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Poguemahone
Dan Fogarty, an Irishman living in England, is looking after his sister Una, now seventy and suffering from dementia in a care home in Margate. From Dan’s anarchic account, we gradually piece together the story of the Fogarty family. How the parents are exiled from a small Irish village and end up living the hard immigrant life in England. How Dots, the mother, becomes a call girl in 1950s Soho. How a young and overweight Una finds herself living in a hippie squat in Kilburn in the early 1970s. How the squat appears to be haunted by vindictive ghosts who eat away at the sanity of all who live there.
And, finally, how all that survives now of those sex-and-drug-soaked times are Una’s unspooling memories as she sits outside in the Margate sunshine, and Dan himself, whose role in the story becomes stranger and more sinister.
Poguemahone is a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale Patrick McCabe has never attempted before.
And, finally, how all that survives now of those sex-and-drug-soaked times are Una’s unspooling memories as she sits outside in the Margate sunshine, and Dan himself, whose role in the story becomes stranger and more sinister.
Poguemahone is a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale Patrick McCabe has never attempted before.
624 pages, Hardcover
First published April 14, 2022
63 people are currently reading
1679 people want to read
About the author
Patrick McCabe
68 books311 followersPatrick 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
May 1, 2022
Dan Fogerty is the narrator of this story switching between a communal house in 1970s Kilburn and a care home in present day Margate.
But Dan isn't quite what he seems as is revealed later in the story. I really loved the unreliable narrator and I had a lot of nostalgia for the 1970s setting. King Crimson even feature in the story.
Although described as a prose poem I saw it was formatted text matching the narrator's sometimes disordered thoughts.
I'm proud to be one of the people who supported the publication of this ingenious novel via the crowd sourcing publisher Unbound
But Dan isn't quite what he seems as is revealed later in the story. I really loved the unreliable narrator and I had a lot of nostalgia for the 1970s setting. King Crimson even feature in the story.
Although described as a prose poem I saw it was formatted text matching the narrator's sometimes disordered thoughts.
I'm proud to be one of the people who supported the publication of this ingenious novel via the crowd sourcing publisher Unbound
June 5, 2025
4.5
I don’t keep many books anymore, I usually read them and pass them on unless there is a personal tie like a gift. So I notice when one has been hanging around too long. I must’ve picked this for the title. Then saw the author—ah, The Butcher Boy, I liked that. Hmm. 600 pages. No chapters. Interior monologue. Verse, even. Right back to the desk.
I opened it again a week ago and didn’t think about it, just started reading. I’m glad I did or else it would have been handed off with a superior “I didn’t care for it” shrug, and I’d likely never have tried again.
This time the voice clicked and started to carry me away. Hypnotic, hazy tales of free love and bootkickings in the alley. Drug reveries scattered with 70s counterculture name-drops. Everything blurred by madness and loss, overseen by menacing spirits.
At the center is a man telling the story of himself and his sister, from a care home where he visits her. She has dementia and has mostly retreated into her mind and the memory of her one true love. Peter Sarstedt’s song “Where Do You Go To My Lovely” comes up a few times and in this context, it’s heartbreaking. It’s never clear whether it’s the loss, the betrayal, or something deeper and older that has unravelled her. But she’s not just mad or a symbol of decline. She’s funny and sharp, bitter and tender. There’s a sense that her great passion was both the best thing in her life and the thing that broke her. The book never resolves that tension. It just lets it ache.
Strange, sad, and filled with dark humour. Unlike anything I’ve read in a long time. My hat’s off to Patrick McCabe for this brave and original work.
I don’t keep many books anymore, I usually read them and pass them on unless there is a personal tie like a gift. So I notice when one has been hanging around too long. I must’ve picked this for the title. Then saw the author—ah, The Butcher Boy, I liked that. Hmm. 600 pages. No chapters. Interior monologue. Verse, even. Right back to the desk.
I opened it again a week ago and didn’t think about it, just started reading. I’m glad I did or else it would have been handed off with a superior “I didn’t care for it” shrug, and I’d likely never have tried again.
This time the voice clicked and started to carry me away. Hypnotic, hazy tales of free love and bootkickings in the alley. Drug reveries scattered with 70s counterculture name-drops. Everything blurred by madness and loss, overseen by menacing spirits.
At the center is a man telling the story of himself and his sister, from a care home where he visits her. She has dementia and has mostly retreated into her mind and the memory of her one true love. Peter Sarstedt’s song “Where Do You Go To My Lovely” comes up a few times and in this context, it’s heartbreaking. It’s never clear whether it’s the loss, the betrayal, or something deeper and older that has unravelled her. But she’s not just mad or a symbol of decline. She’s funny and sharp, bitter and tender. There’s a sense that her great passion was both the best thing in her life and the thing that broke her. The book never resolves that tension. It just lets it ache.
Strange, sad, and filled with dark humour. Unlike anything I’ve read in a long time. My hat’s off to Patrick McCabe for this brave and original work.
February 19, 2022
Right out of the gate, with no warning, you’re immediately launched (pushed?) down the steepest narrative slope, but just relax, let this unreliable narrator take the reins and experience the tumult. This was the most bookborn fun I’ve experienced in a good while, very “Antkind, Newburyport.”
Hoo boy, [spoilers] and [spoilers] and [spoilers] galore!
