4.2
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1,224 ratings
Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Book Award in the First Novel category
A blazingly original, wildly stylish, and pulpy debut novel
"City of Bohane, the extraordinary first novel by the Irish writer Kevin Barry, is full of marvels. They are all literary marvels, of course: marvels of language, invention, surprise. Savage brutality is here, but so is laughter. And humanity. And the abiding ache of tragedy." —Pete Hamill, The New York Times Book Review (front page)
Forty or so years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the North Rises, and the eerie bogs of the Big Nothin' that the city really lives. For years it has all been under the control of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. They say Hartnett's old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight.
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ISBN-10
155597645X
ISBN-13
978-1555976453
Print length
288 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Graywolf Press
Publication date
June 03, 2013
Dimensions
5.62 x 0.95 x 8.32 inches
Item weight
14.4 ounces
ASIN :
B007CLBL1C
File size :
890 KB
Text-to-speech :
Enabled
Screen reader :
Supported
Enhanced typesetting :
Enabled
X-Ray :
Enabled
Word wise :
Not Enabled
Praise for City of Bohane:
"City of Bohane, the extraordinary first novel by the Irish writer Kevin Barry, is full of marvels. They are all literary marvels, of course: marvels of language, invention, surprise. Savage brutality is here, but so is laughter. And humanity. And the abiding ache of tragedy." —Pete Hamill, The New York Times Book Review (front cover)
"Barry's first novel is a grizzled piece of futuristic Irish noir with strong ties to the classic gang epics of Yore. . . . The genre stew--which incorporates a Machiavellian alcoholic mother, flag-waving street fights, and uncertain alliances--is imbued throughout with Barry's inventively vulgar language." —The New Yorker
"As you prowl the streets of Bohane with Barry's motley assortment of thugs and criminal masterminds, you will find yourself drawn into their world and increasingly sympathetic to their assorted aims and dreams." —Boston Globe
"City of Bohane offers a dystopian vision that is splendidly drawn if not shockingly inventive. . . . [Barry's] descriptions are notably vibrant (a December day is 'as miserable as hells scullery) and his syntax strikingly creative." —Cleveland Plain Dealer, Grade: A
"Although Barry has set this bewitching, stylized noir pageant of underworld dynastic upheaval in the grim near-future, it has a timeless air, with spookily beautiful evocations of ancient Irish mythology and an elegiac sense of civilization's attenuation while the old, bred-in-the-bones urges are resurgent." —Booklist (starred review)
"Barry seems to relish splashing around in the literary mud puddles left behind by language-obsessed writers like Flann O'Brian, Cormac McCarthy, and Irvine Welsh. Meanwhile, an equally passionate love of film (think Quentin Tarantino and Sergio Leone) casts a flickering shadow over Barry's fictional world's pop culture crashes into language, and they are both dressed to the nines." —Shelf Awareness
"This wild-ass ripsnorter, set in Ireland about 40 years from now, is a bravura, Nabokovian mind-blower. . . . It's elegiac, lyrical, rollicking fun that mixes Brian Friel with A Clockwork Orange." —Library Journal, "Books for Dudes"
“The best novel to come out of Ireland since Ulysses.” —Irvine Welsh
"Kevin Barry is a genius. He is doing with his life and his gift exactly what he was put on this earth to do and continues the long and great line of Irish writers. His debut novel City of Bohane is an original and remarkable work of inventiveness. . . . As I read, I felt fortunate to gawp at this wondrous treasure trove of Barry's creativity and mastery." —Ethel Rohan
"Kevin Barry is the real thing, and nothing can stop him." —David Guterson
"City of Bohane is an unforgettably wonderful novel: hilarious, unique, utterly believable. It's Joyce meets Anthony Burgess, and as funny as Flann O'Brien. We Kevin Barry fans have known for a while that he is a writer of rarest gifts, but this book is an electrifying masterpiece." —Joseph O'Connor
"Kevin Barry is unique, a one-man school. His work is hilarious and unpredictable--and always brilliant." —Roddy Doyle
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1
The Nature of the Disturbance
Whatever’s wrong with us is coming in off that river. No argument: the taint of badness on the city’s air is a taint off that river. This is the Bohane river we’re talking about. A blackwater surge, malevolent, it roars in off the Big Nothin’ wastes and the city was spawned by it and was named for it: city of Bohane.
