(by Flann O’Brien)
At the very start of this book we learn that the narrator is a murderer: he tells us in the first line how he “killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with [a] spade.” We then learn a bit more about the events in his life that preceded this crime: a little bit about his childhood, a little bit about his time at school (where he stole the first edition of a book by a philosopher (of O’Brien’s invention) called de Selby, whose work is something of an obsession for the narrator), a bit more about his life in his twenties, which were mostly spent reading (books by de Selby or about de Selby) and writing (a book about de Selby which he would very much like to have published) while also (the reader sees) getting taken advantage of by a “friend” who’s been in charge of the farm and pub that the narrator’s parents owned while the narrator was away getting educated. The murder, we learn, was this friend John Divney’s idea: since he and the narrator both were in need of funds, they could rob and kill Mathers while he was en route from home to town with his box full of money. But the robbery doesn’t exactly go as the narrator had hoped: Mathers is indeed robbed and murdered, but the narrator doesn’t see any of the cash, though Divney promises eventually he will. What happens on the day that Divney tells the narrator he’s fulfilling that promise is confusing, though: the narrator is on the verge of getting the money, but something happens, after which he passes a confusing evening, which is only the start to days and days of still more confusion, mostly involving the narrator’s interactions with some very odd policemen in a very odd police station.
The back cover of the edition of this book that I read describes it as a “murder thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle and a chilling fable of unending guilt,” and I’d say that’s pretty spot on. I found this to be a very fun read, and I love the way O’Brien writes, even when he’s just doing something like having the narrator describe a field of cows, like this:
“We were in an entirely other field by this time and in the company of white-coloured brown-coloured cows. They watched us quietly as we made a path between them and changed their attitudes slowly as if to show us all of the maps on their fat sides. They gave us to understand that they knew us personally and thought a lot of our families and I lifted my hat to the last of them as I passed her as a sign of my appreciation.”
If your tolerance for absurdity is low, this probably isn’t the book for you, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can’t remember where/when/how I acquired a copy of this (I have a UK edition, which might mean I got it on a trip to England at some point, though it could also have been a Brooklyn sidewalk/Little Free Library find) but I’m glad I did acquire a copy, and glad I eventually got around to reading it.
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