The Dead School - Hardcover

Patrick McCabe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385314205 ISBN 13: 9780385314206

Publisher: The Dial Press, 1995

Synopsis

From the award-winning author of The  Butcher Boy comes a new novel of  extraordinary power that, according to the San Francisco  Chronicle, "confirm[s] McCabe's standing as one  of the most brilliant writers to ever come out of  Ireland."

In The  Dead School, Patrick McCabe returns to the  emotionally dense landscape of small-town Ireland  to explore the inner lives of two men: a  headmaster and a schoolteacher, each man the product of a  soul-stifling culture, each battling his own demons  of loss and betrayal. Tension coils--until tragedy  strikes a young student in their charge, and the  latent despair and rage that has festered in their  hearts explodes onto the page. As in The  Butcher Boy, McCabe demonstrates his  remarkable command of the vernacular and an uncanny  ability to pinpoint the exact moment when ordinary  minds take flight into madness. Equally  compelling, equally heartbreaking in its impact,   The Dead School has established McCabe  as one of the most celebrated writers of literary  fiction today.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

Review:

"All it takes is one thing to go wrong and then--well everything else decides to follow suit I'm afraid. Mr Sun, who a minute before was saying, 'Hello! I'm Mr Sun! I'm your friend on this happy picnic day!' is opening up a big sunny mouth full of razor teeth." Macabre humor, grisly horrors, likeable characters, madness and pathos, shrewd allusions to pop songs and movies, and a supple prose style that sounds like Irish speech when read aloud--Patrick McCabe does it all. The Dead School is a dazzling novel, more complex and even more gripping than McCabe's The Butcher Boy. Here are the stories of two very different Irishmen, from different generations, whose lives intersect for a brief and mutually destructive time, and then continue, in misery, apart. McCabe deftly avoids the easy or dramatic ending and delivers instead the saddest, funniest, most horrible ending of all because it is so true to life.

From the Back Cover:

"A spellbinding story of betrayal and broken dreams narrated to a wonderfully menacing effect...the sheer force of his language...positively thrums with life."--Los Angeles Times

"The Dead School makes compelling literature....The writing is seamless, the effect shocking: Imagine Apocalypse Now cheerfully narrated by Jimmy Stewart."--The Seattle Times

"McCabe [is] as skilled and significant a novelist as Ireland has produced in decades."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About this edition

• Publisher: The Dial Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0385314205
• ISBN 13: 9780385314206
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 286