Resurrection Man [Paperback]

Eoin McNamee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2004

This is the story of the Resurrection Man, a violent and ruthless sectarian killer who roams the streets of 1970s Belfast. McNamee's novel illuminates the political map of Belfast and the dark ring-roads of collective memory.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The publisher burdens this first novel by a young Irish writer with comparisons to such high stylists as Don DeLillo and Cormac McCarthy. Luckily, McNamee (first name pronounced 'Owen') belongs in such heady company, for, like them, his intense mastery of rhythm and image can sustain the complexity of a world at the level of sentence even as he holds together the larger dynamic of the novel as a whole. Resurrection Man is remarkable for its poetic evocations of violence, human foibles, human suffering. The setting is Belfast in the 1980s; the Resurrection Men are a gang of four led by Victor Kelly, a Protestant drawn into the sectarian violence because his preternaturally silent father is rumored by some to be a secret Catholic, and because he himself is enamored of the gangster movies he used to watch with his mother. Victor is a ruthless killer; his M.O. is the knife across the throat. And it is McNamee's ingenious stroke to link this harsh silencing to blasted Belfast and the broken, inadequate state of words in a place where death and inevitability are etched everywhere in a much more immediate kind of language: he describes the night as a "vernacular darkness"; Victor strips away layers of skin "to arrive at valid words"; a dead man's head is "bent to his chest as though there were something written there he could read." And at nearly every turn, McNamee describes natural events with quirky, sparkling precision that conveys the enormous depth of his engagement with his material and the reach of his imagination: a gang member's mother looks upon him "in a narrow-eyed calculating manner as if he was being measured for some fitted garment of disapproval that she was preparing in another room." That is indeed McCarthy territory, but McNamee lays claim to his own turf in this charging narrative, which keeps the reader on the edge of his seat and is filled with deft overlapping, as one after another Belfast man is "lifted" by Victor and his boys and as Victor becomes a minor celebrity whose arc is finally projected and brought to a close by a mysterious double agent named McClure. The romance here-a woman named Heather is lover to both Victor and a journalist named Ryan covering the case-is sad, real and intelligently underplayed. Victor Kelly is a scarred thug, a mother's son, a creature of enormous complexity and mystery; and though some supporting characters remain slightly overshadowed by the narrative, this book is a chilling masterpiece and a brilliant debut.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A work that ranks along with Cormac McCarthy's Child of God and Graham Greene's This Gun for Hire . . . written in a spare, clean language that nonetheless makes ample room for luminous figurative language."--Pinckney Benedict, The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Taut, harrowing and richly textured . . . Practically every paragraph is alive with intelligent, penetrating perceptions into his characters' thoughts and actions . . . Brilliant."--Chris Patsilelis, The Washington Post Book Worl

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 233 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (May 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571221777
• ISBN-13: 978-0571221776
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,859,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative novel of violence in Ireland., June 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Resurrection Man: A Novel (Paperback)

Politics and crime blur in this evocative novel that explores the Irish underground. Somehow managing to be both brutal and musical, McNamee follows a violent gang leader, his followers, and his enemies as their intersecting lives inevitably degnerate in a hopeless environment. This book is not for the squeamish, by the way.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death swirls around this novel like blue smoke from a cigarette, May 2, 2010

By 

Sugafoot (The Fields of Athenry) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Resurrection Man (Paperback)

Eoin McNamee has conjured, from beyond the grave, the doomed characters of his novel. Soulless death squad members who stalk Belfast in the wee hours. Abducting, mutilating, butchering dozens of innocent Catholic boys and men. Resurrection Man, is full of intelligence operatives, homosexual blackmail, too much amphetamine, the smell of stale whiskey, and ghoulish murder.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Resurrection Man brings human emotion to the Troubles, September 15, 2005

By 

M. Dawes "book worm" (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Resurrection Man: A Novel (Paperback)

This book was a great read. THough it did not go into detail about many of the historical facts and figures of the Troubles, it centered on the emotional turmoil that people experience when facing death. It was also interesting because it was written from the perspective of a Ulster Protestant, showing that people on both sides of the conflict are affected deeply by the death and destruction cause by the fighting. The book is very violent, with violent images and harsh words, but those characteristics add a very human dimension to the book, bringing it down to a level at which people can relate to. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the Northern Ireland conflict. It is a quick read because you don't want to put it down.