A Sort of Homecoming: A Novel [Paperback]

Robert Cremins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000

Coming home for Christmas is a cliché Tom Iremonger hopes to explode.

After a six-month "transcontinental lost weekend" spent blowing his grandfather's legacy, Ireland's self-proclaimed Greatest Resource returns to Dublin armed only with his beloved leather jacket, a dwindling supply of Eurocheques, and a truly monstrous ego. Dublin, however, has changed. It seems, in fact, as smoothly sophisticated as Iremonger himself. Shaken, Tom finds himself violating some precious Rules of Cool--collecting for charity, cheating during the Forty-Foot Swim in the frigid Irish Sea, and above all trying (and failing) to win back Mainie Doyle, the urbane and beautiful daughter of a supermarket magnate. As he fights for his spot atop Dublin's trendy new elite, can it be that Iremonger's future is finally catching up with him? A novel of pints and posterboys, ravers and priests, semtex and sensibility, Cremins's hilarious debut—part Less Than Zero, part Look Homeward, Angel—is as much about some very old truths as it is about the new Ireland.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Smug, "post-literary" hipster Tom Iremonger cuts a dashing, pathetic figure as the kind of loathsome slug Bret Easton Ellis would invent, but with the maddening charm of the wittiest of Dubliners. Iremonger is a 22-year-old Trinity graduate who squandered his entire inheritance during a six-month international binge that he calls an "anti-odyssey," a project to "make the present moment a work of art." Now coming home to Dublin to see his family at Christmas, he learns the hard way that his excesses have not only left him flat broke, but also reflect a radical denial of his own past and a self-destructive evasion of the future. With nothing to go on except an inflated ego, Iremonger suffers shock after shock as he stumbles through a holiday nightmare of tight-lipped relatives, college chums turned gangsters and his lost love Mainie, Doyle now engaged to his old grammar school rival. The failed jet-setter copes with these blows by snuggling deeper into his security blanket of drugs, self-worship and ever-changing "First Rules of Cool," but even the Iremonger ego crumbles before the ghosts of his unhappy past, revealing the shy boy he once was, in love with books and Irish history. Cremins uses his protagonist's delusion as a kind of warped prism through which to view larger issues facing contemporary Ireland: the constant exodus of its youth, troubled Catholic/Protestant relations and the erosion of Irish culture by the nouveau-riches' fad-conscious consumerism. The Iremonger project itself is Cremins's illuminating, ruggedly textured parable for wayward modern youth who turn from tradition in favor of glitzy instant-gratification, and who end up, as the hero does, as so much human jetsam in the airports of the world. This is a gratifying, subtly stylized tale of hard-won humility, told with bracing humor. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Tom Iremonger is on a quest to waste his inheritance quickly by living as dissolute a life as possible. The 20-something Dubliner fancies himself Jack Kerouac with frequent flyer miles--drinking heavily, loving unwisely, using all available drugs, running away from everything and nothing. A supposedly quick trip home for Christmas forces Tom to confront how meaningless and empty his life has become. His ex-girlfriend is moving in with his college tormentor, his drug connection steals Tom's only treasured possession, and his father may have stomach cancer. Admittedly, the coming-of-age premise is overworked, but Cremins manages to bring a fresh sensibility, an uncommon texture, and a unique environment to his tale. The characters are sharply etched, and the dialogue soars with a mixture of Irish, American, and Eurotrash slang. Cremins skillfully uses Tom's extended world tour as a metaphor for the Irish Diaspora and the damage it is doing to that country's future; it should be noted that Dublin-native Cremins now lives in Houston. George Needham

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393320235
• ISBN-13: 978-0393320237
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,393,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awakening from disbelief, June 14, 2000

By 

Guillermo Garcia - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Sort of Homecoming: A Novel (Paperback)

As an ex-student of Cremins', I approached this book skeptically, at best. After only a few pages, I forgot to be unsure about the book and began to simply enjoy the story. Iremonger is a pathetically likeable hero/antihero that Cremins writes authentically. Rule of Cool #1: All lovers of Nick Hornsby, Michael Hornburg, even Irvine Welsh need to take a look. It's got all the essentials: sex, drugs, betrayal, forgiveness, chaos and rebirth.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best, May 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Sort of Homecoming: A Novel (Paperback)

A sort of homecoming tells the facinating story of Tom Iremonger. It deals with his homecoming at Christmas and finds that while he was away everything has changed. Friends, hangouts, and family have all are different than when Tom left, and all pose a threat to Tom's percieved existance. Many problems seem to come from Tom's on-again off-again romance with Mainie Doyle. This book is a great read for anyone who has left their hometown and comes home to find everything has changed . . . or maybe they have changed and the city has stayed the same. It is a great blend of wit, humor, and life lesson.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Roar of the Young Celtic Tiger, March 15, 2001

By 

oh_pete (Cambridge. MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Sort of Homecoming: A Novel (Paperback)

Although I reviewed this book elsewhere over six months ago, I have read it again since and want to make sure as many people buy it and read it as possible. I haven't figured out why this book isn't a bigger hit, is it the Irish thing? It shouldn't be, there's a useful and amusing glossary in the back of Irish terms that are too "Bourgeois To Explain" in the text.

Tom Iremonger is one of the most in-your-face characters you're ever likely to meet, but only in the narrating of his own story--if you met him in a pub he'd probably be too cool to talk to you. He's a male model after all, and his poster is up all over Ireland, with the caption "Ireland's Greatest Resource." Why he decides to come home for Christmas after his six month "anti-odyssey" flying all over the world and spending his grandfather's inheritance is something he can't figure out, but once he's home he realizes that it must be to go to Mainie Doyle's party. Mainie is Tom's on-again, off-again girlfriend, the female version of the Ireland's Greatest Resource poster. Tom's substance-enhanced adventures trying to get an invitation while not seeming to want one are alternately frustrating and hilarious. Iremonger is one of the most self-absorbed characters I've ever come across, and that's the point. He does terrible, self-destructive things but they seem all to be a pose, his true heart is aching underneath all the drug-induced bravado and yearning for redemption.

Robert Cremins is an excellent, sensitive, clever and funny young writer and I look forward to his follow-up to this entertaining and moving coming-of-age tale. He is irreverent in the most wholesome sense of the word. If you like Nick Hornby or Dave Eggers, you will find Cremins well worth the $11. If you are a twentysomething American of Irish descent and Catholic upbringing this book is a must read--even if you still go to mass. Slainte!