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Sad Bastard
Garda Pat Coyne - aka 'Mr Suicide' - is back and refusing to be healed. The damaged idealist is recovering from a traumatic event in the course of his duty which has left him in deep shock. Coyne is undergoing counselling, unable to return to work. His mother-in-law prays for him. His wife Carmel tries to heal him. She's out there healing people who are not even ill in the first place, and with the most bizarre techniques. But Coyne is a reluctant patient. He believes the problem is with Ireland. He gives a running psychonalysis of his country where people can't even laugh properly any more. And Coyne has his self-appointed mission to rescue a young woman who draws him into dangerous territory where he feels he has discovered the perfect crime.
193 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Hugo Hamilton
41 books97 followersHugo Hamilton is an Irish writer.
Hamilton's mother was a German who travelled to Ireland in 1949 for a pilgrimage, married an Irishman, and settled in the country. His father was a militant nationalist who insisted that his children should speak only German or Irish, but not English, a prohibition the young Hugo resisted inwardly. "The prohibition against English made me see that language as a challenge. Even as a child I spoke to the walls in English and secretly rehearsed dialogue I heard outside," he wrote later.
As a consequence of this, he grew up with three languages - English, Irish and German - and a sense of never really belonging to any: "There were no other children like me, no ethnic groups that I could attach myself to".
Hamilton became a journalist, and then a writer of short stories and novels. His first three novels were set in Central Europe. Then came Headbanger (1996), a darkly comic crime novel set in Dublin and featuring detective Pat Coyne. A sequel, Sad Bastard, followed in 1998.
Following a year spent in Berlin on a cultural scholarship, he completed his memoir of childhood, The Speckled People (2003), which went on to achieve widespread international acclaim. Telling the story through the eyes of his childhood self, it painfully evoked the struggle to make sense of a bizarre adult world. It "triumphantly avoids the Angela's Ashes style of sentimental nostalgia and victim claims," wrote Hermione Lee in the The Guardian . "The cumulative effect is to elevate an act of scrupulous remembering into a work of art," commented James Lasdun in the New York Times. The story is picked up in the 2006 volume, The Sailor in the Wardrobe.
In May 2007, German publisher Luchterhand published Die redselige Insel (The Talkative Island), in which Hamilton retraced the journey Heinrich Böll made in Ireland that was to be the basis of his bestselling book Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) in 1957. Hamilton's most recent novel, Disguise was published on June 6, 2008.
Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ham...
Hamilton's mother was a German who travelled to Ireland in 1949 for a pilgrimage, married an Irishman, and settled in the country. His father was a militant nationalist who insisted that his children should speak only German or Irish, but not English, a prohibition the young Hugo resisted inwardly. "The prohibition against English made me see that language as a challenge. Even as a child I spoke to the walls in English and secretly rehearsed dialogue I heard outside," he wrote later.
As a consequence of this, he grew up with three languages - English, Irish and German - and a sense of never really belonging to any: "There were no other children like me, no ethnic groups that I could attach myself to".
Hamilton became a journalist, and then a writer of short stories and novels. His first three novels were set in Central Europe. Then came Headbanger (1996), a darkly comic crime novel set in Dublin and featuring detective Pat Coyne. A sequel, Sad Bastard, followed in 1998.
Following a year spent in Berlin on a cultural scholarship, he completed his memoir of childhood, The Speckled People (2003), which went on to achieve widespread international acclaim. Telling the story through the eyes of his childhood self, it painfully evoked the struggle to make sense of a bizarre adult world. It "triumphantly avoids the Angela's Ashes style of sentimental nostalgia and victim claims," wrote Hermione Lee in the The Guardian . "The cumulative effect is to elevate an act of scrupulous remembering into a work of art," commented James Lasdun in the New York Times. The story is picked up in the 2006 volume, The Sailor in the Wardrobe.
In May 2007, German publisher Luchterhand published Die redselige Insel (The Talkative Island), in which Hamilton retraced the journey Heinrich Böll made in Ireland that was to be the basis of his bestselling book Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal) in 1957. Hamilton's most recent novel, Disguise was published on June 6, 2008.
Hugo Hamilton lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ham...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 13, 2018
I’m not sure I’ll seek out a Hugo Hamilton novel again, but do kinda like the guy. The only other author I’ve read that has made me laugh out loud AND totally creep me out like Hamilton is Stephen King. So that’s saying something. I think it’s just I’m not a big fan of this genre.
September 27, 2008
A great murder mystery, with an eccentric bumbling father, embarrassed son, and touch of Irish grit.
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August 3, 2011La suite de "Headbanger" ("Déjanté") : trop drôle ce Pat Coyne ! Vivement qu'il y ait une suite.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews