The Independent - London, May 20th, 1995
Laurence Sterne believed the novel is like a conversation, a series of propositions and disclosures that invite agreement, questioning and denial. Patrick McCabe clearly believes this too; but in his case, the conversation is so militantly one-sided as to render the reader speechless. No modern author offers a fictional voice so slangily verbose, so buttonholingly in-your-face. In The Butcher Boy, his Booker-shortlisted third novel, the narrator was a swaggering, pig-obsessed social reject called Francie Brady, who wreaked havoc with an Anglo-Irish family while telling his story through a far...
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