City of Bohane

This is my second experience of Kevin Barry - I read the equally compelling and original but very different Beatlebone in January. This one is a mixture of genres that I would normally steer well clear of - gangland thriller, dystopian fantasy, steampunk and graphic novel cliches abound. What carries it is the sheer vibrancy and humour of the language and the many cultural reference points that echo the likes of Joyce and Flann O'Brien.

The setting is the fictional city of Bohane, on the west coast of Ireland and the time is 2053 to 2054, in a country that has become an anarchic battleground between rival gangs, loosely under the watch of a corrupt city authority and a police force that is largely content to keep the main players in show more place. For a futuristic setting, the reference points are surprisingly old-fashioned, in fact the dominant inspiration seems to be the 50s and early 60s, and many Irish traditions and cultural divisions survive in modified form. The language is a complex hybrid of Irish street speak and other influences such as Rastafarianism and the Catholic church, and the characters are all cartoonish and larger than life.

I found the whole thing surprisingly compulsive and satisfying, and although Barry's vision is a bleak, profane and violent one, dark humour is never very far from the surface. In some ways this reminded me of his compatriot and namesake Sebastian Barry's Days Without End, another book which shouldn't work but is sustained by the brilliance of its narrative voice. show less

“It was one of those summers you’re nostalgic for even before it passes. Pale, bled skies. Thunderstorms in the night. Sour-smelling dawns. It brought temptation, and yearning, and ache – these are the summer things.”

“Mouth of teeth on him like a vandalised graveyard but we all have our crosses.”

Bohane, on the west coast of Ireland has seen better days. The novel takes place forty years in the future and this once promising city is now a corrupt morass of dangerous, yet colorful citizenry, all scrambling to survive. Think a mash-up of A Clockwork Orange and Gangs of New York. Barry is a master wordsmith but be forewarned the narrative can be tricky to navigate. There are plenty of rewards for sticking it out though. Bigger show more than life characters, warring gangs, double-crosses and a simmering, toxic, stew of a city. I have to share another quote, to better showcase his remarkable ability:

“The EL train was customarily sad in this last stretch before dawn, that much had not changed. The screech of it was a soul's screech. If you were lying there in the bed, lonesome, and succumbed to poetical thoughts, that screech would go through you. It happens that we are often just so in Bohane. No better men for the poetical thoughts.” show less

This is a new favourite of mine!

Masterful, unique, mesmerizing. A literary debut like no other. I'm coming to learn that grappling with exceptional and captivating use of language, particularly when the author has their characters speak in a dialect that has never existed on the face of the Earth. It is said that reading books is like living many lives.

[City of Bohane] is a story set in a city that doesn't exist, in a timeline that may never come to pass, featuring characters that speak like no other. It's a dingy, grimy gangster saga, but also a love story (or at least a tale of love gone awry). Each sentence creates a stunning image of a deeply terrible place, and each word, both real and invented, are weaved together with a show more brilliance that is very unique to Kevin Barry.

I loved this book. I strongly encourage anyone to check out Barry's work. show less

In 2053/4, Bohane is a brutal, hedonistic city with “a thin enough layer of civilization” in the West of Ireland. Crime boss Logan Hartnett ostensibly runs the town, but his ninety year-old mother, Girly, is the true brains. Logan is facing competition from two separate sources. Young Jenny Ching and Gant Broderick represent the future and past of Bohane crime lords and are both breathing down Logan’s neck.

With Bohane, Kevin Barry has created his own world, language and culture. Fashion is all-important. Calypso music is in. Everyone smokes “herb.” Barry twists words and language in unique ways. It makes for highly poetic and stimulating reading.

This is just an exceptional piece of writing. The invention never feels forced, never feels overly showy - despite how incredibly showy it might be; the man created an entire slang language, for the sake of the Sweet Baba Jay. Instead, he has breathed life into a story and city as (I daresay) only he could've done. There's sex and fighting and a city as magical as Ambergris and a future that feels both gritty and lovely all at once. If our world tends towards hell, as it very well might, I sure hope we at least end up as well dressed as the likes of Jenni Ching and Logan Hartnett and The Gant and Macu. And have a bit of their personalities in the face of such a future, too.
This novel shows an author who will, I have no doubt, come to show more be regarded as one of the very best to've ever bent his pen towards a trembling blank page. It is, again, exceptional. A thing of power and beauty and delightful fancy. His two short story collections are out this month and Bohane is on shelves now. I so very rarely do this - but I implore you, with all speed, to acquire all three. You will not regret it.

A full, even more considered, rave to come at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-O5 show less

The language here is maximalist and for about the first half I was enjoying it in small doses like a rich cake stuffed with nuts, fruit, and chocolate or a lavishly tufted and embroidered tapestry. Eventually the frantic violence and depravity, ridiculous outfits that the plot stops too often to describe in detail, and the ethnic and racial slurs tried too hard to shock and overpowered the bare-bones succession plot. And don’t get me started on Jenny Ching. The last quarter was almost a hate-read.

Some of it is personal: I really don’t do well with whimsy, and this is piled with whimsy. People I respect have liked it much better than I did.

This was an incredible book. Kevin Barry has a real lyrical tilt to his writing, he captures the raw, real feel of a the city of Bohane, a little outpost on the cold, murky Atlantic with such vivid strokes you believe, by the end, in this little city and all of its broken inhabitants. He's done similar things, in the past, with his collection of short stories (There are Little Kingdoms), so I expected a good read, but have been let down by the high praise for other similar-ish works before, with similar blurbs: Joyceian, Flann O'Brian-esque... but, I have to say, Barry comes as close as you're going to to living up to such high billing.

His recent New York Times Book Review cover was well deserved, and I feel he was shorted a bit, by show more having Pete Hamill write the review, because his review was something like his own writing (I've read his book _Forever_, which was a painful, stilted read), and didn't quite do this book justice, with it's bustling *life* to it.

So if you're looking for a novel filled with sand pikeys, turf wars, Sweet Baba Jay appearing in the bogs, and the single greatest named character of all-time (F***er Burke), give this one a read. show less