A very strange book, some bits were quite enjoyable - the biographical sections of the authors life in dubline going from his bedroom to college and drinking a lot, the tale written by the young orlick with all those characters like furrusky at the end to get revenge on the author who had been keeping them all prisoner (Dermot Trellece) and some of the stories of all the people who had the be gathered for large books, cattle punchers and the like.

If this book was an expelery example of metafiction then I dread to read a bad one.

There were also parts of the book that seemed designed to bascially be skipped. The old Irish folk tales told by Fin Macool, they go on forever and really arnt easy to read. Even in the book the other characters are glad of a break.

I think the book has increased my vocabulary though, seemed to be at least one new word on every page.

I was really hopeing it’d be more like the third policeman, an excellent book, but allas it was not. It did seem a bit like a case of intellectual masterbation from the author.