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Summary: So you like run-on sentences, huh?
Review: This is another one of those novels that has been on my reading list for years but could never find it well what do you know I found it in the that same clearance book store what a stroke of luck I don't know if I liked this or not you see the writing was a little hard to get used to you see it's written in the first person by a very disturbed Irish boy and the sentences tend to run on with sparce punctuation and no quotation marks for dialogue but what starts off as annoying becomes easier and puts you inside this disturbing little mind if you can put up with this kind of writing for 200 pages go for it it's not bad after all it was short-listed for the prestigious Booker prize and it's truly a unique reading experience although if this were a 600 pager I couldn't have done it.
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Summary: in praise of the butcher boy..
Review: Somewhat surprised that so many of the comments here are negative. Maybe Francie's "voice" in the book doesn't speak to everyone, but it spoke to me like no other book I've read (corny as this might sound to some of you) since I read "Catcher in the Rye" as a young man. I did wonder after reading this book how it would translate, whether it would find an audience outside Ireland, whether somebody in, say, America or England would actually "get" this book. On reading some of these comments it seems like many just didn't get it. Of course it's a completely subjective thing and the last thing I'm going to tell you is that you're all you're wrong if you hated the book. But, and I find it very difficult to describe exactly how I feel about this book, I grew up in a town like Francie, and what McCabe has captured in this, what he understands more than anyone else I've ever read, is that dark, surreal side of the rural Irish psyche. As I read it I felt like I was discovering a voice I'd always been searching for, hearing a story I always wanted told and one I understood implicitly. And it was a great release. To me this is a more important book than anything else that has come out of Ireland in the last 15/20 years...including stuff most people readily lap up like Roddy Doyle and Frank McCourt (though they are talented writers). That's why I feel strongly about seeing it dismissed as rubbish by some of the other reviewers here. To me this astonishing book is McCabe's best work, better than Breakfast on Pluto which gets a 5 star rating on this site..though I would also wholeheartedly recommend The Dead School.
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Summary: It's different
Review: The Butcher Boy had its funny moments along with its sad ones; however, the book never really seemed to take off. It could have been made as a short story and would have been a much better read. That aside, Patrick Mccabe uses a unique style of writing that lets the reader peer right into the mind of the main character. I recommend this book if you have nothing else to read at the moment.
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Summary: Original, heart-breaking, and supremely executed
Review: So "The Butcher Boy" offers nothing new? OK, name one other book that traces the psychological workings of a young boy who turns into a murderer. And while we're at it, name another book that pulls it off with the skill and narrative voice of McCabe. Really, if you're looking for gore and shock, find a highway accident. The heart-breaking tragedy of "Butcher Boy" is that of a lost childhood. If we've no ability to mourn the death of childhood--as it seems some of the reviewers below have--then our society truly is hopelessly lost in a morass of violence, apathy, and the endless quest of cheap thrills. So read your meaningless Stephen King. Read your vapid Bret Easton Ellis. But please, don't point your critical finger at true writers like McCabe.
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Summary: Lunatic rantings should be avoided
Review: What a load of hog slop. This book does nothing for the reader. Dark rantings of a lunatic character makes you wonder how tightly wound the author is. Avoid this book, don't encourage the author to continue writing.
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Summary: A LITTLE TOO LONG. . .AND NOTHING NEW HERE!
Review: This book proves that blurbs should be taken with a grain of salt. It's an interesting, if not new, technique of allowing an obviously mad narrator dribbling out details of his horrible crime which, in the end, proves to be unoriginal anyway. Sometimes Francie's voice is realistic but most of the time he sounds like an author trying to be clever and it shows. I struggled to get to the end. Whenever I read something "new" like THE BUTCHER BOY, I always fall back onto a classic novel to revive my senses. I'm glad I read it if for nothing else than to save myself from wasting my time on the movie. HA HA
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the Stephen King-friendly reader
Review: When I picked up this book in the bookstore, its cover seemed to suggest murder and death through the eyes and actions of a child. Not quite. This book is mostly a drama, and not horrific in the least. It seems to be a book of laughs in the end. If you are looking for something to tide you over until Stephen King's next release, read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. It is haunting and disturbing, everything that The Butcher Boy is not. If you are looking for a children's book, The Butcher Boy is for you.
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Summary: Old Rope
Review: Awful - is the only word to describe this undergraduate nonsense. Experimental fiction of this sort went out with the nineteen seventies and this example exemplifies its worst excesses. Crude and pointless, with a 'king's new coat' following, there is nothing new here. Believe me.
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Summary: A tedious, though pyschologically accurate picture
Review: The book may be psychologically accurate, but reading it as a story, I got a little tired of Francie. Although I felt sorry for him, I could not identify with or like him as I could, say, Huck Finn, because he lacks Huck's wit, charm and innocent likeability. It might have been better as a short story, but as a novel it seemed to go on and on with a disappointing sameness. I saw no real "descent into madness", as Francie seemed half insane to begin with. All that having been said, the book gives a fairly good picture of what can happen to a child racked by guilt and shame, without friends of loving parents.
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Summary: A hilarious and unforgetable dark comedy
Review: When i rented the film version of THE BUTCHER BOY, i expected another thought provoking drama about the rought life of a young irish boy who's life is always in turmoil. I instead found a hilarious and dark comedy about an insane kid in ireland circa 1963. I enjoyed the book even more. This classic tells an enjoyable and unforgetable tale of a boy who is striving for the "not a bad little bastard anymore" award. what a larf. little francie is most likely the most orignial character in any book i've yet to read. holden caufield, eat your heart out. with this wee lad, you won't know what to expect.
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