Keeping Up with the Kalashnikovs

Ross O'Carroll-Kelly #14

by Paul Howard, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

My friend, Fionn, was being held hostage in, I don't know, Unganga Nanga, and the Government was refusing to send in a team of marines to extract him. Pack of focking cauliflower worriers...I wouldn't have minded being bound and gagged in a basement - just for some peace and quiet. My wife was up the spout again. My daughter had grown into a mix between Suri Cruise and a Chucky doll. And one or two other chickens - well, birds - were coming home to roost. Suddenly, I realized what I had to do - go and get Fionn back. Except what I didn't realize was that Unganga Nanga was no country for old tens. Keeping up with the Kalashnikovs is the fourteenth novel in Paul Howard's 'Ross O'Carroll-Kelly' series. Ross books - annual No 1 bestsellers - have sold over half a million copies, are annually nominated for the Popular Fiction prize at the Irish Book Awards - where they have won the prize an unprecedented three times - and are also critically acclaimed as satirical masterpieces. Titles include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress, Should have Got off at Sydney Parade, This Champagne Mojito is the Last Thing I Own, Rhino What You Did Last Summer, NAMA Mia!, The Oh My God Delusion (chosen as Ireland's favourite book in Eason's 2011 125th birthday poll), The Shelbourne Ultimatum and Downturn Abbey.

Genres: Irish Literature, Fiction, Comedy

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Paul Howard is a journalist with The Irish Times on Saturday.
Howard is best known as the author of the paper's Ross O'Carroll-Kelly columns and has written a series of books based on the the character of Ross.

Howard is the former chief sportswriter for the Sunday Tribune, and a former Irish Sports Journalist of the Year. He has written several nonfiction books, including The Joy, an account of life in Mountjoy Prison, The Gaffers: Mick McCarthy, Roy Keane and the Team they Built, an account of the McCarthy–Keane clash during the run-up to the 2002 World Cup. He also co-authored Steve Collins' "autobiography", Celtic Warrior.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[David Brady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wonder did Paul Howard write this episode before the whole hostage-extremist issue became so grim. Three stars only I'm afraid - I love this series (and have read them all) but Kalashnikovs is really two or three books rolled into one, and the gags not quite funny as the other books.

[Sarah Mcgrath · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the series is finally getting stale. Very few laugh out loud moments in this one.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite good but nowhere nears the heights of the other books. Maybe time is running out for Rosser

[Margaret Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review from BleachhouseLibrary.Blogspot.ie

We received a copy of this title from the publisher, in return for an honest review.



“Keeping up with the Kalashnikovs” is the latest novel in the highly popular Ross O’Carroll-Kelly series . Fans of his weekly column in “The Irish Times” might be surprised to know that this is actually the fourteenth novel in the series .

This story revolves around the kidnapping in Uganda of Ross’ nerdish friend and former school team mate , Fionn , and the attempts of Ross to rescue him . Before that can be achieved Ross must deal with a number of more pressing issues closer to home . His long-suffering wife Sorcha is pregnant with triplets,his mother is dabbling in illicit substances and his eight year old daughter is up to no good . As Ross says “ Life in Killiney has become a nerve-shredding plate-spinning act” In addition to these , Ross manages to involve himself in the relationship woes of his great friends Oisin,JP and Christian !

The Ross O’Carroll-Kelly series has been a fantastic success over the years as people follow his story with regularity and dedication. I am a fan of this character, and the series, so looked forward to this latest book. It was a little darker then previous titles, with the pirate element, but had plenty of laugh out loud moments and was full of Ross' usual humour.

Regular readers of the series are bound to enjoy the many moments of hilarity and cringe that ensue in this episode and I am sure there is more of Ross to come .

Review by Declan Madden

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love me some Ross and was squeeing to have two to get through, but though I enjoyed this I kept being kept comparing this to Downturn and going - eh. I think its because of the Africa plotline and focussing more on the goys than his family (OMG, he slept with someone close to one of them again, do you think they'll forgive him this time?) but even though I still love the characters and the jokes etc, it felt a bit shark-jumpy this time. I felt that the illustrator gave Howard some wacky pics to begin with and then he worked out how to fit the plot around them than other way round.

