Replay

by Michael Curtin

‘Curtin is one of Ireland’s best writers.’RODDY DOYLE`Vintage slapstick humour… so hysterically funny that I was rolling around convulsed… the irony and the satire are sharp and sure, the comedy unblemished.'BOOKS AND BOOKMEN`The writer has a brilliant imagination, an almost lunatic sense of humour, and matches an unerring ear for the nuances of speech with faultless observation.'THE TIMESA twenty-stone taxi-driver, an unemployed docker, a wilting TV sex-symbol and a once mild-mannered schoolteacher slavering for revenge... in a one-horse, two-bar Irish town these are the unlikely guardians of the honour of one of the worst pubs in the land. Fifteen years ago they and their friends constituted a football team. Gathered together again after a decade and a half of boozing, smoking and idling about they look more like the casualty ward on a binge, but nothing can stop THE REPLAY.

314 pages, Paperback

Published December 16, 1982

Reviews

[Peter Thew · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in the mid-1980s and now reissued having been unavailable for some years, this book is great fun. Set in the fictional city of Mellick (a barely disguised Limerick) it tells of a football match between the Institute and a local drinking den, the Nook, which the latter won probably not by fair means. 15 years later, a challenge for a replay is issued. The background of the various players on the Nook team is gradually introduced. The final, hilarious 50 pages are devoted to the playing of the match and the various shenanigans which take place on and off the field. A very enjoyable romp but spoiled by lax proofreading - the text is littered with typographic errors.