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Ghosts & Lightning
Happy or unhappy, all families are a mystery. None more than the Cullens. Having escaped their clutches and moved across the water, Denny is just beginning to make a life for himself when a call from his sister brings him back to Dublin, city of his birth. Back to square one. As if squabbling siblings and unhelpful childhood friends weren't trouble enough, a ghost starts making appearances in the family home and Denny's life starts to get a lot more complicated.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
June 4, 2009
Denny Cullen, 21st-century Dubliner at university in Wales, thinks he's left home, but home isn't finished with him yet. Called back for his mother's funeral, he soon seems to be back in the groove, with relatives and friends who are going nowhere fast and doing nothing much (though, this being Dublin, they do it with considerable wit and inventiveness).
His sister Paula senses a ghost in the house she and Denny are allowing to go to rack and ruin; it might be her alcohol-fuelled imagination but then again it might be composed of memories of their dead mother, their absent father, the brothers from whom they are estranged and much other baggage. Before Denny can move on, he needs to decide which bits of his past he wants to leave behind, and which he needs to take with him. Though this is very much a novel of a young man in 21st-century Dublin, he is also a man with a sense of a long historical and mythological past (and his surname is no accident).
One reason this novel lives so vividly for the reader is the liveliness and realism of its voices. Denny's friends and family constantly come alive off the page: the insanely brave Paula, Uncle Victor the long-term book-borrower, gentle Pajo the emaciated recovering drug-addict with Buddhist tendencies ("he's mad into this kind o thing; life after death, ghosts, yetis, any and all religions. Basically anything there's fuck all proof for, Pajo'll believe it.")
Both fulcrum and observer, Denny himself is a joy of a voice. He is sardonically honest about himself:
Probably why I can't get a job, some witch's hex. Well, hat or the fact I never filled out them forms at the FAS office
but also endlessly imaginative, as when he describes his friend Maggit having second thoughts about something he's stolen:
And wha about the kid who owned it? Is he not gonna miss it?
Maggit thinks about this. He looks into the bag again,
like he might o robbed the answer as well by accident.
or when, travelling west, he finds himself overwhelmed by a sense of history:
… Dungloe, Annagary, Glencolumbkille. Never even heard o those places before, never mind been to them, and yet I dunno why, it all seems dead familiar. Mad that, isn't it? This feelin I get that nothing is new, not really.
There are a lot of very funny scenes in this novel – the car being constantly turned upside down, the funeral dominated by a priestly speech impediment. The variation of pace is remarkable too, from frenetic to leisurely and back, but above all the register of language, which accommodates colloquial and lyrical effortlessly. It's a terrifically assured and likeable debut.
His sister Paula senses a ghost in the house she and Denny are allowing to go to rack and ruin; it might be her alcohol-fuelled imagination but then again it might be composed of memories of their dead mother, their absent father, the brothers from whom they are estranged and much other baggage. Before Denny can move on, he needs to decide which bits of his past he wants to leave behind, and which he needs to take with him. Though this is very much a novel of a young man in 21st-century Dublin, he is also a man with a sense of a long historical and mythological past (and his surname is no accident).
One reason this novel lives so vividly for the reader is the liveliness and realism of its voices. Denny's friends and family constantly come alive off the page: the insanely brave Paula, Uncle Victor the long-term book-borrower, gentle Pajo the emaciated recovering drug-addict with Buddhist tendencies ("he's mad into this kind o thing; life after death, ghosts, yetis, any and all religions. Basically anything there's fuck all proof for, Pajo'll believe it.")
Both fulcrum and observer, Denny himself is a joy of a voice. He is sardonically honest about himself:
Probably why I can't get a job, some witch's hex. Well, hat or the fact I never filled out them forms at the FAS office
but also endlessly imaginative, as when he describes his friend Maggit having second thoughts about something he's stolen:
And wha about the kid who owned it? Is he not gonna miss it?
Maggit thinks about this. He looks into the bag again,
like he might o robbed the answer as well by accident.
or when, travelling west, he finds himself overwhelmed by a sense of history:
… Dungloe, Annagary, Glencolumbkille. Never even heard o those places before, never mind been to them, and yet I dunno why, it all seems dead familiar. Mad that, isn't it? This feelin I get that nothing is new, not really.
There are a lot of very funny scenes in this novel – the car being constantly turned upside down, the funeral dominated by a priestly speech impediment. The variation of pace is remarkable too, from frenetic to leisurely and back, but above all the register of language, which accommodates colloquial and lyrical effortlessly. It's a terrifically assured and likeable debut.
March 14, 2010
I listened to this on audiobook, and I'll admit the heavy Dublin accent probably impacted how much I enjoyed the book.
Overall, it was an enjoyable read. It's not fantasy. In fact, in some ways it's barely even a cohesive novel. There's no central plot, just a series of events loosely strung together by a common first-person narrator.
That said, I enjoyed it. It was funny in parts, touching in parts, and clever in parts. The author has a great gift for economy of phrase, and uses small details to great effect.
Overall, it was an enjoyable read. It's not fantasy. In fact, in some ways it's barely even a cohesive novel. There's no central plot, just a series of events loosely strung together by a common first-person narrator.
That said, I enjoyed it. It was funny in parts, touching in parts, and clever in parts. The author has a great gift for economy of phrase, and uses small details to great effect.
June 10, 2009
Through a Pint Glass Darkly...
