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Amazon Review
You may not have heard of Irish author Phildy Hackball, but now thanks to the blind faith of "an ingenue of an English publisher who had never been in Ireland before", you're about to get your chance. Hackball, who hails from Barntrosna, and who seems rarely to have ventured much past Barntrosna, has compiled for our delectation a collection of short stories which explore the underbelly of his provincial smalltown life. And what an underbelly. There's Cora Bunyan, his wife--or she was until he realised she'd been enjoying Hot Nights at the Go-Go Lounge. There's Declan Coyningham, "definitely the holiest" boy, who seems headed for a life in the church, until the local boys decide his inflated prospects need inflating further (literally). There's the actual Bruce Lee himself, who visits Hackball so he can write his Bruce Lee and Me although some would have it that he's just a waiter from the Red Lotus Temple restaurant in Mullingar. Patrick MacCabe's follow-up to Booker shortlisted Breakfast on Pluto confirms him as one of Ireland's most distinctive and inimitable voices. His stories seem to emanate from some parallel universe, but in their own diseased take on national stereotypes, they provide an incisive, viciously cruel commentary on some of Ireland's most sacred cows. Phildy Hackball is a wonderfully naive drinking companion, forever leading us up the wrong alleyway. Every time you think you're safely at home, another satiric grenade goes off in your face. Read, laugh and be afraid. This is Father Ted on acid. -- Alan Stewart
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