Found on the sale table at Abbeys, and the title sounded vaguely familiar...

Well!

Firstly, this edition has a different cover.

And secondly..wow!
The bible (1001 books to read before you die) claims that this is a book well before it's time, and nothing could be truer.

The narrator is a young student living in his uncle's care.

Nature of care: belligerent relative provides room and board.

The story - where do I begin??
Our narrator is writing a story, but not a story with one beginning, storyline or end. The storehouse of literature (everything that has ever been written) is at the disposal of our man, and he does like to dip in and out with wily characters, cult figures from Irish mythology and scenes from all the well known genres (like a cowboy shoot out - in Dublin!).

Now, all of this sounds very Huraki Murakami, or Kurt Vonnegut, but it's just not that easy to read. Everytime Finn McCool came onto the page, I'd yawn and flick forward to see how long this new saga would last.

I do have this funny feeling that the author (Flann O'brien, not our student or Mr Trellise) enjoyed this book the most. Full of in-jokes, very Irish and perhaps a little dated, there is certainly enough of interest to have the modern reader reaching for a skim of this book.

Metafiction at it's earliest for me.

RELEASE NOTES:

Posting to Dolphin-au as part of the '1001 boos to read before you die' Virtual Book Box on www.bookobsessed.com.

Wow, you make this seem daunting jubby! I do like a book with a challenge though. This will have to live on Mt TBR for a while, before I can cross it off the list of 1001 books to read before you die. Thans jubby, and sorry for forgetting to journal this book as soon as it arrived.

This must be one of the strangest books I've ever read. It took me an awful long time to get in to this book, and even then it was with mixed feelings. It's a book I probably would have enjoyed more when I was about 20, when this cleverness with words and ideas appealed to me. Now I just think it is clever (at times) but get a bit bored with all the mental acrobatics. The author is just showing his intellectual capacities of, it's a bit of an elitist wank, in my view, and something a lot of students tend to get stuck in.
I found the story not quite coherent enough to my liking, and got extremely bored with the Finn McCool story. I'm not too sure if this book deserves to be in the 1001 list. This sort of thing has been done better since.

I'll probably offer this on the 1001 list again.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

sent to arugh as part of the 1001 VBB on bookobsessed.

Found this one in my mailbox today. It might be a bit, but it will get read. Thanks for sharing.