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Summary: A UNIVERSAL CLASSIC WITHEN A PAROCHIAL SETTING
Review: McCabe is a genius. This book is at once sorrowful and joyous. You will weep and you will laugh. It's been over a year since I've read it and the characters , settings and language are still vivid in my mind . Having spent more than half my life in small town Ireland , I can unfortunetely confirm the existance of such lunacy. I have seen it , albeit in different forms , in other parts of this crazy world too.
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Summary: Just read it!
Review: I let my rating do the talking.
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Summary: Chilling, funny story of murder as response to nature.
Review: Francie, an Irish boy during the nuclear annihilation saturated Fifties, is blessed with the best that humanity can offer: charm, intelligence, exuberance, fortituide, and a hair-raising sense of murderous justice. As a child he already learns that nature and humanity are involved in a fight to the finish, that humour and charm -- both of which he excels at -- are the only mechanisms we can strive for, and that, inevitably, murder, at its most horrific, is the only weapon that human beings posssess against the brutish, nasty, short indifference of the world we were born into.That the author can express this dismal reality with genuine -- not black -- humour, and make the story one of the most sincerely enjoyable literary experiences in decades, is itself proof of the magic in the human spirit. Even those of us who have resigned ourselves to the idisputable fact (as R.D. Laing put it) that "life is a terminal illness that is sexually transmitted" will find that "The Butcher's Boy", a child of the human imagination at it's magical best, can brighten the world without diminishing reality.
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Summary: The best of it's kind that I've read
Review: As a psychiatric nurse, I view The Butcher Boy from a slightly different perspective. McCabe gave an exquisite and detailed account of the depth and horror of true madness. Since reading it, my compassion and empathy toward my patients has grown immeasurably. I highly recommend this book for anyone in the field of psych/mental health. I guarantee that it will touch your heart.
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Summary: Sympathy for a Psychotic
Review: A lyrical, haunting book. Through Francie Brady's eyes, we see how others look at him...and oddly, at the times other characters are most repulsed by him, we are, at those times, most pitying. His longing for the old days with his friend Joe touched me very deeply, as did the rest of it. My life couldn't be more different from Francie's (thank God), but through this book I've seen a different portion of the world. I'll probably read it again, and when I do, I will surely find things I missed the first time.
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Summary: Darkly Beautiful
Review: This book reads like poetry and flows like water. The Butcher Boy is a book that makes you feel annoyed that your life is interfering with your reading! The author gives us only those details that are relevant to the main character in the form of thoughts, revealing a sensitive and tormented child/adult. Inspite of the dark content of the story, the author fills the pages with images of intense beauty as it can only be perceived through the eyes of pain. This book should be shelved in the Poetry section. Some readers will by bothered by the sparse presentation, others will hear it as music.
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Summary: A great work of gothic fiction!
Review: This book is one of the best books I have read all year to say the least. I can't wait to see Neil Jordan's film version of "The Butcher Boy."
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Summary: A haunting account of a disturbed youth
Review: Patrick McCabe's Butcher Boy, in the tradition of other Irish greats, is a dark and haunting account of a young boy's mind. Portrait of the Artist as a sociopath-in-the-making. Living in poverty, at the hands of a drunken father na ineffective mother, the protaganist becomes overcome by jealousy beyond his control. A thouroughly sympathetic character, although the book was shocking an disturbing. One of the best I've read in a long while
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Summary: A dark childhood
Review: Coming off another wry, sad, yet inspiring and hopeful novel about another Irish childhood (Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clark HAHAHA), The Butcher Boy makes you feel like poor Paddy's tale was a baldfaced lie. McCabe swoops down upon his young character, skimming the surface of his madness. We are never sure when he breaks through his protective bubble into reality. His hard-drinking father looms and dives in and out of our sight, the 'nervous' mother one day just disappears, the taunting rich woman and her family pierce clearly through his defenses: but is this just a fantastic march of events in his imagination, or is this realty? This book is gripping and horrific, raw and truthful. McCabe's Ireland is not Roddy Doyle's Ireland. The Butcher Boy's deep sorrow and ensuing madness spirals outward and catches us all
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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.
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