He walked the docks and breathed in the sweet badness of the river. It was past midnight on the Bohane front. There was an evenness to his footfall, a slow calm rhythm of leather on stone, and the dockside lamps burned in the night-time a green haze, the light of a sad dream. The water’s roar for Hartnett was as the rushing of his own blood and as he passed the merchant yards the guard dogs strung out a sequence of howls all along the front. See the dogs: their hackles heaped, their yellow eyes livid. We could tell he was coming by the howling of the dogs.
Polis watched him but from a distance – a pair of hoss polis watering their piebalds at a trough ’cross in Smoketown. Polis were fresh from the site of a reefing.
‘Ya lampin’ him over?’ said one. ‘Albino motherfucker.’
‘Set yer clock by him,’ said the other.
Albino, some called him, others knew him as the Long Fella: he ran the Hartnett Fancy.
He cut off from the dockside and walked on into the Back Trace, the infamous Bohane Trace, a most evil labyrinth, an unknowable web of streets. He had that Back Trace look to him: a dapper buck in a natty-boy Crombie, the Crombie draped all casual-like over the shoulders of a pale grey Eyetie suit, mohair. Mouth of teeth on him like a vandalised graveyard but we all have our crosses. It was a pair of hand-stitched Portuguese boots that slapped his footfall, and the stress that fell, the emphasis, was money.
Hard-got the riches – oh the stories that we told out in Bohane about Logan Hartnett.
Dank little squares of the Trace opened out suddenly, like gasps, and Logan passed through. All sorts of quarehawks lingered Trace-deep in the small hours. They looked down as he passed, they examined their toes and their sacks of tawny wine – you wouldn’t make eye contact with the Long Fella if you could help it. Strange, but we had a fear of him and a pride in him, both. He had a fine hold of himself, as we say in Bohane. He was graceful and erect and he looked neither left nor right but straight out ahead always, with the shoulders thrown back, like a general. He walked the Arab tangle of alleyways and wynds that make up the Trace and there was the slap, the lift, the slap, the lift of Portuguese leather on the backstreet stones.
Yes and Logan was in his element as he made progress through the labyrinth. He feared not the shadows, he knew the fibres of the place, he knew every last twist and lilt of it.
Jenni Ching waited beneath the maytree in the 98er Square.
He approached the girl, and his step was enough: she needn’t look up to make the reck. He smiled for her all the same, and it was a wry and long-suffering smile – as though to say: More of it, Jenni? – and he sat on the bench beside. He laid a hand on hers that was tiny, delicate, murderous.
The bench had dead seasons of lovers’ names scratched into it.
‘Well, girleen?’ he said.
‘Cunt what been reefed in Smoketown was a Cusack off the Rises,’ she said.
‘Did he have it coming, Jen?’
‘Don’t they always, Cusacks?’
Logan shaped his lips thinly in agreement.
‘The Cusacks have always been crooked, girl.’
Jenni was seventeen that year but wise beyond it. Careful, she was, and a saucy little ticket in her lowriders and wedge heels, her streaked hair pineappled in a high bun. She took the butt of a stogie from the tit pocket of her white vinyl zip-up, and lit it.
‘Get enough on me fuckin’ plate now ’cross the footbridge, Mr H.’
‘I know that.’
‘Cusacks gonna sulk up a welt o’ vengeance by ’n’ by and if yer askin’ me, like? A rake o’ them tossers bullin’ down off the Rises is the las’ thing Smoketown need.’
‘Cusacks are always great for the old talk, Jenni.’
‘More’n talk’s what I gots a fear on, H. Is said they gots three flatblocks marked Cusack ’bove on the Rises this las’ while an’ that’s three flatblocks fulla headjobs with a grá on ’em for rowin’, y’check me?’
‘All too well, Jenni.’
