Customer Reviews

Orange Rhymes With Everything

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This is a surreal, and compelling novel about among other things - redemption through violence. Like the Amazon reviewer I found it a little disturbing but no more so than Cormac McCarthy or J G Ballard. The humor is dry and the tone is one of obvious irony. There are passages of great lyricism and beauty but lovers of Irish fiction beware: Maeve Binchy it isn't

At first I thought this was an *Angela's Ashes* clone, beginning as it did with a grim Irish childhood. But no. Adrian McKinty speaks with an Irish voice, to be sure, but it is his own voice. Like Joyce Carol Oates, he refrains from using quotes in his dialogue, to good advantage. The device brings his characters closer. After some confusion about who is talking when and where, the reader adjusts, understands and gets with the flow. It's "wee" for "little," "arse" for "ass" and sentence construction contains somewhat of the brogue, "Black and voracious are the lines between us" says he. Toward the end it all pulls together philosophically.

"This whole society was sick. He could see that now. Sick and indifferent to it all. They had their hard wee God; white and dour and manifest. Their country crawling with believers. The homogeneity of it was crippling." And later,

"Couldn't they see? How could they? With their pariah eyes and the schizophrenic noose of their allegiance. Split between loving England and hating it. Booing the English at football games and mourning when their soldiers died. These people who didn't even know if they wanted to be called Irish or not. Stateless. Orphans of history with only their mad religion to give them any identity at all."

I don't enjoy violence in novels or movies, but this is not gratuitous violence. The author is telling it like it is. My only problem is with the female protagonist. She's not convincingly female - not because she's precocious and perceptive, not because of the nose-picking or scatological references. It's a "je ne sais quoi". I hear a young boy talking - not a young girl. McKinty's other female characters are believable enough, but then, they are all in the background.

This is, in my opinion, a stunning first novel with a great deal of promise. I will be looking forward to future contributions by Adrian McKinty.

pamhan99@aol.com

This is a fully realized literary statement of nihilism, a foreboding read in the best noirish tradition. Yet throughout there's a pervasive sense of unity of all things. Dismissing this as a first novel is a mistake; it is deficient in neither theme or quality of prose. I applaud the author's vision and his commitment to style, something almost completely missing from today's bestsellers. This book is disturbing on many levels and I will be thinking about it for weeks to come. I find that so many authors write two excellent books and then descend to some comfortable formula. In this book McKinty's is an original voice that I emphatically hope he maintains. Now on to the rest of his work...

My introduction to Adrian McKinty was FIFTY GRAND, a thriller which really grabbed me. Anxious to read more by the author, I read DEAD I MAY WELL BE which again was a gripping crime odyessy. And then I chose to read this, his first novel.McKinty's power and skill shows here, but it falls far short of his more recent writing. I found this difficult to get through while his later fiction has kept me reading without a break for quite long periods of time. This story is told from two distinct perspectives, but neither seemed truly authentic to me. The heavy use of Irish slang which had me constantly referring to the glossary at the end of the book was a further hindrance to my becoming fully engrossed.If you haven't read anything by this author yet, I suggest that you first read FIFTY GRAND or DEAD I MAY WELL BE. If you pick this one first, you may not feel encouraged to read his later fiction and that would be a shame.

McKinty is the best writer of my generation (although I'm a bit younger than him). 'Orange' is a great novel, although it is vastly different from his subsequent novels. McKinty is outstanding, pick up any of his novels. His prose is second to none.

There is a good novel in this writer, but this isn't it. The depiction of the teenager's life and day to day trials and tribulations are well written, dryly humorous, and showcase the writer's talents. Much less believable are the passages involving the psychopathic ex-terrorist. The senselessness of the overall N.I. situation comes through loud and clear....but we know that without having to read this book. Perhaps having worked his home town problems out of his system with this book, he can get to grips with the novel that parts of this work suggest he is capable of writing. I for one will be looking out for it.