The Holy City

by Patrick McCabe

Now entering his sixty-seventh year, Chris McCool can confidently call himself a member of the Happy Club: he has an attractive and exceedingly accommodating Croatian girlfriend and has been told he bears more than a passing resemblance to Roger Moore. As he looks back on the glory days of his youth, he recalls the swinging sixties of rural Ireland: a decade in which the cool cats sang along to Lulu and drove around in Ford Cortinas, when swinging meant wearing velvet trousers and shirts with frills, and where Dolores McCausland - Dolly Mixtures to those who knew her best - danced on the tops of tables and set the pulses of every man in small-town Cullymore racing. Chris McCool had it all back then. He had the moves, he had the car, and he had Dolly, a woman who purred suggestive songs and tugged gently at her skin-tight dresses, a Protestant femme fatale who was glamorous, transgressive and who called him her very own 'Mr Wonderful'. She was, in short, the answer to this bastard son of a Catholic farmer's prayers. Except that there was another Mr Wonderful in town, a certain Marcus Otoyo - a young Nigerian with glossy curls and a dazzling devoutness that was all but irresistible. Although Chris, of course, was interested in Marcus only because of their shared religious fervour and mutual appreciation of the finer things. That was all. Besides, Mr McCool was always a hopeless romantic - some even described him as excessively so - but is there anything wrong with that? Spiked with macabre humour and disquieting revelations, The Holy City is a brilliant, disturbing and compelling novel from one of Ireland's most original contemporary writers.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Irish Literature, 21st Century, Literary Fiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Patrick McCabe came to prominence with the publication of his third adult novel, The Butcher Boy, in 1992; the book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in Britain and won the Irish Times-Aer Lingus Prize for fiction. McCabe's strength as an author lies in his ability to probe behind the veneer of respectability and conformity to reveal the brutality and the cloying and corrupting stagnation of Irish small-town life, but he is able to find compassion for the subjects of his fiction. His prose has a vitality and an anti-authoritarian bent, using everyday language to deconstruct the ideologies at work in Ireland between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. His books can be read as a plea for a pluralistic Irish culture that can encompass the past without being dominated by it.

McCabe is an Irish writer of mostly dark and violent novels of contemporary, often small-town, Ireland. His novels include The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written a children's book (The Adventures of Shay Mouse) and several radio plays broadcast by the RTÉ and the BBC Radio 4. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto have both been adapted into films by Irish director Neil Jordan.

McCabe lives in Clones, Co. Monaghan with his wife and two daughters.

Pat McCabe is also credited with having invented the "Bog Gothic" genre.

Reviews

[Kim Annabella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aaaaah Mc cabe, Mc cabe. So brilliant, a true author, your craft is the only worth preaching to others about, you are not unlike a modern day Poe. I devour each of your offerings like a crème brúleé macaroon from ladureé’s, one of life’s exceptional pleasures. You out-hip the hipsters, and at the same time remind me of my great grandfather Hannigan weaving a turf basket by the fire, it all looks so terribly messy at first, but by the end when it’s all finished, it’s beautiful without a knot or a cross out of place and will be here long after you have gone. Your work just has a kind of permanence about it, and a relevance I have not seen in writing elsewhere. It is perfect.

Outside of Ireland, you are plagued with Joycean comparisons,
“a modern day joyce”, or more commonly “comic” , “dark and depressing”
no.no.no.no.no.

Impenetrable prose,it seems. They liked the film versions of “the Butcher Boy”, and “Breakfast on Pluto” but they can’t take the exhilaration; On a knife's edge of sanity & eloquent rage, The sense of impending foreboding, suspense where you clench your thighs and your jaw because something‘s going to happen, you just know that something big is going to happen. Something broken,somthing really fucked up,something real. They do not have the mental capacity to weave and dance along as you. The call you stream of consciousness as if such eloquence comes easy;they don’t know our culture,our streets, how the most stoic of us flirt with madness.

How I would like to take residence up in brain & swim around with your hauntingly lovely fucked up characters, more fleshed out than most people I know.