It is fond tradition in Bohane that families from the Northside Rises will butt heads against families from the Back Trace. Logan ran the Trace, he was Back Trace blood-and-bone, and his was the most ferocious power in the city that year. But here were the Cusacks building strength and gumption on the Rises.
‘What’s the swerve we gonna throw, Logan?’
There was a canniness to Jenni. It was bred into her – the Chings were old Smoketown stock. Smoketown was hoors, herb, fetish parlours, grog pits, needle alleys, dream salons and Chinese restaurants. Smoketown was the other side of the footbridge from the Back Trace, yonder across the Bohane river, and it was the Hartnett Fancy had the runnings of Smoketown also. But the Cusacks were shaping for it.
‘I’d say we keep things moving quite swiftly against them, Jenni-sweet.’
‘Coz they gonna come on down anyways, like?’
‘Oh there’s no doubt to it, girl. They’re going to come down barkin’. May as well force them to a quick move.’
She considered the tactic.
‘Afore they’s full prepped for a gack off us, y’mean? Play on they pride, like. What the Fancy’s yelpin’? Ya gonna take an eye for an eye, Cuse, or y’any bit o’ spunk at all, like?’
Logan smiled.
‘You’re an exceptional child, Jenni Ching.’
She winced at the compliment.
‘Pretty to say so, H. O’ course the Cusacks shouldn’t be causin’ the likes a us no grief in the first place, y’check? Just a bunch o’ Rises scuts is all they is an’ they gettin’ so brave an’ lippy, like? Sendin’ runners into S’town? Why’s it they’s gettin’ so brave all of a sudden is what we should be askin’.’
‘Meaning precisely what, Jenni?’
‘Meanin’ is they smellin’ a weakness, like? They reckonin’ you got your mind off the Fancy’s dealins?’
‘And what else might I have my mind on?’
She turned her cool look to him, Jenni, and let it lock.
‘That ain’t for my say, Mr Hartnett, sir.’
He rose from the bench, smiling. Not a lick of warmth had entered the girl’s hand as long as his had lain on it.
‘Y’wan’ more Cusacks hurted so?’ she said.
He looked back at her but briefly – the look was his word.
‘Y’sure ’bout that, H? ’nother winter a blood in Bohane, like?’
A smile, and it was as grey as he could will it.
‘Ah sure it’ll make the long old nights fly past.’
Logan Hartnett was minded to keep the Ching girl close. In a small city so homicidal you needed to watch out on all sides. He moved on through the gloom of the Back Trace. The streets of old tenements are tight, steep-sided, ill-lit, and the high bluffs of the city give the Trace a closed-in feel. Our city is built along a run of these bluffs that bank and canyon the Bohane river. The streets tumble down to the river, it is a black and swift-moving rush at the base of almost every street, as black as the bog waters that feed it, and a couple of miles downstream the river rounds the last of the bluffs and there enters the murmurous ocean. The ocean is not directly seen from the city, but at all times there is the ozone rumour of its proximity, a rasp on the air, like a hoarseness. It is all of it as bleak as only the West of Ireland can be.
The Fancy boss Hartnett turned down a particular alleyway, flicked the cut of a glance over his shoulder – so careful – then slipped into a particular doorway. He pressed three times on a brass bell, paused, and pressed on it twice more. He noted a spider abseil from the top of the door’s frame, enjoyed its measured, shelving fall, thought it was late enough in the year for that fella, being October, the city all brown-mooded. There was a scurry of movement within, the peephole’s cover was slid and filled with the bead of a pupil, the brief startle of it, the lock clacked, unclicked, and the red metal door was slid creaking – kaaarrrink! – along its runners. They’d want greasing, thought Logan, as Tommie the Keep was revealed: a wee hairy-chested turnip of a man. He bowed once and whispered his reverence.
‘Thought it’d be yourself, Mr Hartnett. Goin’ be the hour, like.’
‘They say routine is a next-door neighbour of madness, Tommie.’
‘They say lots o’ things, Mr Hartnett.’
