About the Book - Excerpt
Small islands run busy ferries. At first I felt that on the midnight DunLeary ferry we were as innocents in Pinocchio, not fully aware of our predicament. But pints of stout aplenty provided on the ship of destiny as we departed Erin’s isle.
Ease our troubled minds. TV aboard ship was loud and clear with The Late Late Show, but as our brains grew fuzzy with porter so too TV signal dimmed and disappeared, the umbilical cord shorn with our green island home.
For ever after we would visit the place, sightseeing tourists in the land of our birth. Our home always come from away. Buy Book Here!
Book web site: www.awicklowgirl.com
Reviewer
“If you read only one Irish novel this year, this is the one to choose. It is a stunning, new voice in Irish literature. The core of the book is a love story. There is a magic realism at play in the accounts of the main character’s experiences as he visits old loves and familiar haunts in Dublin city. There is a Joycean echo in the emigrant’s detailed knowledge of the city that he left. I rarely re-read novels but this is one which I think would definitely repay a second and a third read as it operates at so many different levels. A universal novel as it explores dilemma of the emigrant and a man aware of his own faults in pursuit of a love life.”
Reviewer
“A Wicklow Girl charts the narrator’s quest for a soul mate that takes him on a roller coaster ride from New Orleans in the sweaty sensual south of the US to the windy wet village of Howth on the eastern Irish seaboard. The narrator’s voice is mesmerizing, high octane, it drives the novel forward in a compelling and unique way. This is a novel I thoroughly recommend for its universal theme and the sheer poetic beauty of the narrative voice.”
Reviewer
“A Wicklow Girl is one unique novel. Its style and prose are quite unlike all other novels that I have read. I could not put the book down! A totally witty and a beautiful love story interspersed throughout with the most brilliant word play that I have encountered in decades.”
Reviewer
“The main character you want to shout at. His mind is unique. You are enjoying a first class novel. Five stars.”
Reviewer
"It's everything a serious reader would want from a novel. Suffice to say I read it spellbound. The novel is perfect, a classic, satisfying love story. Being language driven, the love story itself is transformed into an epic. Regardless of any plot or theme, it's the voice, the acerbic, relentless observations, the exhilarating metre of sociological dissection, the skewed homecoming poetry of it, the anger and energy and bitterness. It's superb, every word of it held me enthralled. Making this the fuel of a love story is a supreme achievement. It's more than the great Irish novel; its very language is dependent on a narrator's voice corrupted by his wandering. You take a scene to its linguistic origins, refract its meanings and create myth, the voice is contemporary and so compelling in its delivery. Delighted in the puns, the literary and cultural references, the brilliance of the wit and one liners, the put downs to die for and the absurd and crazy, surprising twists of storyline."
About the Author
Brian O’Dowd was born and educated by Brothers in Dublin. “Once fluent in Gaelic, I’m very Irish as I’ve lived life away, London, Trinidad, USA and Canada.”