Hoo boy, [spoilers] and [spoilers] and [spoilers] galore!
July 24, 2022
Jeeeeeez.
August 19, 2022
The word “poguemahone” is a anglicized form of an Irish Gaelic phrase which means “kiss my arse.”
Poguemahone is a 600 page epic novel-in-verse that has been compared by other reviewers to James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. While this comparison, in my opinion, may only be justified by the fact that both authors are Irish men who enjoy wordplay, there is something tantalizing about reading a novel called, by one reviewer, “this century’s Ulysses.”
Poguemahone follows two Irish immigrant siblings, Dan and Una Fogarty, as they move to Kilburn, London in the late 1960s and early 1970s and hang out with other working class people: hippies, punks, and other counter-culture groups.
This isn’t a straightforward immigration tale about the Irish Diaspora though. Poguemahone is filled with Irish folklore as the mythic creature, the gruagach, haunts characters and curses them with bouts of “imní,” or depression. Reality falls apart as that which is irrational or inexplicable control our characters’ lives.
This is a novel-in-verse about memory and the failure of memory. Una develops Alzheimer’s and as her memory fragments and fades away, McCabe’s poetic form follows suit and we’re left questioning the reliability and the very reality of the text itself.
Poguemahone is as much about colonialism, dispossession, and the Irish diaspora as it is about Irish folklore, and the music and popular culture of the hippie generation. McCabe fuses all of these together in a raucous and psychedelic novel, whose free-verse and formal experimentation gives him the room to break the fundamental “rules” of the novel and so gives the room to express this in a form that perfectly fits its themes.
It is equal parts hilarious and devastating, and throughout, it is simply a joy to read.
I strongly encourage all readers to check out Patrick McCabe’s performance of the audiobook: this is another example of the audiobook only enhancing the reading experience. This is a novel-in-verse that is meant to heard.
Full video review here: https://youtu.be/49K7Oef7OFs
Poguemahone is a 600 page epic novel-in-verse that has been compared by other reviewers to James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. While this comparison, in my opinion, may only be justified by the fact that both authors are Irish men who enjoy wordplay, there is something tantalizing about reading a novel called, by one reviewer, “this century’s Ulysses.”
Poguemahone follows two Irish immigrant siblings, Dan and Una Fogarty, as they move to Kilburn, London in the late 1960s and early 1970s and hang out with other working class people: hippies, punks, and other counter-culture groups.
This isn’t a straightforward immigration tale about the Irish Diaspora though. Poguemahone is filled with Irish folklore as the mythic creature, the gruagach, haunts characters and curses them with bouts of “imní,” or depression. Reality falls apart as that which is irrational or inexplicable control our characters’ lives.
This is a novel-in-verse about memory and the failure of memory. Una develops Alzheimer’s and as her memory fragments and fades away, McCabe’s poetic form follows suit and we’re left questioning the reliability and the very reality of the text itself.
Poguemahone is as much about colonialism, dispossession, and the Irish diaspora as it is about Irish folklore, and the music and popular culture of the hippie generation. McCabe fuses all of these together in a raucous and psychedelic novel, whose free-verse and formal experimentation gives him the room to break the fundamental “rules” of the novel and so gives the room to express this in a form that perfectly fits its themes.
It is equal parts hilarious and devastating, and throughout, it is simply a joy to read.
I strongly encourage all readers to check out Patrick McCabe’s performance of the audiobook: this is another example of the audiobook only enhancing the reading experience. This is a novel-in-verse that is meant to heard.
Full video review here: https://youtu.be/49K7Oef7OFs
April 19, 2022
This won't be to everyone's taste, but if you like very unreliable narrators and constantly having your assumptions questioned and undermined, this might just be the novel for you. I'm a fan of Patrick McCabe's writing and was pleased to play a part in this novel's Unbound publishing campaign.
October 25, 2022
Don’t be thrown off by the free verse prose in this excellent book by Patrick McCabe. While having read a couple of his other books (Butcher Boy, Breakfast On Pluto) this was unlike those. For 600 pages McCabe weaves us in and out of London/Ireland 1970’s and with Dan Fogarty as our “narrator” and his sister, Una, as the obsessed over sister McCabe does an incredible job of keeping us riveted and sucked into his writing. It’s ok to feel drunk from the word play and I might even suggest reading in parts. Dizzying in a good way, I couldn’t stop reading it. A friend said it’s an excellent book to listen to (read by Patrick McCabe) and I did and loved and I’m never a “book on tape guy.” Try either way. Readable. Beautiful. And probably unlike what you are or are planning to read next.
4.5 ⭐️
4.5 ⭐️
July 25, 2022
I finished the last 150+ pages of Poguemahone in one mesmerizing day. A day later, I'm missing the voices, feeling bereft, but also feeling moved, haunted, even a bit queasy. Blank verse as Patrick McCabe deploys it in waves of arresting variations - eliciting punk and folkloric energies, laying out concrete depictions of emotion - is the perfect vehicle for this kaleidoscopic tale, which flows and swings between cultural eras and states of mind and alternately blurs and comes into painful focus page after page. I'm almost too rattled to try to capture and assess it more coherently at this point. That words on the page can leave a reader this shaken is testament to their assembled craft and power. Poguemahone is a stunning evocation of the mind's and the spirit's resilience and elasticity, even as they are buffeted by trauma and betrayal over years and generations. Una and Dan Fogarty and the universe as it wheels around them are singular and unforgettable.
