Rating: 
Summary: Sheep, Cows, Pigs
Review: If living in Monaghan doesn't make you criminally insane, living with the likes of Francie's parents (one a baking fiend and the other a sad holder of a spirits clerkship first class) surely will. Francie's cracked, there's no doubt about that. The brilliance of this book lies in McCabe's deft handling of that revelation, in his skill of making his warped narrator likeable even as he becomes almost irredeemably pathological. Francie's description of an Irish songbook reveals the loveable boy inside the monster. And while Mrs. Nugent probably isn't all that bad, if young Brady thinks she's a cow, well, then you're inclined to believe him. Revitalizing first person narration, McCabe elicits terror and sympathy in the same sentence. Memorable reading to be sure.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and Tragic
Review: I truly recommend this book. Very well written and original. I've reread it more than 10 times, yet never feel satisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible, tedious, "please nominate me for an award" writing
Review: I hated this book with a passion. As an avid reader of crime fiction and great literature, I had heard about The Butcher Boy and was anxious to read it. I wish I could get a refund. It is a dark, depressing book which is to be expected considering the subject matter: a young boy slipping into dementia. A few other readers commented that they stayed with the book, interested, for about 100 pages. That's about the same with me, but everything goes downhill quickly. I applaud McCabe's manner of showing us how Francie loses his grip on reality. But, 200 plus pages of a potty-mouthed, insane boy's stream of consciousness ramblings is enough to cause the reader to join Francie in the looney bin.All I could think about when I reading it was that the book was written for attention, maybe to shock, maybe to put a feather in the author's cap. Whatever. I could see the book on the reading list for a college English course, but I got no enjoyment out of it as a booklover and casual, not scholarly, reader. Having read William Faulkner and his love of stream of consciousness and run-on sentences (Sound and the Fury), I was prepared to have to work to finish this book. But, should anyone really have work so hard to complete a book? I guess to put a final nail in the coffin, I was surprised at all the comments that this was a hilarious book. Reader reviews and newspaper/magazine reviews all proclaim this book as amusing or as one puts it "screamingly funny." I found nothing at all funny in the book. Maybe a line here or there was funny, but knowing that these thoughts and actions were coming from a rapidly-forming sociopath made it very hard for me to even crack a smile reading this book. Especially considering the sociopath in question is a young boy. Sorry for the angry review but, once again, I have bought a book with very high expectations and have found myself sorely and sadly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, Scary... compulsive reading...
Review: Patrick McCabe had already attracted media attention before the release of this book, but the release of "The Butcher Boy" marks the period when North American audiences finally sat up and took note of this new Dickens. And that's exactly what McCabe reminds me of- Dickens, with some twists of course. The basic premise of "The Bucher Boy" sounds simple enough- a young boy named Francie Brady gives a first person account of his disturbed childhood (a childhood finally leading to murder). But this book is FAR from average or simple. Written in a type of blissful free association (you'll see what I mean when you pick it up- the sentences run into each other in a refreshing volume of frenzy) that makes the complicated plot even more eerie, the voice and presence and menace of Francie (the pig boy) become unavoidable. I was alternately scared of and for Francie, unsure whether to loathe or pity him. Maybe both. One of the most original works of fiction to come along in decades!
Rating:
Summary: Very poor.
Review: When books such as this become shortlisted for the Booker prize, we are in trouble. Never before has such a grab-bag of Irish clichès (from abusive priests through drunken fathers to small-minded villagers) been so lauded for originality and profundity. Does any Irish person really need to be reminded all over again of how awful life in rural Ireland supposedly was? There is not an interesting observation nor a clever turn of phrase in the whole text. The entire novel seems both plotless and pointless - if there were no Manson-like murder at the end, there would be no readership for this novel and no attempts to project profundity onto it. Like the even worse American Psycho, it seems to require Grand Guignol elements and vulgarity to galvanize its readers into thinking that it must be deep.
Rating: 
Summary: The butcher boy and his pigs
Review: It sounds a bit strange and so it is this whole book. Sometimes it is very disturbing to get within a madman mind and to know all his unusual and often, I must say, even disgusting thoughts. The pigs are a central point of Francie's mind. His family is described as 'pigs', he works in butchery and has to work with pigs, he collects food for pigs etc. So it is not surprising that in his mind there are often people behaving like pigs - and the parts of the book describing these thoughts I found most disturbing. From the beginning it is clear that something terrible will happen. You can not put the book down if you read the first paragraph. And 'the thing that happens' is really terrible! Maybe even too terrible. When reading this book it becomes clear how people are determined with the environment in which they live. If Francie's family lived in a more tolerable and not so narrow-minded town and if in his family were less alcohol and psychopathic thoughts, Francie would be probably a usual, nice, teenager boy. So, beside the horror thing he did, at the end of the book I felt sorry for Francie. At the end of this review I would like to say that I like "The Butcher Boy". My dear friend said, she knows a lot of people who do not like this book. I am sure there is also - beside two of us - a lot of people who like it. Also because of that it is worth to read "The Butcher Boy" and see how the book will influence the reader's mind.
