Genre Fiction
![Patrick McCabe - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000AQ8QIM.jpg)
Poguemahone
A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue by the Booker-shortlisted author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto.
Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a seaside nursing home, would be all alone without her brother Dan, whose epic free-verse monologue tells their family story. Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England. Their mother's trials as a call girl. Young Una's search for love in a seemingly haunted hippie squat, and the two-timing Scottish stoner poet she'll never get over. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dan's mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger- and more sinister.
A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue, Patrick McCabe's epic reinvention of the verse novel combines Modernist fragmentation and Beat spontaneity with Irish folklore, then douses it in whiskey and sets it on fire. Drinking song and punk libretto, ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is the devastating telling of one family's history-and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate.
Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a seaside nursing home, would be all alone without her brother Dan, whose epic free-verse monologue tells their family story. Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England. Their mother's trials as a call girl. Young Una's search for love in a seemingly haunted hippie squat, and the two-timing Scottish stoner poet she'll never get over. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dan's mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger- and more sinister.
A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue, Patrick McCabe's epic reinvention of the verse novel combines Modernist fragmentation and Beat spontaneity with Irish folklore, then douses it in whiskey and sets it on fire. Drinking song and punk libretto, ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is the devastating telling of one family's history-and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Poguemahone
"Poguemahone is like a high dive: The toughest part of reading it might be convincing your feet to leave the board. Once you've done that, gravity does the rest."
-John Williams, New York Times
"McCabe draws the reader into a rambling web replete with Gaelic folklore, IRA agitation, and a soundtrack of glam and progressive rock. Lively and ambitious in form, this admirably extends the range of McCabe's career-long examination of familial and childhood trauma."
-Publishers Weekly
"The vernacular, drunken verse format may be daunting at first, but after a few pages the narrative develops a hypnotic rhythm, as if one is sitting on a barstool listening to the narrator unspool his story over a pint (or three). At this point, the reader has merely to hang on and enjoy the ride. A moving saga of youth, age, and memory-by turns achingly poetic, knowingly philosophical, and bitterly funny."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Poguemahone is a shape-shifting epic of the Irish in England, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale McCabe has never attempted before. Indeed, among his 14 novels and two Booker Prize nominations, this stands out as risky, experimental work by an artist reluctant to rest on his laurels. Modernist and eager to push the boundaries of his own art and the art form of the novel, here is a novelist and novel to celebrate in all their ribald, audacious, outrageous, and compelling brilliance."
-Paul Perry, The Independent (Ireland)
"If you're looking for this century's Ulysses, look no further than Patrick McCabe's Poguemahone."
-The Guardian
"You might think, on first sight, that Poguemahone was following in the wake of Finnegan in its attempt to be enormously long, very dense and quite inaccessible. But it is not, at all. You can slip into it like a blunt knife through butter."
-Irish Examiner
...
"Poguemahone is like a high dive: The toughest part of reading it might be convincing your feet to leave the board. Once you've done that, gravity does the rest."
-John Williams, New York Times
"McCabe draws the reader into a rambling web replete with Gaelic folklore, IRA agitation, and a soundtrack of glam and progressive rock. Lively and ambitious in form, this admirably extends the range of McCabe's career-long examination of familial and childhood trauma."
-Publishers Weekly
"The vernacular, drunken verse format may be daunting at first, but after a few pages the narrative develops a hypnotic rhythm, as if one is sitting on a barstool listening to the narrator unspool his story over a pint (or three). At this point, the reader has merely to hang on and enjoy the ride. A moving saga of youth, age, and memory-by turns achingly poetic, knowingly philosophical, and bitterly funny."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Poguemahone is a shape-shifting epic of the Irish in England, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale McCabe has never attempted before. Indeed, among his 14 novels and two Booker Prize nominations, this stands out as risky, experimental work by an artist reluctant to rest on his laurels. Modernist and eager to push the boundaries of his own art and the art form of the novel, here is a novelist and novel to celebrate in all their ribald, audacious, outrageous, and compelling brilliance."
-Paul Perry, The Independent (Ireland)
"If you're looking for this century's Ulysses, look no further than Patrick McCabe's Poguemahone."
-The Guardian
"You might think, on first sight, that Poguemahone was following in the wake of Finnegan in its attempt to be enormously long, very dense and quite inaccessible. But it is not, at all. You can slip into it like a blunt knife through butter."
-Irish Examiner
...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Now, that put the fear of God in me when I heard
it, I don't mind telling you,
Paddy Conway continued, and he
fiercely fretful,
rubbing the palms of his hands
in a parallel motion up and down
the length of his off-white apron,
& the reason for that is,
more than most I know it to
be a song unique to the craythur
that is known, in folklore, as the
gruagach.
I'm not telling you a word of a lie
they can just as suddenly fling a crock
of fire water into your face,
aye and scorn you as they're doing it again.
& then when you look,
sight nor sign of him will
there to be seen.
