This week’s big Irish literary event is the publication by Cannongate of Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone, which imagines a trip in 1978 by John Lennon to the west of Ireland.
Given a resounding ‘thumbs up’ from Olaf Tyaransen in the new issue of Hot Press - out on Thursday with those Le Galaxie boys on the cover! - it picks up where City Of Bohane left off in terms of the richness of its dialogue, Barry’s ability to construct alternate realities and its sheer readability.
With a couple of extremely ingenious literary devices, it finds the much-garlanded Limerick writer breaking new ground too.
We’re meeting Kev soon for a natter, but to tide you over here’s the remarkable 2012 interview in which he talks to his old Treaty City pal Stuart Clark about his youthful penchant for LSD, participation in Chinese marriage scams, death threats, hanging with Barron Bragg, the IRA, Morrissey-related daffodil theft and a whole more lot fact that’s as strange as his fiction.

[link]hotpress.com/archive/8925453.html?new_layout=1&page_no=2&show_comments=1[/link]