December 11, 2022
A 600+ book written as a poem but reading like a novel about Una and Dan Fogarty, children of the unwed Dots Fogarty, a suicide, raised in an Irish orphanage / foster care system that seems to blend the worst aspects of juvenile prison with factory work. But the book mainly focuses on their later lives, in the early ‘70s, when Una is in her 20s and free of the orphanage, living for the summer in a hippie squatter commune where—among the dope, liquor, acid, and changing personnel—she falls in love with one Troy McClory, a college-semester drop-out and Ian Hunter / Mott the Hoople acolyte, who gives her attention she otherwise never received or receives—even if this means he occasionally beats her.
Dan Fogarty narrates the story, the broken lines on the page capturing the cadence of his speech (blank verse, no ABAB here). But as the narrative goes on, certain facets of the Dan-POV don’t quite add up until, about mid-way through the book one’s hunches are confirmed (spoiler alert) that Dan is actually a gruagach, an Irish sprite that is invisible and unheard (to all but Una), with poltergeist-like abilities to move objects—such as pushing out the window a competitor for her Troy’s amorous attentions. A gruagach embodies a soul—Dan’s case his soul was limited to the few drops of blood that dripped from his mother’s uterus after a botched abortion, while she hanged herself from the rafters.
Traditional Irish folklore would say that Dan was a gruagach who put bad ideas into his sister’s head, just as Una claimed; whereas modern medicine would say she’s schizophrenic. Dan himself claims to suffer from “inmí,” an Irish term for depression and anxiety, which often results in violent drunkenness. “Poguemahone” is another Irish term, meaning “kiss my arse,” which suggests something about the book’s narrative tone. Some of Dan’s physical nastiness is directed to those who debase his sister, who, on top of being dim and delusional, is also obese, which attracts to herself unkind attention that mere dim and delusional do not.
When the book opens, circa 2019, Una is 70 with dementia and in a housing facility that can meet her needs. Like it or not. This is the medias res the narrative returns to during the book’s final hundred pages, as Una prepares her final stage production, just as she had in the days with Troy and Dan. As with her stage productions of the ‘70s at the Mahavishnu Temple, the emphasis is on the verb “prepare.”
Poguemahone, for all its comic moments, is more seriously about the tensions between traditional and modern ways, memory and vengeance, and British / Irish power dynamics.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Dan Fogarty narrates the story, the broken lines on the page capturing the cadence of his speech (blank verse, no ABAB here). But as the narrative goes on, certain facets of the Dan-POV don’t quite add up until, about mid-way through the book one’s hunches are confirmed (spoiler alert) that Dan is actually a gruagach, an Irish sprite that is invisible and unheard (to all but Una), with poltergeist-like abilities to move objects—such as pushing out the window a competitor for her Troy’s amorous attentions. A gruagach embodies a soul—Dan’s case his soul was limited to the few drops of blood that dripped from his mother’s uterus after a botched abortion, while she hanged herself from the rafters.
Traditional Irish folklore would say that Dan was a gruagach who put bad ideas into his sister’s head, just as Una claimed; whereas modern medicine would say she’s schizophrenic. Dan himself claims to suffer from “inmí,” an Irish term for depression and anxiety, which often results in violent drunkenness. “Poguemahone” is another Irish term, meaning “kiss my arse,” which suggests something about the book’s narrative tone. Some of Dan’s physical nastiness is directed to those who debase his sister, who, on top of being dim and delusional, is also obese, which attracts to herself unkind attention that mere dim and delusional do not.
When the book opens, circa 2019, Una is 70 with dementia and in a housing facility that can meet her needs. Like it or not. This is the medias res the narrative returns to during the book’s final hundred pages, as Una prepares her final stage production, just as she had in the days with Troy and Dan. As with her stage productions of the ‘70s at the Mahavishnu Temple, the emphasis is on the verb “prepare.”
Poguemahone, for all its comic moments, is more seriously about the tensions between traditional and modern ways, memory and vengeance, and British / Irish power dynamics.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
July 1, 2022
The title means roughly “kiss my ass” in Irish, and one cannot help but think McCabe is directing this invective/imperative to his readers. This is a very long book in a stream of consciousness voice set forth in poetry-like lines with uneven breaks that defy logic, interspersed with song, snatches of Scottish and Irish words, and phrases depicted vertically in CAPS, which relates half-baked, half finished stories about a host of characters, the significance of which the reader learns only 300 pages later.
But for those willing to pucker up, Poguemahone delivers some rewards. In particular, there is some chilling literary suspense in the slow unveiling of its motivated if not downright unreliable narrator. His initially charming playfulness quickly degrades to something much darker, and he only reveals his nature about a third thru the book (which comes as a relief from the readers prior suspicions of carnal cravings for his sister) and then not completely until the final page.
As for subject matter, this is a tale about mental illness and hauntings and inner (and outer) demons occurring both in the present as well as in the early 1970s in a rooming house occupied by delirious drug-addled misfits and also a disturbing, dislocating presence that seems to induce tragically bad decisionmaking and may or may not be Irish fairies or other diminutive spirits fond of green and red. The central character is Una “Fudge” Fogarty, the narrator’s "sister," who becomes the lover of one of the roominghouse residents and the object of mockery of the rest (and of her brother). Una's cringeworthy neediness and earnestness make her impossible for the reader to sustain proper empathy, but the swirl of petty vengeance and cruel death around her keeps things interesting.
