SOURCE: A review of The Butcher Boy, in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XV, No. 1, Spring, 1995, p. 172.

In the following review, Hemmingson discusses the characters' insanity in McCabe's The Butcher Boy.

This trade paperback reprint of McCabe's 1992 Booker Prize Nominee and winner of the Irish Times-Aer Lingus Literature Prize for Fiction launches the “Cutting Edge” series from Delta, one month after the imprint's founding editor, Jeanne Cavelos (who also began the Abyss line of literary horror titles for Dell), left the company—so whether or not this interesting series continues (interesting with the other titles they have announced for the future) remains to be seen. A series like Cutting Edge (despite its overwrought icon for a name) is needed in the commercial publishing world of today, to offset Stephen King's latest and Erica Jong's woes-as-memoirs about getting old.

The Butcher Boy is a peculiar and morose tale...