Orange Rhymes With Everything

Rating:
Summary: Orangemen had difficult Irish childhoods too!
Review: At first I thought this was an *Angela's Ashes* clone, beginning as it did with a grim Irish childhood. But no. Adrian McKinty speaks with an Irish voice, to be sure, but it is his own voice. Like Joyce Carol Oates, he refrains from using quotes in his dialogue, to good advantage. The device brings his characters closer. After some confusion about who is talking when and where, the reader adjusts, understands and gets with the flow. It's "wee" for "little," "arse" for "ass" and sentence construction contains somewhat of the brogue, "Black and voracious are the lines between us" says he. Toward the end it all pulls together philosophically.

"This whole society was sick. He could see that now. Sick and indifferent to it all. They had their hard wee God; white and dour and manifest. Their country crawling with believers. The homogeneity of it was crippling." And later,

"Couldn't they see? How could they? With their pariah eyes and the schizophrenic noose of their allegiance. Split between loving England and hating it. Booing the English at football games and mourning when their soldiers died. These people who didn't even know if they wanted to be called Irish or not. Stateless. Orphans of history with only their mad religion to give them any identity at all."

I don't enjoy violence in novels or movies, but this is not gratuitous violence. The author is telling it like it is. My only problem is with the female protagonist. She's not convincingly female - not because she's precocious and perceptive, not because of the nose-picking or scatological references. It's a "je ne sais quoi". I hear a young boy talking - not a young girl. McKinty's other female characters are believable enough, but then, they are all in the background.

This is, in my opinion, a stunning first novel with a great deal of promise. I will be looking forward to future contributions by Adrian McKinty.

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Rating:
Summary: Tries hard.....can and will do better
Review: There is a good novel in this writer, but this isn't it. The depiction of the teenager's life and day to day trials and tribulations are well written, dryly humorous, and showcase the writer's talents.Much less believable are the passages involving the psychopathic ex-terrorist. The senselessness of the overall N.I. situation comes through loud and clear....but we know that without having to read this book.Perhaps having worked his home town problems out of his system with this book, he can get to grips with the novel that parts of this work suggest he is capable of writing. I for one will be looking out for it.

Rating:
Summary: Dark, twisted, and funny.
Review: This is a surreal, and compelling novel about among other things - redemption through violence. Like the Amazon reviewer I found it a little disturbing but no more so than Cormac McCarthy or J G Ballard. The humor is dry and the tone is one of obvious irony. There are passages of great lyricism and beauty but lovers of Irish fiction beware: Maeve Binchy it isn't