Roddy Doyle
A Star Called Henry
Pbk published August 2000 by Vintage at £6.99
ISBN: 0099284480
Artwork by: Cover photograph: © Hulton Getty
This is Ireland s !host famous living writer tackling one of the most crucial periods in its history A Star Called Henry has all the hallmarks of the start of a major literary portrayal of a national experience Guardian
Born in the Dublin slums of 1902 his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settler of scores Henry Smart has to grow up fast By the time he can walk he s out robbing and begging often cold and always hungry. but a prince of the streets By Easter Monday 1916 he s fourteen years old and already six-foot-two a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army A year later he s ready to die for Ireland again a rebel a Fenian and a killer With his fathers wooden leg as his weapon Henry becomes a Republican legend - one of Michael Collins boys a cop killer an assassin on a stolen bike
Both in its sweep and the vigour of its diagnosis of everything that is wrong with Ireland s sense of itself this novel is the equal of Grass s The Tin Drum and
Celine s Journey to the End of the Night Like those works this is a brilliant and breathtaking act of apostasy Here for once that most overused of terms is applicable
this really is a masterpiece Carlo Gebler Irish Times
The energy and full-blooded dialogue of Doyle s creations are as much in evidence here as in the best of his previous work A Star Called Henry is billed as Volume
One of The Last Roundup It is an exhilarating beginning. Daily Telegraph
Coyle lust gets better and better This is history evoked on an intimate and yet earth-shaking scale with a driving narrative that never falters Maybe the Great
American Novel remains to be written but on the evidence of its first instalment this is the epic Irish one created at a high pitch of eloquence Publishers Weekly
A vibrant work of fiction In Doyle s ambidextrous hands the making of modern Ireland gets a vigorous and illuminating run-down. Independent
Sarah May
The Nudist Colony
Pbk published July 2000 by Vintage at £6.99
ISBN: 0099289563
Artwork by: Cover photograph: Flames© Claire Haydon/Tony Stone. Boy © Colin Gray/Photonica
A Heart of Darkness for the late twentieth century, this is a remarkable and unforgettable debut Aesop is fourteen. His knowledge of crime is limited to drug-taking and car-theft on the Hackney estate where he lives; his knowledge of sex to what he observes his friends doing. But when Ludwig James knocks him over in his chauffeur-driven car one evening outside King's Cross, Aesop enters a world where the law is broken on a far grander scale.
Sarah May's startlingly accomplished first novel evokes an ailing England, riddled with corruption, whose inhabitants live among the remnants of its great colonial past An abandoned line factory, a decrepit Victorian butterfly house, the ruins of a labour colony in the Brazilian rainforest: intense, cinematic images preside over a grippingly sinister narrative and a cast of lovingly observed characters, each a criminal in his or her own way, each reaching towards redemption.
Sarah May is 27 and works in television. She lives with her son in London. This is her first novel.
Chuck Palahniuk
Survivor
Pbk published August 2000 by Vintage at £6.99
ISBN: 009928264X
Tender Branson, the last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult, has commandeered a Boeing 747, emptied of passengers, in order to tell his story to the plane's black box before it crashes. Brought up by the repressive cult and, like all Creedish younger sons, hired out as a domestic servant, Tender finds himself suddenly famous when his fellow cult members all commit suicide. A media messiah, author of the bestselling autobiography Saved from Salvation and the even better-selling Book of Very Common Prayer, he ascends to the very top of the freakshow heap before finally and apocalyptically spiralling out of control
Brett Easton Ellis described Chuck Palahniuk's first novel, Fight Club, as 'an outrageously suspenseful apocalyptic comedy of horrors' and concluded,' Maybe our generation has finally found its Don DeLillo:
Delete 'maybe;
Fight Club is now being filmed with Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham-Carter.
Chuck Palahniuk lives in Portland, Oregon.
Tim Parks
Destiny
Pbk published July 2000 by Vintage at £6.99
ISBN: 0099284944
The bestselling author of the Booker-shortlisted novel, Europe
'A writer with real talent' Time Out
Three months after returning to England, Christopher Burton receives a phone-call at the reception desk of the Rembrandt Hotel, Knightsbridge that in forms him of his son's suicide.
But why on receiving this terrible news, does Burton immediately decide that he must leave his Italian wife of thirty years standing? Why does he find it so difficult to focus on his grief for his son?
Intensely dramatic, dark and, against all odds, hilariously funny, Destiny is a satisfying story and a profound meditation on marriage and identity. Parks gives us a frightening experience of what it means to tread the narrow line between sanity and psychosis.
