Clockwork on steroids in Ireland

• Book: City of Bohane
• Location: Ireland
• Author: Kevin Barry

Review Author: JustRetiring

Kevin Barry’s first published book ‘City of Bohane‘ was shortlisted for the prestigious award Costa First Novel Award, in 2011.

In a dystopian view of the future, Bohane – a city on the west coast of Ireland – is a corrupt, violent, drug-addled community, controlled along tribal lines.

For years, Bohane has been ruled with an iron fist by dapper Logan Hartnett, head of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But his old nemesis, ‘The Gant’ Broderick, has returned after 25 years away and is back for the crown and for Logan’s wife Macu. The Cusacks sense weakness and even Logan’s trusted henchmen – Wolfie Stanners and Fucker Burke – are getting ambitious. But young Jenni Ching from the Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe might just be the sassiest of them all…

Smoketown, Big Nothin’, The Rises, Beauvista, the Back Trace, High Boreen – these are the dark corners of Bohane where dream-pipes are smoked, deals are done, battles are fought and the next chapter in the city’s lurid existence will be decided.

‘City of Bohane‘ is crammed full of literary pyrotechnics. There’s not a single page where you can rest on your reading laurels in this vivid, frantic, stylised descent into the Bohane abyss.

Logan Hartnett – aka ‘The Albino’, the ‘Long Fella’ or simply ‘Mr H’ has a ‘mouth of teeth on him like a vandalized graveyard.’ The Gant ‘had a pair of hands on him the size of Belfast sinks.’ Sometimes I felt that a translation, or a glossary of terms, might even be useful: ‘Boy chil’… Reefins aside, like? There been floaters on the Bohane river down the years and them floaters got bruds and cuzzes in this place, y’heed?’

Fashion plays a key role in the personas of this rabid cast of characters:

‘Fucker wore: silver high-top boots, drainpipe strides in a natty-boy mottle, a low-slung dirk belt.’

‘Macu wore: a pair of suede capri pants dyed to a shade approaching the dull radiance of turmeric, a ribbed black top of sheer silk that hugged her lithe frame, a wrap of golden fur cut from an Iberian lynx, an expression of wry bemusement about the eye, and about the mouth an expression unreadable.’

‘City of Bohane‘ is Clockwork Orange on steroids. Restful it’s not, y’check me?

For lovers of TripFiction, Bohane is a futuristic fiction but still vividly imagined. And the text and dialogue will most assuredly transport you to Ireland.

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