I saw you shopping in cavan once, you had on a long button down coat and seemed to have the world on your shoulders. I wanted to walk up to you and tell you something trite, like how your writings changed my perception of small town life in Ireland. Yes, you make me proud me proud to be Irish. How I feel the weight of centuries and the ghosts of mad Irish genius long forgotten whisper in my ear to never fear the strangeness of reality all the more for reading one of your novels and finding in the struggle something beautiful.

[Joanne Tinkler (Mamajomakes) · Rating 2 out of 5]

On finishing this book my first thought was ‘Well that’s time I won’t get back ‘. Apart from the occasional funny quip, this is one of the most boring books I’ve ever read. Sorry, not my cup of tea.

[Don Dealga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my God! Humphrey Bower, the reader of this audiobook is apparently "well-known for his capacity to perform a variety of accents" and he gets through most of them in this rendering it appears!!! He does a kind of literary reading version of Russel Crowe's 'mobile accents' in the movie Robin Hood. The problem with McCabe's narrative voice for an audiobook reader is that it is very firmly accented in the tones & cadence of the County Monaghan dialect; Bower starts off in good old paddy whackery Oirish be gorrah! but soon wobbles all over the more peripheral regions of Britain & Ireland, ending up in what sounds like the West country Wurzels https://youtu.be/lzGkB6YO9Yc and along the way he murders an Indian character's accent too.
There are so many brilliant Irish actors/readers around and somehow Bowers got this gig. His chaotic phonological odessey is an amusing distraction from what must be McCabe's worst novel. It's like all that manic imaginative creativity expended on works like The Butcher Boy has exhausted the author. A very limp and disappointing work. It seems like in this work we have chanced upon a much older version of the Francie the narrator of 'The Butcher Boy' now manifesting as Chris Mc Cool. Years of heavy medication and intensive therapy have taken a lot of the edge of Francie/McCool and he now seems a tired shadow of his former self.
The racist & sectarian utterances and musings of Mc Cool no doubt intended to be ironic and set in the context of a different and less diverse Irish society come across as grating, tired and tiresome. The story and characters don't really engage the reader, and there's a feeling of 'going through the motions' about the whole thing.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh m god this book was so boring, nothing happened throughout the entire thing. I was really hoping the main character would die just so something would happen
I didn't like the writing, it was a bit all over the place. The ending made absolutely no sense whatsoever and I couldn't care less tbh, I'm just glad its over

[Jennifer Martin]

DNF at 25%

I *think* McCabe is trying to play a racist old dude with nostalgia for the 1960s for laughs. I’m not really sure. But I’m an American in the summer of 2024 and this type of racist old dude is currently ruining my country so I kind of don’t have a sense of humor about him.

This is not fair to an Irish novel published in 2009, but I am where I am.

[Anthony Bools · Rating 2 out of 5]

Delighted with the style of this from the first chapter, until the prose got repetitive, It's the usual grim fare from McCarthy, which I love but this all seemed a bit stretched out.

[Phil · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very bored reading this. The story for me just did absolutely nothing and despite only being just over 200 pages, I found it tedious and too long.

I was disappointed with it

[Rasim-Ahmet Poturovic · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10

[Deirdre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Macabre & sinister in a cool calm collected way! At times, I was confused by the story line but just had to keep reading.

[Rosetta Whyte · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great reading of this wild imaginative story.

[Stephen Hero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick McCabe is one of my very favourite contemporary authors. Typically his stories consist of framed macabre snippets of half-thought heavily doused in disjointed dark humour all-the-while wrapped within nice clean stream-of-conscience prose.

Good.

I’m not a literary critic at heart but the only thing that I can think of that would make these stories a bit better for me would be if they were heavily wrapped in bacon as well.


I remember having to attend the film adaptation of his novel Breakfast on Pluto all by myself since I couldn’t convince any of my dodgy mates to catch a flick with me involving the disturbing tale of a transvestite prostitute who becomes involved with Irish Republican terrorists.

Perhaps it’s time for some new dodgy mates. Or perhaps I can wholeheartedly stop this art house cinematic fascination of mine and instead vigorously purse the hilarious physical comedy pursuits of watered-down wunderkind Jim Carey. All dodgy mates seem to thoroughly enjoy the comedic styling of that motherfucker.