Undeniably lyrical and occasionally funny, the text of Poguemahone is a series of run-on sentences invoking various literary and musical figures of the time, touching on terrorism, vengeance, difficult parents, and a host of other ills. I’m not going to lie: Poguemahone is tough going, like riding the currents of a toilet flushed: the reader goes round and round but all the while knows s/he's going down. The stream of consciousness has been compared to Joyce, but it's far more evil and far more twisted sort of consciousness. Unfortunately, McCabe goes on with it at far greater length than the trope can sustain, and about three quarters in, I just wished it would end.
But for those willing to pucker up, Poguemahone delivers some rewards. In particular, there is some chilling literary suspense in the slow unveiling of its motivated if not downright unreliable narrator. His initially charming playfulness quickly degrades to something much darker, and he only reveals his nature about a third thru the book (which comes as a relief from the readers prior suspicions of carnal cravings for his sister) and then not completely until the final page.
As for subject matter, this is a tale about mental illness and hauntings and inner (and outer) demons occurring both in the present as well as in the early 1970s in a rooming house occupied by delirious drug-addled misfits and also a disturbing, dislocating presence that seems to induce tragically bad decisionmaking and may or may not be Irish fairies or other diminutive spirits fond of green and red. The central character is Una “Fudge” Fogarty, the narrator’s "sister," who becomes the lover of one of the roominghouse residents and the object of mockery of the rest (and of her brother). Una's cringeworthy neediness and earnestness make her impossible for the reader to sustain proper empathy, but the swirl of petty vengeance and cruel death around her keeps things interesting.
Undeniably lyrical and occasionally funny, the text of Poguemahone is a series of run-on sentences invoking various literary and musical figures of the time, touching on terrorism, vengeance, difficult parents, and a host of other ills. I’m not going to lie: Poguemahone is tough going, like riding the currents of a toilet flushed: the reader goes round and round but all the while knows s/he's going down. The stream of consciousness has been compared to Joyce, but it's far more evil and far more twisted sort of consciousness. Unfortunately, McCabe goes on with it at far greater length than the trope can sustain, and about three quarters in, I just wished it would end.
June 21, 2022
I loved The Butcher Boy and ranked it alongside Shugie Bain as one of the best books I have ever read although it took me a while to get it .
This “ modern day Ulysses “ was therefore a massive disappointment - I found it mostly a largely incomprehensible rambling account about people I did not like or care about . The TLS was naturally ecstatic because they get these things much more easily than mere mortals like myself . However it does irritate when they say things like, that after every Gaelic worn or phrase ( and there are indeed many of them ) we are immediately given the English translation which, even if accurate ( which it is not as far as I can see) begs the question as to why make this tome even more impenetrable than it already is . I would love to engage with the greater mortals quoted on the back cover whose descriptions range from “ A tremendous pitch- black multi- layered epic” to “ A stunning lyrical novel” to try and understand where I went wrong . Numerous cultural references are dropped in apropos of nothing other than to enhance the good taste of the writer in such matters .
Perhaps it is my inability to understand this 600 page “free verse” which in itself seems something of a contradiction that makes me so negative so I will finish with a quote from p 246 of my copy “ Whose owner had met him, ashen faced in the hallway - standing there blurting out all kinds of hopelessly unintelligible rubbish” and carry on with A Rage in Harlem which I understand and am thoroughly enjoying .
This “ modern day Ulysses “ was therefore a massive disappointment - I found it mostly a largely incomprehensible rambling account about people I did not like or care about . The TLS was naturally ecstatic because they get these things much more easily than mere mortals like myself . However it does irritate when they say things like, that after every Gaelic worn or phrase ( and there are indeed many of them ) we are immediately given the English translation which, even if accurate ( which it is not as far as I can see) begs the question as to why make this tome even more impenetrable than it already is . I would love to engage with the greater mortals quoted on the back cover whose descriptions range from “ A tremendous pitch- black multi- layered epic” to “ A stunning lyrical novel” to try and understand where I went wrong . Numerous cultural references are dropped in apropos of nothing other than to enhance the good taste of the writer in such matters .
Perhaps it is my inability to understand this 600 page “free verse” which in itself seems something of a contradiction that makes me so negative so I will finish with a quote from p 246 of my copy “ Whose owner had met him, ashen faced in the hallway - standing there blurting out all kinds of hopelessly unintelligible rubbish” and carry on with A Rage in Harlem which I understand and am thoroughly enjoying .
December 2, 2022
I tried and I tried, but after 400 pages and learning what the twist is, my time feels wasted. A stream of consciousness ramble about mental illness, pop culture, hippies, 70's London and anything else the author could think of.
March 10, 2025
The best thing about this read was the title. Enough said.
Read
February 8, 2023How did McCabe do this? Every time I put this book down I didn’t want to pick it back up, but every time I picked up I couldn’t put it down.
Una has dementia and is living in a nursing home; this is her brother Dan’s 600 page poem in which he tells the erratic story of their lives, with the voices, cadences, and tones constantly shifting. Absolutely wild/disturbing/beautiful.
