"This is a virtuoso performance." Publishers Weekly
Killoyle
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Proving that the spirits of James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett still flow in the veins of at least one writer, Roger Boylan has composed a novel filled with hilarity and doom about the inhabitants of the Irish town of Killoyle: Milo Rogers, a headwaiter and would-be poet with a bit of a drinking problem and a bit of a sexual one; Kathy Hickman, a writer for the woman's fashion magazine Glam, as well as a former pin-up girl; Wolfetone Grey, who reads books only by or about God, and who also makes anonymous phone calls through-out the town in order to make people believe, among other things, that they have just won the lottery; and a host of other peculiar folks, all suffering from and tortured by problems with God, sex, the drink, and of course Ireland. Accompanying all of this is a nameless figure who bursts on the scene in the form of acerbic, opinionated, hilarious footnotes that rudely comment upon the characters and numerous other subjects.
Publishers Weekly
"Comparisons to James Joyce will come inevitably. . . . Boylan proves himself capable of spinning a fabulous yarn, as colorful as it is tangled."
The Minnesota Daily
"I was hooked . . . Boylan writes with wit and a keen eye for the ridiculous."
The Irish Emigrant
"To the people of Dalkey Archive Press, Roger Boylan's Killoyle must have looked like the work of Flann O'Brien resurrected in a world long gone PoMo."
The Recorder
"A fine first novel, continuing the Dalkey tradition of publishing both Irish humorists and sundry members of the literary avant-garde."
Cups: The Cafe Culture Magazine
"Roger Boylan brings a wholly Irish comic vision to his portrait of [the] small town in Killoyle."
Gazette.net
"Killoyle is sure to please those enthralled by the tragicomic history of Ireland, as well as those with a bent for rivers of prose in the Joycean mode."
Dallas Morning News
The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad
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"A grand Irish entertainment." The Financial Times
Also available as a Kindle edition.
This sequel to Killoyle follows the hapless inhabitants of that mythological town through the frenetic week of the Pint-Pulling Olympiad. After local lush Mick McCreek gets into a car crash with a cross-dressing church sexton, he enlists a lawyer, Tom O'Mallet. As it turns out, the lawyer's real gig is selling missiles to the IRA, and he plans to use his clueless client as a patsy. O'Mallet also hoodwinks Anil, an Indian waiter who has found himself the unlikely target of a manhunt. What Tom doesn't know is that his lucrative weapons are destined for a massive terrorist attack on the Pint-Pulling Olympiad, and that Anil's cousin Rashmi — a sweatshop worker turned intelligence operative — is hot on the bombers' trail. With a wink and a nudge, Boylan's pyrotechnic prose brings to life Ireland at its manic extremes, proving the author a dazzling and distinctive talent in American fiction.
"A splendid novel in every way: very funny, very inventive, and very insightful."
Steven Moore
“Boylan's narrative resembles Joyce at his comically prolix best, with a similar appetite for vernacular nuance and pop allusion."
The Village Voice
"Roger Boylan explores life’s absurdities with incomparably extravagant wordplay.”
The Financial Times
"You really feel yourself pulling for a rollicking Irish tale like The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad . . Boylan’s satiric follow-up to [Killoyle] offers countless moments of lowbrow, lyrical mirth on the order of Roddy Doyle, Canadian satirist Robertson Davies or stories like Waking Ned Devine . . . Olympiad’s characters, having ‘stumbled a bit on the winding highway of life,’ leap off the page. You’ll really know their tendencies, fears and tastes . . . Boylan’s account of life in modern Ireland rings authentic, and his gifted ear (and pen) are self-evident.”
Austin American-Statesman
“Boylan is great with dialogue and tone, and has a keen understanding of how Irish people are—or aren't—finding the delicate balance between their old customs and their (relatively) new place as a, for lack of a better term, buzz country. . . [he] knows the territory of the changing Ireland in his bones, and he's adept at weaving it into his fiction.”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad: A Mostly Irish Farce is a rollicking roller coaster of a novel by Roger Boylan, set in the days leading up to the Pint-Pulling Olympiad in the town of Killoyle, Ireland. A cross-dressing church sexton, a drunk who loses his job as a car tester and sues for wrongful termination, unemployment seminar hosts who sell missiles to the IRA on the side, and other memorable characters populate the pages of this engaging and topsy turvy tale with surprises hiding around every corner. ”
Midwest Book Review
“Boylan both lampoons and pays homage to absurdist literary inspirations, including James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Monty Python's Flying Circus . . . The book sparkles because of the author's antic wordplay, especially the running commentary addressed to the reader in a hilarious sequence of lengthy footnotes.”
Library Journal
“An extraordinary sequence of episodes . . . highly entertaining . . . Boylan has produced a novel which reads like a mixture of [Flann O'Brien] and Tom Sharpe, with the odd Joycean aside added for good measure.”
The Irish Emigrant