Rating:
Summary: The Surrealistic Place Between Sanity and Insanity
Review: Set is a rural Irish town in the early 1960s, The Butcher Boy is a beautiful and disturbing novel that tells the tale of "the incredible Francie Brady," a lonely Irish teenager who has, at best, a tenuous grasp on reality. A series of crushing personal loses, are causing Francie to slowly descend into madness, into the world of the true psychopath. In an irrational attempt to fix blame on someone for the cruelties which have befallen him, Francie makes a local woman, Mrs. Nugent, the target of his scathing and sardonic wit, his growing anger, and finally, his shocking violence. This is a tale of the surrealistic space that lies between sanity and insanity and Francie is the mythical changeling. Despite its exceptionally depressing subject matter, The Butcher Boy is darkly comic and Francie's resilient, callous and savage first-person narrative, devoid of much traditional punctuation, impels the reader at a breakneck speed. Francie gives nicknames to people, places and things and speaks in his own brand of Irish slang. The book is a little claustrophobic in feel because we observe Francie's descent into madness from the inside, without realizing that we are going there. We unwittingly embrace his warped point of view and are able to sympathize with him and weep for him even though we absolutely cannot condone what he does. It's a rather hallucinatory novel, a patchwork-quilt of B-movie aliens, comic strip logic and even visions of the Virgin Mary. It's a wild ride between sentimentality and the Grand Guignol; a place where real and rational explanations of the world simply aren't good enough. Although this is an Irish novel, you won't find any politics in this book. The Butcher Boy is set in a distant, apolitical Ireland of the past, all to the good. Politics would only confuse the issues here. Francie's world in an ambiguous, ambivalent one of religious fanaticism and Irish mysticism, two things that no doubt contribute to Francie's deteriorating mental state. The ending of the book is a little surprising and is the only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five. It really doesn't seem in keeping with the character of Francie that McCabe worked so diligently to build. I felt a little let down, a little out of place. But make no mistake, The Butcher Boy is a highly disturbing book. It is an intimate look at a mind-gone-wrong, but it is extremely well-written and highly original. There are no cookie-cutter characters or plot lines here. As the Virgin Mary says to Francie, "Don't go bothering your head about it. The world goes one way and we go another." That is certainly true for The Butcher Boy as well.
Rating:
Summary: A disturbing, lyrical masterpiece
Review: This is my first novel by Patrick McCabe and I find his use of language decieving until you get used to it; from then on it is astoundingly brilliant. His style of writing is reminiscent of Anthony Burgess, and The Butcher Boy is a mixture of both, a Clockwork Orange by Burgess and The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger. If you want an insight into violent, disturbed youths turn to these novels and you wont be dissapointed.
Rating:
Summary: Portrait of Bitter Youth
Review: "The Butcher Boy," I think, is a beautifully vivid and horrific account of an impoverished, devestated youth. And the pig theme, from Francie's vision of his family as pigs to the butcher scenes, have a sick lyrical quality - a feeling of leading the reader into the kitchen, the sty, behind the facades of Francine's world. Also, the book has a distinctly Irish sense of better times long gone: a mood which seems to run through Irish, or Irish-American, writers as diverse as Trevor & Donleavy. Francine's recurring fantasy of him & Joe at the lake is a haunting motif (though maybe overplayed a little near the end.) There are times when the book becomes strangling claustrophobic, & the reader feels absolutely enclosed in Francine's mad pig world, but, as hard as this is as a reading experience, it does make the book unforgettable. A harsh, angry, & horrifying novel.
Rating:
Summary: Praying to the Manitou and the Pig Toll Tax
Review: Francie Brady has got to be one of the most memorable characters to come out of any novel in the past ten years. His story of loss and insanity has more to do with social apathy on the part of his environment, which makes him altogether that much more sympathetic. You can't blame him for the things he does, as each act no matter how surprising or atrocious is a direct consequence for a wrong done to him. So whether it's stealing comic books or making a pig out of mean old Mrs. Nugent you'll find yourself laughing at Mr. Francie Brady Not A Bad Bastard Anymore. The flow of this novel is the only difficult part, as it is very much like being dropped into a young boy's stream of consciousness. A lack of punctuation throughout was a brilliant tactic by Mr. McCabe to illustrate the rationalization of the insanity that first surrounds young Francie Brady and then eventually engulfs him. A thought provoking tale on the importance of a stable upbringing and a solid establishment of reality for children. This novel was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and was made into a fine film by Neil Jordan(The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire). A solid investment for fans of compelling literature and a billion, trillion Flash bars.
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