Una has dementia and is living in a nursing home; this is her brother Dan’s 600 page poem in which he tells the erratic story of their lives, with the voices, cadences, and tones constantly shifting. Absolutely wild/disturbing/beautiful.
March 20, 2023
I picked this one up out of pure curiosity. The blurb on the cover says, “this century’s Ulysses.”
There’s always a desire, when a writer takes a risk and does something different, to look to the past and make comparisons. I don’t know if Poguemahone is this century’s Ulysses. That comparison is probably more of an advertising gimmick than a serious statement (a ploy that clearly worked on me).
What I do know is Patrick McCabe took a huge risk stylistically, and I think it paid off. Poguemahone is absolutely insane, beautiful, funny and original, in my opinion. It’s like a mix of Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Beloved, and Joyce all in one “novel”. It took me a while to finish this one, but man is it ever worth it. And if you disagree well then you can just poguemahone.
There’s always a desire, when a writer takes a risk and does something different, to look to the past and make comparisons. I don’t know if Poguemahone is this century’s Ulysses. That comparison is probably more of an advertising gimmick than a serious statement (a ploy that clearly worked on me).
What I do know is Patrick McCabe took a huge risk stylistically, and I think it paid off. Poguemahone is absolutely insane, beautiful, funny and original, in my opinion. It’s like a mix of Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Beloved, and Joyce all in one “novel”. It took me a while to finish this one, but man is it ever worth it. And if you disagree well then you can just poguemahone.
July 1, 2022
Breathless, bleak, rollicking, and other adjectives that fail to convey the tone, style, feel, and flair of this literary mishmash. If you've all for unreliable narrators, hippie hijinks in 1970s squats, prog-rock poets and dash of sex and violence, well, grab this tome and dive in. Leave behind your expectations of what the hell a novel (in-verse or otherwise) ought to be and you'll be off. Enjoy?
August 16, 2022
A very interesting take on 1970s life for the London Irish. The use of blank verse and the narrator's distinct voice make this Modernist poem novel worthwhile. However, it does lack a strong narrative drive.
January 31, 2024
‘Because, as Frank "The Blind Owl' Olson
had announced,
his troubled eyes
blinking through thick spectacles,
there were big things coming
- things that no one, certainly not the straights,
would, could, ever have dreamed of
because the fringe was not just a space
for plays
but for travelling deep inside wherever your
heart & soul wanted to go
yeah man, this is our laboratory, our playground,
The Blind Owl had explained
& yeah, since you ask, it's experimental by
definition, a place where every voice can be
heard - because everyone is welcome to put
forward their idea.
Is cuma ce aisteach, he said.’
had announced,
his troubled eyes
blinking through thick spectacles,
there were big things coming
- things that no one, certainly not the straights,
would, could, ever have dreamed of
because the fringe was not just a space
for plays
but for travelling deep inside wherever your
heart & soul wanted to go
yeah man, this is our laboratory, our playground,
The Blind Owl had explained
& yeah, since you ask, it's experimental by
definition, a place where every voice can be
heard - because everyone is welcome to put
forward their idea.
Is cuma ce aisteach, he said.’
September 16, 2022
I have all the time in the world for that very special and idiosyncratic experimental style of McCabe’s but I unfortunately felt like a lot of the plot was very lost and meandering. Anecdotes being told twice, characters without very much depth. The plot-twist at the end was good and McCabe has a great touch for unhinging and chaotic climaxes to his stories but ultimately I was just trying to get the book finished.
May 1, 2024
Occasional spoilers as overviews, my first review.
Possibly my favourite text hence registering, including 2 readings and 2 audiobook sessions too with McCabe’s richly mesmerising gift for voices, dialects, pacing and effects. Pogue Mahone’s epic scope is brought to the forefront of your attention with as much colourful focus and force as any microdot-induced vision of mandalas or madness. Recommended by an acquaintance (cheers Jenks).
A cyclical and vertiginous expedition into the subconscious, a decades-long tale drawing on epic visions, endless hours of shattering domestic drudgery, fake/juiced personal myths and what may be one of the most uniquely malevolent craythurs ever invoked in contemporary literature. Never less than magnificent, Pogue Mahone could so easily have chosen to turn viscerally or introspectively to ‘The Troubles’, hippy yoghurt-weavers and terrorism on the UK mainland as plot movers, yet McCabe introduces another form of terror to the forefront - the gruagach and its myriad forms of mind-shattering presences.
Una Fogarty will live in your memory long after the final scene fades, as will her brother, Dan, as will all the residents and visitors of 45 Brondesbury Gardens and beyond, with their many respective fates. From exile (think Land of the Wandering Host), to being judged as manual labour, to an oh so rare spell with a majestically rendered vision of a vain and deeply flawed duplicitous lover, Una’s life is laid bare like a porthole into a very personal abyss. McCabe never looks away from the multitude of traumatic layers which have continually ruptured the Fogarty's lives, lives where repair from hypocritical exploitation is never remotely possible. Without sentiment or recourse to toady renderings of a commercialised ‘Oirishness’, Lady Ocean, Fudge Fogarty, an imperfect vision of imperfect humanity rarely seen, or worse, ignored entirely (like this review).
