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Title: The Holy City

Author: Patrick McCabe

Narrator: Humphrey Bower

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 03-01-10

Publisher: Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Now entering his 67th year, Chris McCool can confidently call himself a member of the Happy Club: he has an attractive and exceedingly accommodating Croatian girlfriend and has been told he bears more than a passing resemblance to Roger Moore. As he looks back on the glory days of his youth, he recalls the swinging 60s of rural Ireland: a decade in which the cool cats sang along to Lulu and drove around in Ford Cortinas, when swinging meant wearing velvet trousers and shirts with frills, and where Dolores McCausland - Dolly Mixtures to those who knew her best - danced on the tops of tables and set the pulses of every man in small-town Cullymore racing.

Chris McCool had it all back then. He had the moves, he had the car, and he had Dolly, a woman who purred suggestive songs and tugged gently at her skin-tight dresses, a Protestant femme fatale who was glamorous, transgressive, and who called him her very own 'Mr Wonderful'.

She was, in short, the answer to this bastard son of a Catholic farmer's prayers. Except that there was another Mr Wonderful in town, a certain Marcus Otoyo - a young Nigerian with glossy curls and a dazzling devoutness that was all but irresistible. Although Chris, of course, was interested in Marcus only because of their shared religious fervour and mutual appreciation of the finer things. That was all. Besides, Mr McCool was always a hopeless romantic - some even described him as excessively so - but is there anything wrong with that?

Editorial Reviews:

Irish novelist Patrick McCabe concocts a fascinating - and unreliable - protagonist in Chris McCool, reminiscing on a wild life back in the swinging '60s, complete with Mod fashions and groovy tunes, and his unhealthy obsessions with a Protestant seductress named Delores and a devoutly Catholic Nigerian named Marcus, which eventually led to his incarceration in a psychiatric ward for an untold crime. McCool is an entertaining antihero whom Humphrey Bower embodies with verve, his brogue alternately suggesting playfulness, anger, and a pleasantly wistful quality as he looks back on a life that may or may not be true.

Critic Reviews:

"McCabe slowly transforms his unreliable narrator from a campy Austin Powers-like figure to a sick creep with a violent streak. A mesmerizing but unsettling read." (Booklist)

Members Reviews:

The audio book is also an excellent listen, superbly read

This is a comical, wicked tale, peppered with nostalgia and dark humour. A thoroughly enjoyable read. The audio book is also an excellent listen, superbly read.

Haunting

Chris McCool is the narrator of Patrick McCabe's new novel, The Holy City. At age 67, McCool is reminiscing about his life, and the narrator zigs and zags across time periods that it can take the reader a while to feel settled. Born as the illegitimate child of a rich Protestant and poor Catholic farmer, McCool's small town formation was packed with prejudice and insularity. In the 1960s McCool embraced a campy lifestyle that offered some promise to release him from the constraints of his upbringing. While he's dating an older woman, McCool can't quite overcome his obsession with a Nigerian Catholic boy. The darkness of religious and sexual confusion seem to converge. McCool becomes institutionalized. Forty years later, while living with a wife who loves him, McCool reflects on his promise and the degree to which his madness was been cured.