The Big Yaroo

by Patrick McCabe

Sequel to the bestselling Butcher Boy, Francie Brady is back! Francie Brady, the broken Butcher Boy, leads a busy life in Fizzbag Mansions, where he was incarcerated five decades ago after the mistake with Mrs Nugent. Still obsessed with the comic books of his childhood, he has found a new vocation – as a publisher of his very own magazine, The Big Yaroo, and Francie throws himself into its production, working to a deadline in more ways than one. Along the way, he remembers Da, Uncle Alo, Joe Purcell and his beloved Ma, and wrestles a desire to escape his past with the world’s need for him to exorcise his childhood demons. As Francie is drawn even further into the dark world of his own mind, the line between reality and delusion ceases to mean anything. Uproariously funny, terrifying and profound, this is the swansong of one Irish literature’s most enduring characters.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland

250 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2019

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

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The return of Francie Brady from The Butcher Boy, who’s still several miles adrift from sanity beach.

[Craig White · Rating 5 out of 5]

F***'s Sake, Francie, That's The Best One Yet!
jeez, you murder one housewife, and............
.....in actuality, it's just something francie did, and for the most part, takes it all in his stride. a totally mad stride, mind, one so tortured and distant from reality, that brutally murdering mrs nooge just plays a small part! no biggie, his 50 odd years incarceration in 'fizzbags' mansion.
this brilliant sequel to 'the butcher boy' (which although allusions are made to his past, it really is in your interest to have read it before this!) finds francie brady in his 60s, long-time inmate of the above institution, out where the buses don't run, planning another great escape, and the editor of his own magazine - the big yaroo - which will explain everything to anyone who reads it (aye, right!). but it's not all fun and games as we wade through the dreadful things he's done, mostly of which he thinks he's hard done by, or at the very least, someone else's fault.
patrick mccabe has skillfully captured the process of francie's madness and masterfully described how francie views it all through continual references to his pitiful childhood and imagined relationships with those he knew from his home town. as i've said before, mccabe (along with the brilliant james kelman) is the master of putting down on paper what really goes on in people's heads - this is what we need to read!
genius is not a word to be bandied about, but mccabe is one, you don't read his books, you experience them!

[Oakleigh Irish · Rating 3 out of 5]

The notion of a Butcher Boy sequel is an appealing one, so allied with Patrick McCabe's brilliant portrayals of Irish, rural, internecine insanities over the last 30 years, hopes were high, indeed the best McCabe stories happen where insanity and reality collide. The Big Yaroo however is convoluted and dreamlike, without any discernible plot and populated with cartoonish characters.

[Chairoplane · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just had to put this down, I'm sorry. I didn't want to accept that the follow-up to one of my favourite books was so dire and unenjoyable. In fact, apart from The Butcher Boy, I've never read anything else by McCabe that I thought was any good. Sad.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved The Big Yaroo. It was wonderful to be back in France Brady's brain, a troubled soul with awful instincts. But I didn't love the ending. More to come.

[Tony Woods · Rating 2 out of 5]

T’was bad. Had expected a riotous continuation of the BB but instead discovered a boring meandering mess. Could excuse its demented direction given the character source that is Francie but that’d have been generous. No escaping it’s a poor tale told poorly.