Not to say this is all “too much, maaan, too much” or overtly dark for the sake of darkness, to anoint its multitude of shadows. I implore you to allow the first 5-6 chapters to settle, to let McCabe’s linguistic word-play build, gaining momentum and purchase, because when the writer opens up the valves anything can (and does) happen. Is the temple haunted? Don't know. Who or what is Dan Fogarty? I have a few ideas but they don’t necessarily converge. What exactly happened at 45 Brondesbury Gardens? You decide. What followed in the succeeding years? Step inside, come and see.
A supporting cast sprinkled with gold dust, from the perverted roaming eye of caretaker Alex Gordon’s “look at the Bristols on that!” (straight out of 70’s sitcoms), to Troy M and his “sweet Lady Ocean” pretences, to Nano, to Margaret Rutherford, to Kilburn itself caught through narrow shifting windows in time, all swept away by synchronously eventful twists of fate and the cruel tricks of failing memory.
Add what may be episodes of trauma-induced psychosis and the eviscerating effects of dementia, the latter note perfect in terms of metaphor, dignity and cosmic indifference to human suffering in hugely effective waves of allegorical focus. Dementia’s role in Una’s later life is portrayed with an empathetic as well as honest eye too, fully immersing you in the “V-V-V-V-V-v-v” of doodlebug munitions mutilating entire streets of her memory and, by extension, identity. The use of vertical and scattered text is both a disorienting and gloriously wicked device, detailing Pogue Mahone's cacophony of scenes and voices.
The brilliance of this non-linear work is too vast to distill into a ‘review’. It contains too much wisdom, lived experience, humour and scathing detail built in as cyclical waves of events, personalities and locations. Hence, when it moves through more prose-poetic passages, its accumulative effects accrue further in your mind’s eye, adding another level of perspective by tapping into a deeper familial well of intergenerational trauma as adroitly as anything in the English language.
Pogue Mahone is never less than a transformative journey into language, memory, time, the chomping bile of post-war racism's days of “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs", of one woman’s monstrous journey through labyrinthine domestic servitude, meaninglessly cleaning Albion’s office spaces while desperately navigating a muddy murky slope of flakey back-biting friends and relentless pain. It is remorselessly satirical of counter-cultural tropes, even when you're off guard. I particularly enjoyed the sparse use of Gaelic with translations, the loop of “that is to say”/'s accumulative communicative magic in creating not just believably complex characters, but seeding them into entirely realistic yet previously utterly unimaginable worlds, worlds whose many pasts and presents are constantly bleeding into each other. Lastly, spare a thought for Connie, a carer for Una later in life rendered pitch perfect with ominous contagious dread, drawing you further into McCabe's lair.
An experience the likes of which are exceptionally rare. A work for the ages - timeless, universal, unforgiving, unsparing, playful, wise and soul-shattering throughout, with only a wink for comfort. Spellbinding storytelling of the highest order.
Possibly my favourite text hence registering, including 2 readings and 2 audiobook sessions too with McCabe’s richly mesmerising gift for voices, dialects, pacing and effects. Pogue Mahone’s epic scope is brought to the forefront of your attention with as much colourful focus and force as any microdot-induced vision of mandalas or madness. Recommended by an acquaintance (cheers Jenks).
A cyclical and vertiginous expedition into the subconscious, a decades-long tale drawing on epic visions, endless hours of shattering domestic drudgery, fake/juiced personal myths and what may be one of the most uniquely malevolent craythurs ever invoked in contemporary literature. Never less than magnificent, Pogue Mahone could so easily have chosen to turn viscerally or introspectively to ‘The Troubles’, hippy yoghurt-weavers and terrorism on the UK mainland as plot movers, yet McCabe introduces another form of terror to the forefront - the gruagach and its myriad forms of mind-shattering presences.
Una Fogarty will live in your memory long after the final scene fades, as will her brother, Dan, as will all the residents and visitors of 45 Brondesbury Gardens and beyond, with their many respective fates. From exile (think Land of the Wandering Host), to being judged as manual labour, to an oh so rare spell with a majestically rendered vision of a vain and deeply flawed duplicitous lover, Una’s life is laid bare like a porthole into a very personal abyss. McCabe never looks away from the multitude of traumatic layers which have continually ruptured the Fogarty's lives, lives where repair from hypocritical exploitation is never remotely possible. Without sentiment or recourse to toady renderings of a commercialised ‘Oirishness’, Lady Ocean, Fudge Fogarty, an imperfect vision of imperfect humanity rarely seen, or worse, ignored entirely (like this review).
Not to say this is all “too much, maaan, too much” or overtly dark for the sake of darkness, to anoint its multitude of shadows. I implore you to allow the first 5-6 chapters to settle, to let McCabe’s linguistic word-play build, gaining momentum and purchase, because when the writer opens up the valves anything can (and does) happen. Is the temple haunted? Don't know. Who or what is Dan Fogarty? I have a few ideas but they don’t necessarily converge. What exactly happened at 45 Brondesbury Gardens? You decide. What followed in the succeeding years? Step inside, come and see.
A supporting cast sprinkled with gold dust, from the perverted roaming eye of caretaker Alex Gordon’s “look at the Bristols on that!” (straight out of 70’s sitcoms), to Troy M and his “sweet Lady Ocean” pretences, to Nano, to Margaret Rutherford, to Kilburn itself caught through narrow shifting windows in time, all swept away by synchronously eventful twists of fate and the cruel tricks of failing memory.
