Bøger af Colin O'Sullivan

Picturesque Killarney might seem the perfect place to enjoy the rare gift of sun but the town has got the blues. Bernard Dunphy, eccentric jarvey and guitarist, is pining for his unrequited love and has to contend with an ailing mother and an ailing horse. His troubled friend Jack gets embroiled in a violent crime. A trio of girlfriends becomes entangled in the terrible webs of their own making. The novel fluctuates between darkness and light as the protagonists struggle with their inner demons. Can friendship, love and music save their sinking souls? "Colin O'Sullivan writes with a style and a swagger all his own. His voice - unique, strong, startlingly expressive - both comes from and adds to Ireland's long and lovely literary lineage. Like many of that island's sons and daughters, O'Sullivan sends language out on a gleeful spree, exuberant, defiant, ever-ready for a party. Only a soul of stone could resist joining in." - Niall Griffiths

"In near-future Japan, Susie Sakamoto is mourning the loss of her husband and son to a plane crash. Alone in her big modern house, which feels like more of a prison, Susie spends her days drinking heavily and taking her anger out at the only "sentient" thing left in her life: Sunny, the annoying home robot her husband designed. Susie despises Sunny, and sometimes even gets a sinking feeling that Sunny is out to hurt her"--

Rural Ireland in the late 1980s and, stuck in a rut in a small unnamed village, are sixteen-year-old cousins Laura and Kevin. The close cousins and constant companions ache to abscond to somewhere bigger, better, more exciting, where they are free to do what they want to do, free to become who they really are.But things are holding them back. As well as having to cope with family tragedies, the troubled, music-obsessed teens must also negotiate the tricky terrain of burgeoning sexuality, the pitfalls of adolescence, and issues of homosexuality that seem, confusingly, to impinge upon them.And then there is Laura's own serious affliction, epilepsy, which comes and goes when she least expects it. Only cousin Kevin knows how to handle this tricky situation, or handle her: with gentleness, with sympathy, and with maybe just a little too much in the way of love and affection.The months and the spiraling family crises serve only to bring them closer together: but how close is too close?And then there is the strange matter of the nearby pond: this small body of water keeps drawing them near. Laura is convinced that something lurks down there, but Kevin eschews, putting it all down to the psychological trauma she is going through. Are they prepared for whatever secrets might come bubbling to the surface, monsters real or imagined that could come rising from the depths?Colin O'Sullivan returns to a familiar (and formative) Irish setting with this punchy novel that grows in pace page by page. 1980s references abound, not only with music giants of the time, Boy George, Madonna et al, but also the politics of Gorbachev and Reagan, literal and figurative walls that are about to be torn down and imminent societal changes. Although rooted in the past, this fraught and frantic work is startlingly relevant and makes us consider today's current affairs.

How much can one land take? How much can one man take? What if the rains kept coming? What if the huge waves kept crashing in? What if the plates kept shifting and volcanoes kept up their choking spew? What if neighbouring nations became more antagonistic and the rest of the world began to forget you? It's the not-too-distant-future and a certain Asian country is in physical and moral tatters. What was once a polite society has become fouled and corrupted. Part-time referee and full-time PE teacher, Tombo, stands in the middle of all this, trying to find fairness and balance in his own life, as things continue to crumble around him. Added to his personal miseries - missing-presumed-dead daughter, eerily silent wife, unrequited lusts - comes the unwanted, unwarranted attention of two, mean-spirited, wrathful adolescent girls, who have decided that he is to be their "chosen one". Can this harangued Everyman battle against the forces that envelop him, or will he too fall to the whims of the new dystopia? In this pulsing, provocative, visionary work, O'Sullivan couples his usual lyrical fervour with a philosophical acuity to present before us a trembling world that may not be too far away... > "Colin O'Sullivan's writing is an antic, mordant and perverse plunge into strange and unnerving worlds." Colin Barrett