The Stray Sod Country - Softcover

'Powerful, razor-sharp and with a depth that calls to mind The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner ... McCabe is the real McCoy' Russell Hoban 'A hilarious circumnavigation around an Irish town and its vagabond inhabitants, in the grand tradition of Somerville and Ross and Flann O'Brien' Edna O'Brien 'Dazzling and wonderful Patrick McCabe orchestrates all of his familiar themes into a mesmerising tapestry of small town dreams and nightmares. He is master of his universe here, and what a universe it is' Neil Jordan 'It is a true delight to re-enter the world of one of the most exuberant and entertaining contemporary writers' Daily Mail

It is 1958, and as Laika, the Sputnik dog is launched into space, Golly Murray, the Cullymore barber's wife, finds herself oddly obsessing about the canine cosmonaut. Meanwhile, Fonsey 'Teddy' O'Neill, is returning, like the prodigal son, from overseas, with brylcream in his hair, and a Cuban-heeled swagger to his step, having experienced his coming-of-age in Butlin's, Skegness. Father Augustus Hand is working on a bold new theatrical production for Easter, which he, for one, knows will put Cullymore on the map. And, as the Manchester United football team prepare to take off from Munich airport, James A Reilly sits in his hovel by the lake outside town, with his pet fox and his father's gun, feeling the weight of an insidious and inscrutable presence pressing down upon him. With echoes of Peyton Place and Fellinni's Amarcord, and with a sinister, diabolical narrator at its heart, this is at once a story of a small town - with its secrets, fears, friendships and betrayals - and a sweeping, grand guignol of theatrical extravagance from one of the finest writers of his generation. From the closed terraces and back lanes of rural Ireland to the information highway and global separations of our own time, The Stray Sod Country is at once an homage to what we think we may have lost and a chilling reminder that the past has never really passed.