Add what may be episodes of trauma-induced psychosis and the eviscerating effects of dementia, the latter note perfect in terms of metaphor, dignity and cosmic indifference to human suffering in hugely effective waves of allegorical focus. Dementia’s role in Una’s later life is portrayed with an empathetic as well as honest eye too, fully immersing you in the “V-V-V-V-V-v-v” of doodlebug munitions mutilating entire streets of her memory and, by extension, identity. The use of vertical and scattered text is both a disorienting and gloriously wicked device, detailing Pogue Mahone's cacophony of scenes and voices.
The brilliance of this non-linear work is too vast to distill into a ‘review’. It contains too much wisdom, lived experience, humour and scathing detail built in as cyclical waves of events, personalities and locations. Hence, when it moves through more prose-poetic passages, its accumulative effects accrue further in your mind’s eye, adding another level of perspective by tapping into a deeper familial well of intergenerational trauma as adroitly as anything in the English language.
Pogue Mahone is never less than a transformative journey into language, memory, time, the chomping bile of post-war racism's days of “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs", of one woman’s monstrous journey through labyrinthine domestic servitude, meaninglessly cleaning Albion’s office spaces while desperately navigating a muddy murky slope of flakey back-biting friends and relentless pain. It is remorselessly satirical of counter-cultural tropes, even when you're off guard. I particularly enjoyed the sparse use of Gaelic with translations, the loop of “that is to say”/'s accumulative communicative magic in creating not just believably complex characters, but seeding them into entirely realistic yet previously utterly unimaginable worlds, worlds whose many pasts and presents are constantly bleeding into each other. Lastly, spare a thought for Connie, a carer for Una later in life rendered pitch perfect with ominous contagious dread, drawing you further into McCabe's lair.
An experience the likes of which are exceptionally rare. A work for the ages - timeless, universal, unforgiving, unsparing, playful, wise and soul-shattering throughout, with only a wink for comfort. Spellbinding storytelling of the highest order.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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May 29, 2022I tried so hard to like this book, but failed.
February 26, 2025
The Guardian called this book “this century’s Ulysses”, which worried me since it took me three years to read last century���s Ulysses. Poguemahone is not Ulysses (which ended up being the best book I have ever read), but it’s its own excellent thing. There are some similarities in that both put their characters firmly into their time and don’t worry about how much of that will be familiar to the reader. There’s Gaelic, for one - though McCabe has a clever way of providing you a translation. In Pogumahone the culture is mostly mid-1970s, so instead of odd references to Parnell and the GAA, it’s Mott the Hoople, Tubular Bells, IRA bombings, etc.
The inside cover blurb describes Poguemahone accurately as “an epic free-verse monologue”. It’s printed like a poem too so despite the 600 pages, it reads fast. And writing a 600 page free-verse monologue is a medal-worthy feat in its own right. Once in a while I would decide that it should have been shorter, but then I’d be sucked back in. It’s a great ride and a great read.
What’s it about? Well, Ulysses, for all its obscure references, style changes, and meanderings, had a straightforward plot. Not so Poguemahone. The monologue is delivered by it’s-hard-to-say about some members of the Fogarty family, and especially the children of a woman who was forced to immigrate to London in the 1950s. It’s mainly focused on Una, the daughter, and her time in the waning days of London’s hippie era. But that family history and that bleak cultural history is entwined with Irish folklore, to the point where it’s not quite clear what’s real. And folk tales are often pretty grim.
The inside cover blurb describes Poguemahone accurately as “an epic free-verse monologue”. It’s printed like a poem too so despite the 600 pages, it reads fast. And writing a 600 page free-verse monologue is a medal-worthy feat in its own right. Once in a while I would decide that it should have been shorter, but then I’d be sucked back in. It’s a great ride and a great read.
What’s it about? Well, Ulysses, for all its obscure references, style changes, and meanderings, had a straightforward plot. Not so Poguemahone. The monologue is delivered by it’s-hard-to-say about some members of the Fogarty family, and especially the children of a woman who was forced to immigrate to London in the 1950s. It’s mainly focused on Una, the daughter, and her time in the waning days of London’s hippie era. But that family history and that bleak cultural history is entwined with Irish folklore, to the point where it’s not quite clear what’s real. And folk tales are often pretty grim.
February 1, 2023
Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe feels like randomly listening to an insane person in the park, and before you may excuse yourself you find his story astonishingly interesting, so you follow him through a non-linear narrative gobbledegook rabble babble, only to end up loving the story in some unexpected way.
Although it seems like there are only side-plots for half of the book, the central story is easy to gather and revolves around Una who lives in the winter of her life in 2019, but used to lead a wild life in London in the 1970s. She gets to live in a shabby apartment with a guy named Troy and other free spirits. To her, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll are the greatest things since bread came sliced, but soon enough she pays the price. What really happened during her heydays and lowest points becomes clear only after a close reading of this novel-sized free verse poem — or poetically stylised prose epic. Its language, an unfiltered pub drivel with a slight Hibernian touch broken up into units of intonation, makes it a unique read.
One has to trust McCabe as a story-teller that the ascend to the apex of this book is worth the view. Because it is.
