J. P. Donleavy (1926–2017)

Reginald Darcy Thormond Dancer Kildare, to the remote midlands Irish manor known as Andromeda Park born. His father, “a man well known for his gambling as he was for his generosity among cronies, had married for money and was, as he was mostly, away in England for the racing.” His mother a beloved equestrienne who soon dies in a riding accident.

Darcy grows in the crumbling country house, raised by servants, surrounded by the dwindling land his father is selling off. Taught the art of show more love by his Austrian housekeeper, Darcy is sent to a boarding school when his father learns of it. In a hilarious episode the school burns on Darcy’s first night and he commences his journey to manhood.

Darcy finds plenty of lust but still seeks love. In typical Donleavy style, the words and story flow hypnotically while Darcy finds his way in his young life and has to prove himself time and again while meeting the most amusing and disagreeable people Dublin has to offer. show less

In this sequel to The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman, Darcy Dancer returns from Dublin to his ancestral home, the “mouldering” Andromeda Park, filled with his beloved insolent, thieving, lackluster staff, eating him destitute and “all going mad together.” He finds a new and captivating member of the staff, Leila, who remains at arms-length despite their eventual shared profession of love.

Darcy suffers through the usual riotous fox hunts, the drunken savagery of which leave show more outsiders stunned out of their senses. He returns to Dublin for a short period of more savage debauched drunkenness, this time in the catacombs, and for intense disappointment at the track with the con-man Ronnie Rashers, now masquerading as the Earl of Ronald Ronald.

Leila is rife with strife, sadness, loneliness, and profane humor. Darcy is land-rich but perpetually cash poor, as he is well-sexed but loveless, without “all anyone really wants in this world, is just each other. One body enfolding another in comfort when it carries so much pain.” show less

This is one of those books where the narrative of the protagonist (and oddly, the protagonist removed from self at times) really takes over. He's disarming, insightful and despairing...much older and more manipulative than a Holden Caufield and more jaded too. The major similarity is the fact that he sees the phoniness in people. He wants them to be better but when they aren't, he's not going to cry over swear words in an elementary school. He's simply going to move on becoming more and more show more apathetic and not caring how much he hurts others. At the same time, he really does care. The city (NYC) clearly gets to him much more than any woman is capable of.


This one, this Cornelius Christian is the kind of shady character you want to try to love...you search for a redeeming sense to him just like all of the characters in his life that run into him. Donleavy puts you in their position in a way. You want to keep giving him chances even knowing he'll disappoint. He's honest about the disappointment as well. At the end, however, he can't give anyone what they'd like from him and if you were a character in this story, he's abuse you right along with the rest. I'm pretty convinced of that.


This novel has some fantastic lines...Christian too, though his thoughts, his memories of his cruel childhood, are usually even better. At times, you get a feel for action and metaphor like few writers can usually give you. At other times, this is crude and brash but the poetic insights are worth it.



Favorite quotes:

pg.9 "We like to make friends with sorrow Mr. Christian. That way we come to know it."

pg.12 "Someone else's house is more your own if it's filled with strangers"

pg.19 "Window full of refrigerators there. Say they're giving them away for nothing, almost. Just step inside for bargains beyond belief. I feel like there's nothing around me in the world."

pg.37 "..And my short wave says there's someone ready to jump on Fifth and Fiftieth. If the snow stays and gets deeper they'll be a lot more. They go out of the windows like pop corn off a red hot pan. Happens every time there's a blizzard."

pg. 108 "Sadness is a private garden. With high stone walls. And I would never leave it."

pg 164: "I am an orphaned prince."

pg. 183: "I don't have a degree. O k. Maybe I was too distracted by human nature in college. I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own."

pg. 216: "Without crime this city would collapse....God is what your desires are."

pg. 256: "It taught me death is better than dying. Better than hapless Better than glee The cat's Meow in this midnight Sea"

pg. 302: "And anytime I ever saw anything floating in the sky, even a scrap of paper, I stopped to watch till it was gone." show less

An irresponsible overseas student in early 1950s Dublin and London does no work, drinks and fights his way through his student grant, mistreats his wife, child, and several girlfriends, and robs or cheats various landlords and shopkeepers. But wait a moment - he's not just being gratuitously offensive, he's rebelling against the hypocritical conformity of the society of the times. So that's all right, then, we're allowed to indulge him...

Obviously, we should have read this back in 1955, when show more it was a censorship-beating under-the-counter publication brought back illegally from Paris, and when Dangerfield's oafish behaviour might still have struck us as gloriously liberating. We might have recognised the book as an important link between the American modernism of the Henry Miller era and the up-and-coming young British writers of the Osborne/Amis/Sillitoe generation, and celebrated the unstoppable energy of its narrative and the irrepressible effrontery of the dialogue. Reading it more than sixty years later, the main feeling is regret for the sheer wastefulness of it: all that justifiable resentment against post-war bourgeois society getting pointlessly burnt off in macho bouts of drinking, fucking and fighting. To no purpose at all, as far as we can see... show less