[Judy M Reyes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a problem...I will try to finish books that I start reading, even if I start disliking them. That was the case here with Keeping up with the Kalashnikovs. I finished it. The End.
I picked up this book in 2015 in a bookstore during a trip to Galway, Ireland. So I finally got to it and tried to give it a chance. Perhaps the times have changed, given "Me Too." But although I LOVE satire, black humor, irreverence and irony (all of which I believe this book proports to contain), I found it quite indulgent. Let's just say that it is written from the Male Protagonist perspective, and was not particularly positive about the females in his life. It could be seen as a bawdy romp, written with Irish-English spelling, but "Ross" is just a bit too creepy and gets away with it all. Women are shrews, pathetic losers or sexual targets. Ross is "the boss" of it all. The one thing I'll say positive is that he has a demon-child daughter "Honor" with a smart mouth and chutzpah beyond the pale. Eventually I saw that "Honor" grew a bit throughout the saga, and father/daughter relationship improved by the end of the book. So Honor could be someone that I might like to see again somewhere in a book. She was the true "evil genius" of the story.

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book fourteen in the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series. Ross and the gang are kidnapped in Uganda trying to rescue Fionn who had been kidnapped in Uganda. All the usual supporting characters get an outing. I think this series has really taken off since they increased the page count from 250 to 400 . Paul Howard gets the extra freedom to explore the characters in much greater detail, ok it may slow the pace a bit but makes up for it with the extra dimensions to the characters

[Paul Singleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant read as ever. What always amazes me is the ease with which Paul Howard writes dialogue and creates a page-turning story all through the eyes of one narcissistic character who you nearly always end up liking as he saves the day yet again. This book is no exception. I only wish I could write dialogue as cleverly. A true art form.

[carol shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

I enjoyed this book so very much. I laughed my head off but it was also touching in parts. I know Ross so well now I don't want anything bad to happen to him but he really has NO moral compass!

[Matthew Harwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique and novel addition to a hilarious series. The characters are lovable and the situations that they get themselves into are hilarious and written enjoyably. It is hard to put this book down and I found myself laughing out loud throughout.

[ladylassitude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ross is awful, and Paul Howard awfully funny

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first ROCK book. Hooked from the start, and reading every book in the series since

[Sharyn Hayden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't ever met a Ross O'Carroll Kelly book I didn't like. Another smash hit.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently heard an author of a really successful thriller series say, "What the reader of series wants is something the same that's different".
And Keeping Up with the Kalasnikovs does just that, we have the same lovable rogue getting himself into strife that only he could, but we have it with new settings, some new characters and new laughs. All in all, it's what we've come to love and expect from Ross O Carroll-Kelly. If you liked some of the other novels or even just the newspaper column, you'll love Keeping Up with the Kalasnikovs.

[Grace Tierney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another legend of a novel about the man who could have been Brian ODriscoll if only he were smarter and less of a hit with the ladies. Great modern Irish satire and a page turner as always. This time he needs to rescue his friend Fionn from kidnappers in Uganda while stopping his wife finding Honor's rat-breeding operation, becoming a father again and juggling a few lady-friends too. Great read. Not sure how well non-Irish residents would cope with the accents, but anybody trying to understand modern Ireland would do well to read the series, and don't take it too seriously.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ross returns to some of his old antics in this book, and I start to wonder if any of the lessons learned by Ross are actually going to stick or if he's forever going to ebb and flow in and out of maturity. None the less, it was a good Ross book, and we haven't had an adventure like the last third of this book in a long, long time.

Interestingly the book ends with a tiding up of Ross's life like we've never seen before, and could have easily been the final in the series. Which is a pity because it probably would have been a great place to leave it. Oh well!.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

We received book into work for review. This is an excellent addition to the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series. As a character Ross truly is side splitting funny at times, while at others I wanted to delve into the book and throttle him.
More...more....

[Naoise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story dragged a bit and the phonetically written dialogue and accents are hard to decipher at times but once the story actually got going it was incredibly funny. I'd really give it 3 and a half stars.

[Conor Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always 5 Stars

[Lucylu19 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable Ross story, was ideal for my late summer holiday, he finally realises that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree with his daughter Honor!

[Brid Molloy]

Funny. Howard's ability to convey all sorts of dialect is genius and hilarious. Love this series Roysh!

[Iuliana Naughton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm looking forward to the next one already.

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent as always!

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely not one of my favourites of the series.

[Michael Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three and a half. Good story, funny and some sharp observations of modern Ireland. But Ross is just too bad, too amoral.