Although it seems like there are only side-plots for half of the book, the central story is easy to gather and revolves around Una who lives in the winter of her life in 2019, but used to lead a wild life in London in the 1970s. She gets to live in a shabby apartment with a guy named Troy and other free spirits. To her, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll are the greatest things since bread came sliced, but soon enough she pays the price. What really happened during her heydays and lowest points becomes clear only after a close reading of this novel-sized free verse poem — or poetically stylised prose epic. Its language, an unfiltered pub drivel with a slight Hibernian touch broken up into units of intonation, makes it a unique read.
One has to trust McCabe as a story-teller that the ascend to the apex of this book is worth the view. Because it is.
February 22, 2023
This book took me a couple of months to read. It’s a verse novel,
D
O
N’
T Stop reading!
From the author of The Butcher Boy – and fan of Tommy Makem, I would guess, Patrick McCabe – and published by, yes, Unbound.
Imagine. If Shane McGowan had read T.S.Eliot. If Heaney had joined the flower-power movement and lived in a Kilburn Squat/Commune in the early 70s.
I’m not sure this book is for everyone, but it definitely was for me:
Three-day week, strikes, IRA bombings, all Irish tarred with the same brush, Prog rock with glam rock coming up on the rails, and Sunday-afternoon, black-and-white ‘fillums’ on the tele in the corner all about girls going to London and getting pregnant. Sometimes I felt as if McCabe had been inside MY head.
A remarkable account of a descent into madness, flitting from a care home now to the brown-corduroy 70s, it is brilliant literature, but who will buy it? I did, and it was magnificent.
This revue is so short because… Well, I am lost for words.
D
O
N’
T Stop reading!
From the author of The Butcher Boy – and fan of Tommy Makem, I would guess, Patrick McCabe – and published by, yes, Unbound.
Imagine. If Shane McGowan had read T.S.Eliot. If Heaney had joined the flower-power movement and lived in a Kilburn Squat/Commune in the early 70s.
I’m not sure this book is for everyone, but it definitely was for me:
Three-day week, strikes, IRA bombings, all Irish tarred with the same brush, Prog rock with glam rock coming up on the rails, and Sunday-afternoon, black-and-white ‘fillums’ on the tele in the corner all about girls going to London and getting pregnant. Sometimes I felt as if McCabe had been inside MY head.
A remarkable account of a descent into madness, flitting from a care home now to the brown-corduroy 70s, it is brilliant literature, but who will buy it? I did, and it was magnificent.
This revue is so short because… Well, I am lost for words.
May 29, 2023
Good grief - a thing of wonder. This was a more or less random choice and it took me some time to get the hang of it but it sucked me in and certainly delivered. I've never read anything like it, daunting at the outset, 600 pages of blank verse-like narrative with plenty of blind alleys, forays and side-paths but an overarching plot full of highs, lows, flashes of happiness, intense emotion, grief and regret. Not to mention Irish folklore and partly set against a background of drugs, sex, rock and roll and the IRA bombing campaign of 1970s London, and a nursing home in modern-day Margate.
Definitely worth persisting - I read the final 150 pages in an afternoon. Comparisons with Ulysses (which I'm also, as it happens, re-reading) are invidious: yes it's long and it's Irish, but this is a thing apart and true to itself. This will stay with me for a long time.
Definitely worth persisting - I read the final 150 pages in an afternoon. Comparisons with Ulysses (which I'm also, as it happens, re-reading) are invidious: yes it's long and it's Irish, but this is a thing apart and true to itself. This will stay with me for a long time.
June 29, 2022
This is an experience not just a book! Creative, different. Others have used the word rollicking and it is that for sure. I found great enjoyment in all of the Irish language and cultural references. The story is bleak and massively entertaining at the same time. At one point, somewhere in the middle of it, things felt a little repetitive but then it picked up the pace again and the layering / retelling of the story yielded different and deeper perspectives. Maybe a tad too long but that is nitpicking!
May 23, 2022
Powerful, creative, unique, and crazy-engaging. An experience-- one that is not for everyone. Bouncing between the ARC copy and the Audible version, I loved hearing the author's interpretation of the book!! and, then, also, moved back to reading it myself... catching a breath and a break. Intense. Esp hearing the author enthusiastically belt the story out to us. Glad to have given this one a go.
July 10, 2022
Sad Fudge
should be cleaning offices, but, instead has an encounter which is less to him, more to her, and given the family history, as told by her brother, or told as we watch, famous stars from the period, musicians, theatre, as they appear to her, as friends turn into them, or become less than friends, still unforgettable, her life moves backwards, to move forward.
should be cleaning offices, but, instead has an encounter which is less to him, more to her, and given the family history, as told by her brother, or told as we watch, famous stars from the period, musicians, theatre, as they appear to her, as friends turn into them, or become less than friends, still unforgettable, her life moves backwards, to move forward.
June 20, 2023
I can definitely understand the comparisons to James Joyce — it feels like a strange, reality-bending form of stream of consciousness writing. It’s captivating, it feels at once like conversation, like a trip inside the mind, and what I imagine living with dementia must feel like. This is the first book by McCabe that I read and I really loved it.
June 28, 2023
A wonderful free verse epic that starts in a post-hippie London flat and slowly unspools into a dark nightmare rife with Irish folklore, early 70s rock, and lots and lots of madness. Dan Fogerty is a wonderful little character, equally charming and horrifying. I liked this one a lot - especially the way it builds and builds, finally ending with a jig and a song. It’s great.
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