[Like Any Other Man] is a retelling, in a modern idiom, of the Samson and Delilah story; by taking a pagan theme that fits nicely into biblical sanction, the author has been able to smuggle an outrageously funny, frank, and terrifying book into his own country. Patrick Boyle is the best thing that has happened to literary Ireland in a long time. Because he relates the modern obsession with sex to a vanishing sense of guilt, he is also something of an out of season Jansenist, a man who can make sin still see...

Working within the tradition of the modern Irish short story [in At Night All Cats Are Grey, Patrick Boyle] has freed himself of the gentle pathos that became Frank O'Connor's hallmark; he avoids, too, Sean O'Faolain's generally cheerful outlook on his countrymen. It is as though he wanted to dig deeper into a vein already well mined. Boyle's is a more somber disposition; a realist who rarely softens the edges of life, he is closer to the Joyce of Dubliners than to his con...

Sometimes—in moments of bleakness—it seems as though the main teams of modern fiction writers are the Moralists and the Amoralists. If this is so, then Patrick Boyle is a solid and creditable full-back for the first team. Beyond its humour and its sophisticated representationalism, A View from Calvary aims to lay bare the movements of the will; and, especially, that fatal lethargy, born so often from the self-imposed constraint of fear of social opinion, which leads to moral failure and human ...

Patrick Boyle uses Irish speech for exactitude, but English for effect—and all too often weakens the effect by exaggeration. 'Tap-tap-tap. Loud. Urgent. Imperative'—no one even knocks on a door without taking risks with his blood pressure. Pillows are sweat-sodden, eyeballs bulge. But this isn't only Mr Boyle's manner, it's a large part of his subject. The stories in his recent At Night All Cats Are Grey are about suddent death, savage animals, a collapse of ...

[In "Like Any Other Man,"] Patrick Boyle has written a gem of a novel, limpid, sad and conceived on the dark side of the Irish soul. The protagonist, Simpson, is a lost Brian Boru, a civilized King Kong of pub and bed. His peace with the small, small-hearted town over which he officiates as fiscal priest is a terrible armistice of cunning and familiarity. He knows the foibles and weaknesses of each of his clients and considers himself exempt until syphilis strikes. The novel deals almost entir...

Mainly, [Patrick Boyle's "At Night All Cats Are Grey"] is about drinking and dying, frequently intermingled. An old farmer gets falling-down-stoned at his wife's wake and crawls into the deathbed for his night's repose…. After the death of her husband, a grandmother is revealed to be a secret lush (milk and John Jameson)…. Mr. Boyle's wide range of sensibility also embraces the outdoor world (death again); he can give a universal tinge to the final str...

Patrick Boyle's collection of short stories, A View from Calvary, presents a … traditional, delicate picture of Ireland. The title piece is a novella dealing with the hypocrisy and fragility of friendship—a recurring theme. A famous composer, convinced that he has found contentment and true comradeship in a remote Irish village, becomes the victim of rumours that he is abusing rather than suffering the little children who come unto him…. Suicide follows. Mr Boyle writes with quie...

"In Adversity Be Ye Steadfast" is an entertaining if unkind caricature of a God-crazed Ulster Presbyterian farmer. The same story also appears in Mr. Boyle's latest collection, A View from Calvary. Boyle is a skilful writer, though not incapable of platitude …, [of sentimentality, and of coarsegrained simple-mindedness]. There is a vein of Irish machismo running right through his work which may put some readers off; although, from another point of view, this is merely an aspect o...