Description
Book SynopsisDublin, some years from now, and the President of the United States has just been assassinated during a state dinner in his honour. The official account has already taken hold but a hawk-eyed octogenarian named Monk, believing that there's nothing that cannot be known, has a version of his own -- a dark and twisted tale of both the watcher and the watched.Nothing gets past a man as invisible as me, he says, introducing us to a cast of damaged characters he has kept under the strictest surveillance for years. Chief among them is Schroeder, recently sacked from Trinity College, where he once taught the Presidential daughter, and is now wandering the city streets in a medicated fugue as sinister and violent events begin to take control of his life. But this, says Monk, is no thriller or invented tale of suspense. It is, he insists, an honest and faithful record of breakage and distress at a time when dysfunction -- personal, local, national, global and even cosmic -- pervades all. A time when everything is already broken and when, in many ways, the shooting of a pill-popping President is neither here nor there. The only thing that matters, Monk tells us, is the truth.And this is why, stationed high in his attic room with a Stoli in a highball, he does what he does. There's divinity in it, he says. And a modicum of love.
Trade ReviewRampant wit and a deft and elegant control of language... The Times John Kelly is an immensely gifted writer--he can do things with the spoken language that are rare to behold and behear. -- Tom Paulin Witty, inventive, exhilarating... The Guardian Ambitious, original, smart, sophisticated and ingenious. It's the very rare reader who won't relish it.The Irish Times -- George O'Brien The Irish Times Kelly's language is a torrent of comic inventiveness that makes it a joy to read... From Joyce and O'Brien, even a touch of Beckett's Murphy in the opening pages, Ireland's trilogy of modernist writers and their legacy has inspired From Out of the City but it is a novel with a voice of its own. Among the echoes, perhaps, is the refrain of a Bob Dylan song, "Everything is Broken", and it's a rare novelist that can hold his own with a comparison to the best of Dylan, this is one. Bookmunch A big rip-roar of a novel: deeply nuanced, authentic, madcap, and very, very funny indeed. From Out of the City subverts itself and diverts us at the very same time: a wonderful new Irish novel. -- Colum McCann Wild and fresh and invigoratingly demented--this is a fiercely funny novel that will bring to mind the glorious excesses of writers like J. P. Donleavy, John Kennedy Toole and Thomas Pynchon. -- Kevin Barry John Kelly's novel is inventive and intense and--more to the reader's point--it's luxuriously involving. -- Richard Ford From Out of the City is intricate, outrageous, sophisticated, funny and wonderfully entertaining: what more could a reader ask? -- John Banville John Kelly has pulled Dublin out from under our feet and with surgical precision, dexterity and wit, he has dissected it, then reassembled it, before hurling it into the future. From Out of the City has all that is required of good satire: humour, truth and above all the ability to make us more than a little afraid. -- Christine Dwyer Hickey A fantastic read. The Irish News John Kelly has really put together a brilliantly original narrative, with the story turning in unexpected directions throughout... It's a fiercely inventive novel and a total joy to read." Freeburner The language is rich, exuberant ... it dive-bombs, screeches, wheels, and plummets; other times it flourishes in a lush lyrical reverie. And funny, shrewdly funny. Joyce, Beckett, Donleavy... quietly wandering around in the background, amidst the ruins, smiling wistfully at the outrageous absurdity of it all. Numero Cinq A literary high-wire act that he somehow pulls off... It's that rare thing: an intense, compelling and enjoyable literary novel." Hot Press Thrilling... disturbingly relevant and unexpectedly moving. Bookslut The talent has fully realised itself... His prose is first-class: lyrical and oblique, very satisfying in a way only literature can be... A fine novel. The Irish Independent Fresh, wild and a tad demented. The Irish World Audacious, blackly funny, and high-end gritty, this work is nothing like a standard thriller...Library Journal Library Journal Kelly proves himself as an imaginative storyteller with a keen eye for the absurdly depraved Publishers Weekly
