The Plastic Tomato Cutter - Softcover

Curtin, Michael

3.53

15 ratings by Goodreads

9781910670583: The Plastic Tomato Cutter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910670588 ISBN 13: 9781910670583

Publisher: Thistle Publishing, 2015

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‘Curtin is one of Ireland’s best writers.’
Roddy Doyle

'Good on modern dialogue, clever with ticklish set pieces and screamingly funny about male eccentricities.’
Daily Mail

‘The effect at first of tuning one’s radio into the middle of a garrulous Irish soap opera... Curtin’s is a wit that touches the heart.’
Daily Telegraph

‘Curtin’s books are marvellous achievements, very funny and very, very human. He has also created some of the best barmen in modern literature.’
Roddy Doyle

A delightful story of love and snooker, of old customs giving way to outrageous youthful behaviour.

Mr Yendall, one of life’s great antiques even as a young man, charts the downward progress of society from his position as deputy-manager of Montague’s outfitters and as the habitual occupant of the corner table at the Draper’s Club.

Of another age, Tim Harding, snooker champion and member of the society of bellringers – despite him being a ‘black Protestant’ ex-Trinity College man of doubtful parentage – is so besotted by the local beauty, Cecelia Sloan, that he can hardly see straight. She insists that they follow a perfectly romantic courtship – traditional almost. Well, almost... until she discovers Tim is her brother.

Michael Curtin’s characters are enormously attractive, their dilemmas are unbelievable and yet strangely real and he brings to this novel of dazzling comic twists and turns an abiding affection for the human condition.

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About the Author:

Michael Curtin was born in Limerick in 1942 and is best known for his novel The Plastic Tomato Cutter (Zondervan, 1991), set in his native city. He is also the author of the novels The Self-Made Men (Penguin Books, 1980), The Replay (Sphere Books, 1981), The League Against Christmas (HarperCollins, 1989), The Cove Shivering Club (Zondervan, 1996) and Sing (Zondervan, 2001). The plots of his work tend toward the comic and range from the farcical to the dark and understated.

From Publishers Weekly:

Brilliant satire enlivens this bittersweet, amoral chronicle of society's changing values and the friends who confront them. Two narrators define the Irish city of Limerick in counterpoint: one commenting on the passing scene as he holds out against change, the other struggling with the absurdities of contemporary life. The first voice is that of Mr. Yendall of the House of Montague, a men's clothier which, at the novel's opening, has already begun its gradual decline. The second narrator is Tim Harding, the 28-year-old president (and sole employee) of Fagend, a company that helps people stop smoking. Curtin ( The League Against Christmas ) also populates his novel with a handful of other memorable people whose lives are variously roguish and sportive, winsome and bilious. The most interesting character is Yendall, whose heroic refusal to acknowledge the decades of modernism (to which the title alludes) ultimately elicits admiration. As the book concludes, Curtin raises the banner for controlled anarchy: enemies become friends, legal and religious standards are overlooked for the better and Harding comes full circle to begin helping those who can't manage to relinquish their cigarettes.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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