“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Funky Friday’s Free-For-All: If Music Be The Food Of Love, Eat On

We don’t know John Connolly (right, in a manner of speaking). Never met the guy, and with the exception of Critical Mick – the exception to every rule, including the rule of exception – we don’t know anyone who has. So why do we love JC so and want to have his Charlie Parker-shaped babies? Because he spaketh thusly to Mojo magazine: “What I love is that people would come up to me and say I went out and bought a Go-Betweens album after hearing them on your CD. You feel like you’ve done some good in the world.” To those not in the know, The Go-Betweens are the finest band ever to come out of the Southern Hemisphere, and rival only The Tindersticks in the tiny little hearts of the Crime Always Pays elves. Anyhoo, moving on … to yet another John Connolly interview! In the New Zealand Herald, no less! Crikey, worse than Uncle Travelling Matt Fraggle, that lad … Anyway, less of the Connolly jive, more of other writers wibbling on about the page-blackening process. To wit, Jason Starr’s funkadelic take on the writer’s choice of POV, Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, and Brad Kelln’s so-crazy-it-might-just-work plot to conquer the free world by publishing a free novel on the free interweb and taking readers along for the free ride, for free. How cool is that? Almost as cool as Ray Barboni from Miami, seen below teaching Gene Hackman a thing or nineteen about hoodlum protocol … the most important rule being that you never say, “Look at me, Ray,” to Ray Barboni. And that’s it for another week, folks – be sure and drop by again next week, y’all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They say the fuckin' smog is fuckin' reason you've such beautiful fuckin' sunsets.