Beatlebone - Tapa dura

Casually lyrical, formally inventive, funny and moving, it is a small wonder * * SUNDAY TIMES * * Gloriously freewheeling . . . a tale of fame, freaks, bad liquor and bad weather * * GUARDIAN * * Books like this come along once in a generation * * NEW YORK TIMES * * The most arresting and original writer to emerge from these islands in years -- IRVINE WELSH Beatlebone is as gloriously confounding and as wondrously welcome as a hatching hawk's egg in a Christmas cracker -- NIALL GRIFFITHS Beatlebone is a rule-breaking novel, a strange and fascinating look at the mystery of creative inspiration * * FINANCIAL TIMES * * A strange and brilliant experiment into showing your working. It's thematically dense yet supremely readable * * METRO * * I think Kevin Barry is two kinds, if not three kinds, of a genius . . . wonderful storytelling . . . enormously cinematic -- TOM SUTCLIFFE * * BBC RADIO 4 SATURDAY REVIEW * * Superb . . . Beatlebone is a novel of necessary invention: profound, funny, hard to pin down * * IRISH TIMES * * Mingling surreal black humour and breakdown, Beatlebone is a wild cascade of language and imagery, rich in wordplay and referential resonance. Beneath the glittering surface Barry is giving us a vanitas on fame and celebrity. Remember the date is 1978. The real-life endgame will be played out very soon * * SPECTATOR * * As ever with Barry, the dialogue is a joy, tapping into a rich vein of humorous melancholy . . . this is a sharp, likeable book that moves deftly between warm comedy and a grimmer concern with Lennon's parentless childhood with the 'dead love stories' that 'make us' * * SUNDAY TIMES * * A profound, mad and intriguing novel. Too often novels about great artists shy away from attending to those very creative processes that made them great. Beatlebone is a committed, brutal portrait * * LITERARY REVIEW * * The kind of next-level literature that inspires, even incites another generation of natural-born wordsmiths to write big and bold * * THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW * * There's music to Barry's prose: Smart rhythms dart through his sentences; taut bridges join his paragraphs; the tinge of hysteria serves to animate his characters and their surroundings. His dialogue is whimsical, sometimes hilarious, catching the idiom of the local life, and, in Beatlebone, nailing John Lennon, the wittiest and darkest Beatle, spot on * * SLATE * * A genius of the language, teasing out impressionistic riffs that channel emotion into words * * LOS ANGELES TIMES * * Beatlebone is glorious, savoury stuff - part lark, part meditation, and a tiny part excavation * * BOSTON GLOBE * *

WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2015 He will spend three days alone on his island. That is all that he asks . . . John is so many miles from love now and home. This is the story of his strangest trip. John owns a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland. Maybe it is there that he can at last outrun the shadows of his past. The tale of a wild journey into the world and a wild journey within, Beatlebone is a mystery box of a novel. It's a portrait of an artist at a time of creative strife. It is most of all a sad and beautiful comedy from one of the most gifted stylists now at work.