He lit his pale smile for the Keep. He stepped inside, pushed the door firmly back along its runners, it clacked shut behind – kraaank! – and the men trailed down a narrow passageway; its vivid red walls sweated like disco walls, and the building was indeed once just that but had long since been converted.
Long gone in Bohane the days of the discos.
‘And how’s your lady wife keepin’, Mr H?’
‘She’s extremely well, Tommie, and why shouldn’t she be?’
A tautness at once had gripped the ’bino’s smile and terrified the Keep. Made him wonder, too.
‘I was only askin’, Mr H.’
‘Well, thank you so much for asking, Tommie. I’ll be sure to remember you to her.’
Odd, distorted, the glaze that descended for a moment over his eyes, and the passage hooked, turned, and opened to a dimly lit den woozy with low night-time voices.
This was Tommie’s Supper Room.
This was the Bohane power haunt.
The edges of the room were lined with red velvet banquettes. The banquettes seated heavy, jowled lads who were thankful for the low lights of the place. These were the merchants of the city, men with a taste for hair lacquer, hard booze and saturated fats.
‘Inebriates and hoor-lickers to a man,’ said Logan, and it was loud enough for those who might want to hear.
Across the fine parquet waited an elegant brass-railed bar. Princely Logan marched towards it, and the obsessive polishing of the floor’s French blocks was evident in the hump of Tommie the Keep’s back as he raced ahead and ducked under his bar hatch. He took his cloth and hurried a fresh shine into the section of the counter where Logan each night sat.
‘You’ve grooves worn into it, Tommie.’
Logan shucked loose from the sleeves of his Crombie and he hung it on a peg set beneath the bar’s rail. The handle of his shkelper was visible to all – a mother-of-pearl with markings of Naples blue – and it was tucked into his belt just so, with his jacket hitched on the blade the better for its display. He smoothed down the mohair of the Eyetie suit. He picked at a loose thread. Ran dreamily the tip of a thumb along a superstar cheekbone.
‘So is there e’er a bit strange, Tommie?’
There was a startle in the Keep for sure.
‘Strange, Mr H?’
Logan with a feint of innocence smiled.
‘I said is there e’er a bit of goss around the place, Tommie, no?’
‘Ah, just the usual aul’ talk, Mr Hartnett.’
‘Oh?’
‘Who’s out for who. Who’s fleadhin’ who. Who’s got what comin’.’
Logan leaned across the counter and dropped his voice a note.
‘And is there any old talk from outside on Big Nothin’, Tommie?’
The Keep knew well what Logan spoke of – the word already was abroad.
‘I s’pose you know ’bout that aul’ talk?’
‘What talk, Tommie, precisely?’
‘’Bout a certain…someone what been seen out there.’
‘Say the name, Tommie.’
‘Is just talk, Mr Hartnett.’
‘Say it.’
‘Is just a name, Mr Hartnett.’
‘Say it, Tom.’
Keep swivelled a look around the room; his nerves were ripped.
‘The Gant Broderick,’ he said.
Logan trembled, girlishly, to mock the name, and he drummed his fingertips a fast-snare beat on the countertop.
‘First the Cusacks, now the Gant,’ he said. ‘I must have done something seriously fucking foul in a past life, Tom?’
Tommie the Keep smiled as he sighed.
‘Maybe even in this one, Mr H?’
‘Oh brave, Tommie. Well done.’
The Keep lightened it as best as he could.
‘Is the aul’ fear up in yuh, sir?’
‘Oh the fear’s up in me alright, Tommie.’
The Keep hung his bar cloth on its nail. He whistled a poor attempt at nonchalance. Tommie could not hide from his face the feeling that was current in the room, the leanings and nuance of the talk that swirled there. Logan used him always as a gauge for the city’s mood. Bohane could be a tricky read. It has the name of an insular and contrary place, and certainly, we are given to bouts of rage and hilarity, which makes us unpredictable. The Keep tip-tapped on the parquet a nervy set of toes, and he played it jaunty.
‘What’d take the cares off yuh, Mr Hartnett?’
Logan considered a moment. He let his eyes ascend to the stoically turning ceiling fan as it chopped the blue smoke of the room.
