Carn - Hardcover

McCabe, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0856281808 ISBN 13: 9780856281808

Publisher: Aidan Ellis Publishing, 1989

Synopsis

Patrick McCabe, whom the San Francisco Chronicle called "one of the most brilliant writers ever to come out of Ireland," presents another compelling novel of small-town Ireland that leaves its indelible mark on the canon of classic fiction. Carn is the story of two women; Josie Keenan, who returns to Carn, Ireland, the provincial hometown she once left behind, and Sadie Rooney, a factory worker who dreams of leaving. As the two women strike up a friendship--fueled by hopes to better their lives, yet inextricably tied to the tenuous fate of Carn--each must confront the hard truths of her past and future. And despite its own attempt to thrive, the town itself cannot escape the daily reminders of Ireland's endless legacy of violence and unrest.
Written in the raw, unsparing prose that marks McCabe's fiction, Carn is the timeless story of a small town struggling to break away from its bleak past, and the lives of two women aching to escape the forces that shaped them.

About this title

About the Author:

Patrick McCabe was born in Ireland in 1955. His novels include Music on Clinton Street, Carn, The Butcher Boy, and Breakfast on Pluto. The latter two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Butcher Boy won the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize in 1992 and was made into a film, directed by Neil Jordan, in 1997. The film Breakfast on Pluto, also directed by and co-written with Neil Jordan, was released in 2006 to great acclaim. His play Frank Pig Says Hello was published by Methuen Drama in Far From the Land: New Irish Plays in 1998. Patrick McCabe lives in his home town of Clones, County Monaghan.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The first US publication of an early novel by McCabe (the acclaimed Butcher Boy, 1993, and The Dead School, 1995) once again demonstrates his unsparing, precise view of the mingled anger, sorrow, and boredom at the heart of modern Irish life. The town of Carn is somewhere up north, near the border where Ireland ends and North Ireland begins, and it's not much of a place. A small railway junction and cattle market, it was sleepy to start with and nearly nods off altogether when the trains stop running: ``It got to the stage where no one expected anything good to happen ever again.'' Then a big-shot local opens a meatpacking factory that gets the place whirring. For the people of Carn--young girls like Sadie Rooney, old tarts like Josie Keenan, IRA toughs like Benny Dolan--the life of the town becomes a substitute for life itself; the insuperable boredom and frustration they suffer is subsumed in their daily rounds as they drift from work to pub to church and back. Like most good regional writers, McCabe assembles a portrait of the place from seemingly random, modest events. And by concentrating on the lives of the town's inhabitants (of every class and condition), he allows us to see how they are bound together by a dense, shared history of poverty and oppression and by the close similarity of their habits and fears. When the larger world begins to intrude itself through the violence and terrors of the modern Troubles spilling over from Northern Ireland, the town is unprepared. While some, like Benny Dolan, welcome the violence and conspiracy as an escape from boredom, most of the people are unable to make sense of the sudden upsurge of danger. The symbolic ending is obvious and heavy-handed--appropriately so. Marvelously rendered and deeply felt: a story about the inescapable impact of Irish history on Irish life that's told with an immense, quiet power. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Aidan Ellis Publishing
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0856281808
• ISBN 13: 9780856281808
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1