It is often remarked
that there is another
even more wicked side to the breed,
a fondness for abducting innocent human
childre, preferably unbaptised.
It is often expected that
he arrives in a gust of wind
some night when you least expect him
& that what you'll be looking upon is
an ugly wee runt of a man in a
skirty coat
aye, a coarse runty fellow
& he burned up by the sun
wearing a pair of old brogues
that no tinker
would be seen in.
With not so much as even a hint
of malice initially.
But, make no mistake, that will
come later.
& he indulging himself in the
pelting of innocent individuals
with stones and rocks,
or causing burning peats to
fall from the fireplace, injuring both humans and animals.
Aye, and singing no end of bawdy songs,
or disclosing
scandalous things concerning visitors to the house,
from secret locations around the rooms – the chimney, maybe,
or the ceiling. They could even break windows and cause
apparitions to appear – invade people's privacy
as they lay there asleep – perhaps even cause their beds to
levitate alarmingly.
As could Dan The Blackbird by times
all got up in his Sunday morning best
a dickybow, even.
& he, all the while underneath,
like some shadow with no face
a repugnant entity in a cowled jerkin,
with sharp fang-like teeth, through which he
spits brazenly,
scorned crumbs of The Sacred Host.
Paddy Conway seemed pale, and for a bit it looked
as if he was on the point of abandoning the story.
Before raising his hand and shuffling towards the
washbasin in order to fill himself a glass of tap water,
sighing protractedly as he downed it in one swift gulp.
Before proceeding, as before.
Then he comes, the barman resumed,
aye back arrived Dan The Blackbird
& started rambling and
raving to himself about this and that,
little of which
I could make any sense of.
Regarding the poor misunderstood gruagach,
them that had the misfortune
to be placed on earth
against their will
midway between Paradise
and the Infernal Regions
at every turn to be low-rated, slurred & slighted
never to know any proper home,
reviled in the body of a threeyear-
old child,
only with the face of a three-hundred-yearold
man.
Whose only distinguishment in this world
is the quality of malevolence,
when they're not invading innocent people's
dreams
for that they will do
& make no mistake
& turn milk sour
overnight, prevent hens from laying,
inflict terribly incurable
diseases upon households,
make cattle fall ill & sheep break
out of their pens.
it, I don't mind telling you,
Paddy Conway continued, and he
fiercely fretful,
rubbing the palms of his hands
in a parallel motion up and down
the length of his off-white apron,
& the reason for that is,
more than most I know it to
be a song unique to the craythur
that is known, in folklore, as the
gruagach.
I'm not telling you a word of a lie
they can just as suddenly fling a crock
of fire water into your face,
aye and scorn you as they're doing it again.
& then when you look,
sight nor sign of him will
there to be seen.
It is often remarked
that there is another
even more wicked side to the breed,
a fondness for abducting innocent human
childre, preferably unbaptised.
It is often expected that
he arrives in a gust of wind
some night when you least expect him
& that what you'll be looking upon is
an ugly wee runt of a man in a
skirty coat
aye, a coarse runty fellow
& he burned up by the sun
wearing a pair of old brogues
that no tinker
would be seen in.
With not so much as even a hint
of malice initially.
But, make no mistake, that will
come later.
& he indulging himself in the
pelting of innocent individuals
with stones and rocks,
or causing burning peats to
fall from the fireplace, injuring both humans and animals.
Aye, and singing no end of bawdy songs,
or disclosing
scandalous things concerning visitors to the house,
from secret locations around the rooms – the chimney, maybe,
or the ceiling. They could even break windows and cause
apparitions to appear – invade people's privacy
as they lay there asleep – perhaps even cause their beds to
levitate alarmingly.
As could Dan The Blackbird by times
all got up in his Sunday morning best
a dickybow, even.
& he, all the while underneath,
like some shadow with no face
a repugnant entity in a cowled jerkin,
with sharp fang-like teeth, through which he
spits brazenly,
scorned crumbs of The Sacred Host.
Paddy Conway seemed pale, and for a bit it looked
as if he was on the point of abandoning the story.
Before raising his hand and shuffling towards the
washbasin in order to fill himself a glass of tap water,
sighing protractedly as he downed it in one swift gulp.
Before proceeding, as before.
Then he comes, the barman resumed,
aye back arrived Dan The Blackbird
& started rambling and
raving to himself about this and that,
little of which
I could make any sense of.
Regarding the poor misunderstood gruagach,
them that had the misfortune
to be placed on earth
against their will
midway between Paradise
and the Infernal Regions
at every turn to be low-rated, slurred & slighted
never to know any proper home,
reviled in the body of a threeyear-
old child,
only with the face of a three-hundred-yearold
man.
Whose only distinguishment in this world
is the quality of malevolence,
when they're not invading innocent people's
dreams
for that they will do
& make no mistake
& turn milk sour
overnight, prevent hens from laying,
inflict terribly incurable
diseases upon households,
make cattle fall ill & sheep break
out of their pens.
