her biography. What he discovers in the supposedly abandoned Kilbrack isn't at all what he expects. The outrageous cast, nearly all of whom seem to be characters in the memoir, are hilarious, and O'Leary himself is a memorable addition to the roll of heroes of Irish literature, with his endearing tics and habits. Constantly making brief mental "diary memos," he also clutches in his pocket his version of a security blanket (a mysterious "lemon jiffy") and waits five full minutes before entering a public toilet to be certain no one is inside. Only the crude homophobia of O'Leary's father jars in this idyll of satiric nostalgia.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Written more than a decade before the widely acclaimed epic At Swim, Two Boys [BKL F 1 02], this exuberant comic fable is both highly amusing and surprisingly moving. O'Leary Montague, a facially scarred amnesiac as the result of a car accident, travels to the Irish village of Kilbrack because it is the setting of his favorite novel, Ill Fares the Land, by Nancy Valentine. The small-town residents prove to be deeply eccentric, with habits ranging from button hoarding to cocaine addiction, so O'Leary, a veritable bundle of nervous tics and obsessions, fits right in. His desire to write a biography of the revered Nancy Valentine leads him to a hapless meeting with reclusive Valentine Brack, a still raffish if aging member of the landed gentry who harbors a terrible secret. O'Neill sends up the rural Irish to a fare-thee-well, devoting paragraph after paragraph to the hidebound villagers' convoluted conversations, so cryptic in tone that they inevitably lead to absurdly comic misunderstandings. While never slackening the antic pace, O'Neill deepens his narrative by making of the shambling, timorous O'Leary a change agent of revolutionary import. Soon enough, his story comes to signify the poignant search for one's history and home. O'Neill can cross genres at will--an epic tragedy here, a black comedy there; his large talent knows no bounds. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Library Binding: 305 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (February 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074325595X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743255950
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,250,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild Irish ... Montagu???, April 18, 2009

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Dick Johnson (Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kilbrack: A Novel (Library Binding)

Of course you can go home again. It will have changed - but you too will have changed. This book is all about dealing with change while wondering why things aren't as they used to be. There are ups and downs in the story, but not in the writing. The journey is very rewarding for the reader.

On the off chance you have not yet read the Editorial Reviews above, please do not read the one from Publishers Weekly or even the one from Booklist. They give away too much. Unfortunately you have to go to the "See all Editorial Reviews" to get only what you need to know before buying the book. And, I do hope you buy it.

O'Neill manages to carry forward a theme for 300 pages that few authors could have done. The humor is even and consistent throughout - and is never forced. The dialog is realistic and the characters, though overstated, are believable.

Due to O'Neill being Irish, comparisons will be made to Joyce. O'Neill is much more easily readable than Joyce. The author that came to mind as I was reading was Anthony Trollope. I hope O'Neill has a plan for continuing tales from Kilbrack.