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Heads: A Novel about an Artist
Jazz Doherty, an Irish artist, makes a sacrilegious blunder while painting murals at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Berkeley. The parish priest, Fr. Ned Tobin, declares jihad on him and Doherty goes on the run.
As his work at the church develops a cult following of hippies, punks and assorted outsiders, Jazz starves in San Francisco's bohemia. Keeping out of the priest's range, he does odd jobs to get by, planning to leave California as soon as he has the money. While house sitting for a jailed marijuana grower, Jazz discovers a freezer full of money in the basement. He dips into the stash and spends recklessly. He leaves a generous donation at the parochial house for Fr Ned, but his plan to purify their karma backfires.
This hilarious novel has a cast of weird and wonderful characters, many of them Irish immigrants, legal and illegal. We them we travel the San Francisco Bay Area, a few steps ahead of the cops and the INS. Heads was # 7 in BookGalley's Top 10 ebooks of 2011.
Praise for Eddie Stack's writing —
“Variously fantastic, comic, elegiac and nostalgic, Mr. Stack’s fiction
is versatile and engaging...a vivid, compassionate, authentic voice...
securing (him) a place in the celebrated tradition of his country’s
storytelling.”
— New York Times Book Review
“There’s a genuinely wild and fugitive comic sense –– that
puts one in mind of Myles na Gopaleen as much as the salt spume
dam, George Makay Brown. Never sentimental, often funny, always
accurate, this is pithy, finely tuned writing of a high order.”
— The Observer
As his work at the church develops a cult following of hippies, punks and assorted outsiders, Jazz starves in San Francisco's bohemia. Keeping out of the priest's range, he does odd jobs to get by, planning to leave California as soon as he has the money. While house sitting for a jailed marijuana grower, Jazz discovers a freezer full of money in the basement. He dips into the stash and spends recklessly. He leaves a generous donation at the parochial house for Fr Ned, but his plan to purify their karma backfires.
This hilarious novel has a cast of weird and wonderful characters, many of them Irish immigrants, legal and illegal. We them we travel the San Francisco Bay Area, a few steps ahead of the cops and the INS. Heads was # 7 in BookGalley's Top 10 ebooks of 2011.
Praise for Eddie Stack's writing —
“Variously fantastic, comic, elegiac and nostalgic, Mr. Stack’s fiction
is versatile and engaging...a vivid, compassionate, authentic voice...
securing (him) a place in the celebrated tradition of his country’s
storytelling.”
— New York Times Book Review
“There’s a genuinely wild and fugitive comic sense –– that
puts one in mind of Myles na Gopaleen as much as the salt spume
dam, George Makay Brown. Never sentimental, often funny, always
accurate, this is pithy, finely tuned writing of a high order.”
— The Observer
166 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 13, 2010
1 person is currently reading
6 people want to read
About the author
Eddie Stack
13 books6 followersEddie Stack has received several accolades for his fiction, including an American Small Press of the Year Award, a Top 100 Irish American Award and Caomhnú Award. Recognised as an outstanding short story writer, he is the author of four collections of short stories: The West, Out of the Blue, Quare Hawks and Borderlines. He has also published HEADS, a novel, and The Irish, a collection of three novellas.
His work has appeared in literary reviews and anthologies worldwide, including Fiction, Confrontation, Whispers & Shouts, Southwords, Criterion, State of the Art: Stories from New Irish Writers; Irish Christmas Stories, The Clare Anthology and Fiction in the Classroom.
Stephen Windwalker of Kindle Nation wrote this about ’Derramore‘, a story from The West:
"Let me just say this: I've read dozens of novels and stories that found some way to pay homage to James Joyce over the years, but frankly there have been few of them that convinced me they had any real claim on the reference. Not so with 'Derramore.' Turbo Tracy's forgeries may not involve the uncreated conscience of his race, but this story, more than any that I've read in decades, put me in touch again with the best of Dubliners and some of the vignettes of Portrait and Ulysses, so much so that, when I finished reading the story and found the blurbs from the Times Book Review and other journals, I actually felt they were understated".
A natural storyteller, Eddie has recorded spoken word versions of his work, with music by Irish Martin masters Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. Mp3 audio stories are available on his website.
Eddie is currently working on a book about the culture and traditional arts of Doolin, County Clare. Slated for publication in 2014, it includes interviews and profiles of tradition bearers, features on storytelling, dancing as well as music and songs from Doolin. Readers will have access to a web site where they can listen to, and download, audio and video of the tradition bearers featured in the book.
Eddie Stack's books are available in print, and ebook format for Kindle, iPad, Nook and Kobo.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 7, 2011
This review first appeared on Amazon.com here: http://www.amazon.com/Heads-Kindle-Ed...
This book took me a while to get into and it continued to be slow going for most of it, but once I got to about the 60% mark, I needed to finish it. The writing was quite good. There were some strange turns of phrase that I would consider grammatically incorrect, but that might be commonplace in popular Irish literature. It was an interesting, albeit somewhat scattered, storyline. Characters were introduced at odd times, and there were some that could have been left out altogether. There was the oddball Paddy, who was introduced to explain some money that was found in a freezer. A lengthy, overly complicated back-story was created to justify his existence. I wasn't convinced that Dido or Gigi were at all necessary, and I didn't feel they added to the story. I was confused by the whole Kitty Kelly/Lady Mahoney storyline and didn't see how it related to the rest of the story. It may have been added for shock value alone. It seemed as if characters were being added at times when the plot stalled or perhaps to make a short story into a novel length story.
This book took me a while to get into and it continued to be slow going for most of it, but once I got to about the 60% mark, I needed to finish it. The writing was quite good. There were some strange turns of phrase that I would consider grammatically incorrect, but that might be commonplace in popular Irish literature. It was an interesting, albeit somewhat scattered, storyline. Characters were introduced at odd times, and there were some that could have been left out altogether. There was the oddball Paddy, who was introduced to explain some money that was found in a freezer. A lengthy, overly complicated back-story was created to justify his existence. I wasn't convinced that Dido or Gigi were at all necessary, and I didn't feel they added to the story. I was confused by the whole Kitty Kelly/Lady Mahoney storyline and didn't see how it related to the rest of the story. It may have been added for shock value alone. It seemed as if characters were being added at times when the plot stalled or perhaps to make a short story into a novel length story.
April 7, 2011
This is the story of a young Irish artist in San Francisco, Jazz Doherty, who gets in trouble with a priest and then gets mixed up in all sorts of things he shouldn't. In style, the book is mixture of a road trip novel (though the main protagonist journeys no further than San Francisco to Marin and back) and a gentle crime caper, with plenty of colourful characters slipping in and out of the narrative.
It's a charming book and I particularly liked hearing the voices of the Irish characters - the author, Eddie Stack, is Irish and lives in San Francisco.
Recommended.
It's a charming book and I particularly liked hearing the voices of the Irish characters - the author, Eddie Stack, is Irish and lives in San Francisco.
Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews