Mondo Desperado

'Transforms commonplace subjects and sordid situations into glorious comedy ... It is precisely his literary sophistication which brings such freshness to the portrayal of unsophisticated lives' The Times 'The voice in his novels, a narcotic mixture of rural Irish hyperbole and fantastical tongue-in-cheek literariness, is so much his own, and so sprightly and funny, and so capable of outrageousness. The short stories in ibis collection are virtuoso McCabe yarn-spinning, impossible intrusions into tranquil lives. They are all set in the village of Barntrosna, an unlikely bog-trotters' Lake Wobegon, and told in the souped-up blarney of one Phildy Hackball' Observer 'This weird and wonderful collection of distinctly Irish oddities gives a compelling insight, not so much into the present distressed state of Ireland, as into one of the more excitingly eclectic and absurd minds working in contemporary fiction anywhere' Guardian 'McCabe is a sly and excellent stylist who develops startling, unlikely and yet very persuasive idioms for each of his books. But despite revelling in parody and black comedy, his novels manage to mix a terrible sadness with the humour in a way which never seems mechanical or glib' Sunday Telegraph