Critical Mick

Reviews Free of Rules.

Reviews by the Clown that All Other Critics Want to Strangle with a Black Turtleneck

Father's Music
Dermot Bolger
Flamingo, 1997

The Whole Irish Experience Between Two Covers!

The first of Dermot Bolger's works that I read. On a cheap-and-cheerful holiday over the rails of Eastern Europe, Father's Music transported me to the late-night streets of London, then dark alleys and mansions of Dublin, and down to the West's craggy coast. The plot follows a troubled young English woman named Tracey Evans who takes up with a mysterious Irish man. This dangerous Luke Duggan gradually admits to the criminal past that makes him such an interesting character- but is that life behind him, or not?

As tension steadily builds, Tracey explores the multifold conflicts that leave her unsettled. True, every possible negative thing in the Irish experience manages to happen to her. This chick's baggage would make venal Ryanair dance a psychotic jig of glee, €15 per kilo surcharge my bleeding ass.

Backing slowly away from the anti-O'Leary tirade, allow me to conclude that Tracey's character and experience reflect distinct truths. Readers close this novel, moved, with a deeper understanding of what forms Irish life today. I thought highly enough of Father's Music to pass it along to my beautiful travelling companion, and months later to my mate Alison Maxwell.

Four stars. It's definitely one to keep in circulation.

Mick proudly presents a profile of Dermot Bolger on the DFA Guide to Dublin.

Dermot Bolger is a cool guy in Critical Mick's book. Father's Music is a fine novel.

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2005 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 30 May, 2005.