Knick Knack Paddy Whack: Summary and book reviews of Knick Knack Paddy Whack by Ardal O'Hanlon, plus links to an excerpt from Knick Knack Paddy Whack and a biography of Ardal O'Hanlon.
Knick Knack Paddy Whack A Novel
by Ardal O'Hanlon
Hardcover: Jan 2000,
256 pages.
Paperback: Jul 2001,
256 pages.
A surprise bestseller in Britain, this edgy and funny novel about youthful rage and rebellion calls to mind the fiction of Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby.
Not since Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye has literature seen a young man with as much contempt for hypocrisy and phoniness as Patrick Scully, the nineteen-year-old narrator of this outrageous account of frustrations and dreams.
Stuck in a dead-end job as a security guard in Dublin, while his friends pursue what he regards as useless degrees at the university, Scully escapes for a weekend to his hometown of Castlecock. He's joined there by his Dublin roommate and childhood chum, Xavier "Balls" O'Reilly, and the two of them embark on a rollicking weekend of carousing, drinking, and depravity. Truth to tell, Scully enjoys being away from his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Francesca Kelly, who has gone to visit her mother in Wicklow. Scully's aware that he and Francesca are drifting apart and he's wondering why. The answer resides in Francesca's much-too-candid diary, in which she confides her heart's true affections. Of course, Scully himself is hardly a saint in matters of the flesh, and when on his first night home he finds himself out back of a dance hall with a girl he's just met, it's clear that nothing but trouble lies ahead.
When he returns to Dublin, Scully's life spirals downward and out of control. But his indefatigable sense of humor and uncompromising candor never desert him, and it's clear that Scully may be down but he's not out. Laced with searing wit and brilliant language, Knick Knack Paddy Whack builds to a shocking climax as the duplicity of Scully's so-called friends dawns on him and becomes more than he can bear. Disturbing and funny at the same time, Ardal O'Hanlon's book places him among the best of the new breed of Irish writers.
The Observer (London)
A kind of cross between The Diary of Adrian Mole and The Butcher Boy. O'Hanlon is extremely funny on the rituals and frustrations of small-town life.
Esquire (UK)
A fine debut, by turns thrilling and chilling.
Mail on Sunday (London)
Fluently written and excellently constructed. A funny, moving and finally horrifying tale.
Irish Times
A robust and resonant read. A skillful and thoughtful work that will shake, rattle and roll the reader into submission.
It's a story about how to wreck your marriage, how to help the homeless, how not to raise your kids, how to find religion . . . and how to be good. 'Hornby's quick eye and nimble observational style nail everyone's vanity'.
By turns humorous and heartbreaking, personal and sweeping, familiar and extraordinary, Brian Strause's first novel takes readers on an unforgettable emotional journey into America's heartland.
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