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Meet Matthew, Rez, Cocker, and Kearney. They've just finished school, and are facing the great void of the future, celebrating their freedom in this unpromising adult reality with self-obliteration. They roam through Dublin, their only aims the next drink, the next high, and a callow, fearful idea of sex. Kearney, in particular, pushes boundaries in a way that once made him a leader in the group, but increasingly an object of fear. When a trip to the U.S. turns Kearney's violent fantasies ever darker, the other boys are forced to face both the violence within themselves and the limits of their own indifference.
Here Are the Young Men portrays a spiritual fallout, harbinger of the collapse of national illusion in "Celtic Tiger" Ireland. Visceral and chilling, this debut novel marks the arrival of a formidable literary talent, channeling an unnerving anarchic energy to devastating effect.
"[A] lively debut by a promising young writer." - Publishers Weekly
"Rough in its language, physical violence, and reminders of youth's potential for anything, the book joins a respectable literary line dating back to A Clockwork Orange, if not Tom Jones and Vanity Fair." - Kirkus
Darkly exhilarating ... God may be dead, but a new literary star is born." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"[He] perfectly describes the disaffected experience of most suburban teenagers, the feeling of waiting for life to begin... The result is a dark and intoxicating debut." - Irish Independent
"It's a rough but powerful debut." - Irish Times
This information about Here Are the Young Men was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rob Doyle was born in Dublin and holds a first-class honors degree in Philosophy and an MPhil in Psychoanalysis from Trinity College Dublin. His fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Gorse, The Moth, The Penny Dreadful and elsewhere. Having spent several years in Asia, South America, Italy, England, and the U.S., he now lives in Dublin. Here Are the Young Men is his first novel.
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