‘Send me out a dozen of your oysters,’ he said, ‘and an honest measure of the John Jameson.’
The Keep nodded his approval as he set to.
‘There ain’t no point livin’ it small, Mr Hartnett.’
‘No, Tommie. We might as well elevate ourselves from the beasts of the fields.’
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Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels. City of Bohane was the winner of the 2013 International Dublin Literary Award. Beatlebone (2015) won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize and is one of seven books by Irish authors nominated for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award, the world's most valuable annual literary fiction prize for books published in English. His 2019 novel Night Boat to Tangier was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Barry is also an editor of Winter Papers, an arts and culture annual.
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Customer reviews
4.2 out of 5
1,224 global ratings
Westarmagh
5
Just Read the Damn Book
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2013
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As we all know, there are a hoard of pseudo-critics whose sole purpose here is to hype the work of friends or who are paid to favor a book for compensation. There are as well - unfortunately - critic wannabes who pen lengthy ersatz literary reviews by pulling up every cliche learned in creative writing 101. Screw that: read the damn book. It's original, populated with characters of depth, and rolls out a good story line. If you don't like it, come back and tell me I'm wrong (you won't).
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4 people found this helpful
Mo Runalls
5
One of the best books I've ever read.
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
It's not easy reading. The language is slangy and difficult for an American, but you grow accustomed and learn to love it. Very worthwhile to stick with it. This book is funny and heartbreaking. I couldn't get enough. Truly sad when I finished.
Kindle Customer
5
As Splendid a Dream as Fever Allows
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2020
Verified Purchase
What Mr. Barry achieves with this novel is a sweet-as-it-is-bleak tale of the underworldly doings of a mythical, if not prescient depiction of a town in the not-too-distant future. His use of the Bohane argot to tell of lost love, lost souls, and lost time imbues this story with a poignant beauty that is the very stuff of Legend. The City of Bohane is an experience as much as a read, and will leave a palpable impression that I expect will linger with me for days if not years. An exquisite piece of literature and beacon of hope for the future of writing.
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Frank Conahan
5
An ear for the fictive landscape.
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2016
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This is not a great work of plotting or character development. There is no tremendous insight that bubbles up or any deep satiric or other voice at work that has huge things to teach the reader. What there is though is a really terrific writer at work writing an immensely well crafted and entertaining story. The language of the book is funny, clever, deeply sad in spots, and always just what it needs to be to involve the reader in what is going on in the narrative. I didn't really care too much what happened to any of the characters, but I was very invested in finding out how it would be described.
Mr. Barry also manages to communicate a strong sense of place; the west of Ireland that isn't really the west of Ireland, but is perhaps more the west of Ireland than the actual place. He credits Anthony Burgess as a major influence, which he obviously was, and like Burgess, he manages to take the imagination into the most important parts of place, in a sense its emotional touch points, while being very comfortable taking all sorts of liberties with description; Bohane is like Burgess' Britain or any number of fantastic sights around the world that couldn't possibly be but come off as absolutely authentic.
His characters tend to be types and he is a painterly narrator, showing us the image of the old woman and the whiskey, the boys with the homicidal boot heals and carefully arranged hair, etc., and providing them with dialogue that perfectly suits the image and associations his descriptions conjure up. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and Beatlebone as well.
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3 people found this helpful
Jay Alan
5
Most eloquent, transformative, and transportive novel I've read in years
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2012
Verified Purchase
Astounding book. I keep trying to find meaningful ways to describe City of Bohane to my friends. I repeatedly fail to come up with any rendering or synopsis that does any sort of justice to the brilliance of the author's use of language, he appears to toy with it but again that does not describe the linguistic acrobatics that Mr. Barry performs with what appears to be apparent ease. Given how amazingly complex and sophisticated the author's writing is, his ability to move effortlessly and seamlessly about in time, place and character allows him to make these realms his own and his characters as well. Kevin Barry weaves an astonishing tapestry that is so utterly engaging it simply must be read and savored.If you do not get your paws on this novel and manage to read it you are doing yourself a tremendous disservice.
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