Sigh. It’s beyond me.


Digression aside, in order to give you an overlying taste of this thing, here’s a few chapter titles from the novel selected at random via the end results of firing a half-loaded handgun in the workplace and chalking down the results on the backside of a tattered, spent notebook:

Any Views on That, Mahatma Gandhi?
The Mysteries of Protestants
Saints You May Not Know

Now where do I sign up for more of this? And are you with me for a change?

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

McCabe is actually one of my favorite authors. I've read all of his books--so avidly, in fact, that I ordered an advanced reading copy of Winterwood when it came out.

As with most people, Butcher Boy is my favorite (and was my first). I also saw McCabe read, and found him very witty / funny, which led me to subsequently hunt down everything he wrote. He had read from Carn, which I also love--other faves are The Dead School and Call Me the Breeze.

The Holy City is probably one of my least favorites. It had some truly brilliant / funny bits--very McCabe--but on the whole, it didn't resonate, and I didn't devour it like I have most of his other books.

I was happy to see more from him, but was a bit disappointed that it didn't live up to some of his other works. I kept thinking there would be more--that we would find out something more. perhaps something eerie--like his "wife" was actual a dead body or something. But the book remained largely allusive, was conflicted with the Catholic / Protestant tension--but nothing incredibly profound.

Shucks, I still liked it. I really like him, though. If you haven't read McCabe before, I'd highly recommend you give him a shot, but don't make this the first.

[Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Other reviewers on Goodreads, and someone I spoke to, suggested this wasn't the best introduction to Patrick McCabe. I can't argue with that! Unfortunately, it was my first McCabe book, and it really didn't inspire me to come back for another. The best part for me was Humphrey Bower's (as usual) superb narration. I often found myself wondering whether or not I would have persevered with this if I'd been reading the printed version.

There were lots of things to laugh about, and a good deal of cringing too. To be fair, the book would speak a lot more to a reader familiar with James Joyce, and would probably be best appreciated by someone who spent at least part of their teenage years in the 1960s. If three stars says "I like it" then I'm afraid I can only give two, but I can see why many people will award 4 or 5.

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chris McCool has some secrets. He’s going to trickle them out to you in Holy City. He will quote lyrics from silly little ditties from the 60s (my favorite part of the book) and tell you some stuff about his past while he also reveals some significant stuff about his present life. He’ll also ponder over the immense difference between Protestants and Catholics and the upper class and the working class but not so much between the dead and the alive. Whoops!

[Colm Mac Gearailt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. First person narrative, with unreliable narrator. Told within two time periods, contemporary times and 1960s. About the effects of abandonment and lack of a secure identity on the psychology of the later man. Bit unnerving (but in a good way) due to the candid and dry nature with which the topic was dealt with but enjoyable read. If you have the ipod with you, stop and listen to the named songs. Really adds to the whole feel of the book while your reading it.

[The Bookshop Umina]

I think this is my lowest rating thus far!

We talked about this one at bookclub last night - no one willing to stand up for it as a great read. There were good moments but it didn't work and we all finished the novel confused. Very disappointing as the precis describing Ireland in the swinging sixties has made it sound like an enjoyable one.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

'A time to be born, this balloon-headed time - a unique era of stability and opportunity. Where we all, with eager willingness, are dutiful zeros. With our life paths signposted upon a virtual highway. The bleached calm of the twenty-first century.'

page 142

[Derek Bridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the usual McCabe stuff is here: a deranged mind tells of his past and present, the mess that was the former giving partial explanation to the mess that is the latter. Sure, it's clever and inventive. But all McCabe's novels do this. Come on, Pat. Give us something completely different.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like this author but I actually put this book down before I finished it.

[Corinne]

I just couldn't get engaged by the writing. Maybe I'll try another time.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a first; I'm the first person on Good Reads to read this?

[A. Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a cheerfully sinister little book. The narrator is a very calm and rather amusing sociopath. Kind of like The Butcher Boy all grown up.

[Velvetink · Rating 2 out of 5]

i of 5 books for $3 -19/04/2013

[Tamara · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably didn't 'get' it, but I didn't find this book compelling at all. Maybe I simply lack the whole Catholic/Protestant background, though.