The Brothers' Lot - Softcover

Holohan, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 193607091X ISBN 13: 9781936070916

Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd., 2011

Synopsis

"Holohan's ability to write the kind of free-flowing naturalistic dialogue that so potently conveys the anarchic spirit of schoolboy warfare . . . is grounded by a shadow play of macabre references to horrors that ghost around the edges of the narrative, many eerily similar to some of the more infamous real life reports that have emerged in recent years."
--The Irish Times

Combining the spirit of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers' Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means, a dilapidated Dickensian institution run by an assemblage of eccentric, insane, and often nasty celibate Brothers. The school is in decline and the Brothers hunger for a miracle to move their founder, the Venerable Saorseach O'Rahilly, along the path to Sainthood.

When a possible miracle presents itself, the Brothers fervently seize on it with the help of the ethically pliant Diocesan Investigator, himself hungry for a miracle to boost his career. The school simultaneously comes under threat from strange outside forces. The harder the Brothers try to defend the school, the worse things seem to get. It takes an outsider, Finbar Sullivan, a young student newly arrived at the school, to see that the source of the threat may in fact lie inside the school itself. As the miracle unravels, the Brothers' efforts to preserve it unleash a disastrous chain of events.

Tackling a serious subject from the oblique viewpoint of satire, The Brothers' Lot explores the culture that allowed abuses within church-run institutions in Ireland to go unchecked for decades.

About this title

From the Publisher:

A hilarious and satirical debut novel exploring religious hypocrisy in an Irish secondary school.

From the Back Cover:

"Kevin Holohan's strange yet disconcertingly recognizable world has echoes of Flann O'Brien's and Monty Python's, but there is rage as well as absurdist comedy. The Brothers' Lot is a memorable, skillfully wrought, and evocative satire of an Ireland that has collapsed under the weight of its contradictions."
--Joseph O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea

"Kevin Holohan takes us to a harrowing place. This vivid book aims to break your heart while it makes you catch your breath. It is powerful and is not afraid of the dark."
--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway

"Kevin Holohan's wickedly funny debut novel, set in a rundown Dublin religious school where the spirits are low but the Gaelic pride runs high, will make you laugh almost as much as it makes you weep, for beyond their almost comical incompetence and a thin veneer of piety the Brothers who run the place are sad, flawed men, whose weaknesses range from sadism to depravity. They educate by cudgel and dole out discipline with a leather strap, while protagonist Finbar Sullivan and the other long-suffering students bear it all with the kind of wise-cracking cynicism, irreverence, and pranks that one would expect at that age."
--Preston L. Allen, author of Jesus Boy

"The Brothers' Lot is a screamingly funny indictment of the culture of repression and abuse that has plagued Ireland for generations, but it is much more than that. It is a brilliantly told tale, compassionate and brutal. Most important, it celebrates the spirit of reckless bravery and rebellion, the spirit that draws back the curtain on iconic institutions to reveal the frailty of an ecclesiastical house of cards."
--Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old Country

About this edition

• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 193607091X
• ISBN 13: 9781936070916
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 317