Ghosts and Lightning is the debut novel of Trevor Byrne, a young Dubliner, that has already seen him praised by the likes of Roddy Doyle - a rare feat. Upon reading the book, it's easy to see why.
Set largely in the poorer suburbs of Dublin, a place I know only too well, the narrator Denny returns home from Wales after hearing of his mother's passing. Suddenly, the realities of Irish life return in all their gritty and morally grey forms with Denny - a moral man - thrown back into the moral dillemma of his drug and drink ravaged, prejudiced, and political-correctness-be-damned Dublin lingo and loyalties. This is not the Dublin you see from a tourist bus - a place of colourful boats and scripted histories and Celtic jewellery going cheap. This isn't where you want your roots to be, it's where you want to leave.
Neither is this novel, in many ways, really about ghosts, though it is about hauntings - the memories of the past, of Denny's mother, of misery in all its forms finding transcendence through humour, American wrestling (!), football, drinking and dancing and mythic flights of the imagination (punctuated, at times, by lightning flashes of violence). Denny inherited his mother's wild irreverence and imagination, and with it he takes us on an honest and, occasionaly, frightening tour of Dublin and the surrounding environs, eventually going North in search of meaning and freedom, to mourn, to touch an ancient magic, to make good with his life.
At points, Byrne uses the occasional chemically-enhanced reverie and inborn wild imagination of Denny to weave his way into a kind of Irish magical realism - a giant horse towering 200ft in the air; Goblins and Sprites; or the evocative imagining of a long-extinct giant Elk - a chieftain in high places, a symbol of an older Ireland. These moments are, for me, gold-dust - imbuing the harsh realities with an older form of magic, inking the page with pagan sentiment. (The Fishfinger of Knowledge is sheer, hilarious genius!) By contrast, the quasi-magical scene with the foal, and the consequences, is both beautiful and profoundly terrifying. Byrne can evoke wonder, fear and revulsion - sometimes all at once.
A sense of loss and yearning - of his mother, of Ireland's collective heritage - reveals itself throughout the novel as Denny gazes at the hard men and hard lives about him, made soft and merry for a time by the shared love of stories and a bit of "banter" (often insulting, yet funny, conversation). A violent act merits a song, a saga, a tale. If in only that, Byrne shows us, we are human - flawed, morally grey, self-destructive, and all too human.
As someone who has been in the places Denny inhabits, and seen the woes and wonders, listened to outrageous stories and laughed and felt bad for laughing, I can say that the book is both authentic in its dialogue, and heart-renderingly touching in its humanity. There were many times I laughed out loud, tears streaming down my cheeks, the dialogue veering from insanely creative insults - a common Dublin/Irish artform! - to poetic description. Indeed, Byrne has turned cursing into a poetic form all his own. If you're a prude, trust me, this is authentic. If you open to it, you may find yourself lost in the poetry of language both profane and sacred.
In the beginning I kind of disliked Denny and some of his friends, then, as the tale moved forward, I realised I shared his predicament - the morally grey life of the places Denny inhabits, the sudden emergence of Ireland into multi-culturalism, the frequent hypocrisy of "Cead Mile Failte" (our so-called welcoming attitude to foreigners), all this bubbles up in the fast-talking, hard-hitting, dark and humorous dialogue of the characters. As the tale unfolds, Denny quickly emerges a good man at times compromised by his friends, family loyalties, the poverty of his birth and the hypocrisies of his country. In the end, he and his friends are looking for love and meaning in a hard place, a place only friends can survive.
Indeed, I remember the time when, in an area very close to Denny's fictional home, people would gather about a grassy mound and watch as robbed cars screeched through the night, circling and burning rubber, everyone a supplicant to crime, and the Gardai rarely showing up to do anything about it. I think of some friends from school and childhood, now dead from drugs and drug-related crime, some OD'd, some murdered; the violence and scandals and a different kind of fiddlin'. That's the Ireland Denny knows. It's the Ireland I know. At its heart, though, is a magic, an athmosphere, a love of language and story; tales and insults to make tears stream down your cheeks, like Byrne's did mine, tears of both mourning and laughter.
This is Dublin life, but not the kind you may know or have heard about. I dare say, there are a lot who live in Dublin that don't know this kind of scene. Byrne shows us it all - through a pint glass darkly (pulled by a foreigner!) - yet also gives us hope that laughter and love and friendship beyond breaking can keep back the "Slaughters" of this world, the cold and cruel capitalism, and the hypocrisy of our own immigrant past and modern prejudices. As we sit over that pint o the blackstuff in The Foggy Dew or some other pub, seeing the darkness around us captured in our Guinness, for Byrne and Denny the way we tell stories is the white froth of it all - clean and light and pure.
In short, Ghosts and Lightning is brilliant, beautiful, comic, grotesque, and frightening - a tale told by a half-demented Seanachai, a warrior-poet of old who can metre and rhyme his "fucks" as much as his "cunts". It was simply a strange and wondrous joy to read and see evoked in ways poetic, tragic, yet filled with hope, the harsh realities where I, like Denny, live. This "buke" (not book!) marks Byrne an original, authentic, and powerful new voice in literature to watch and wait for. Highly recommended.
Ghosts and Lightning is the debut novel of Trevor Byrne, a young Dubliner, that has already seen him praised by the likes of Roddy Doyle - a rare feat. Upon reading the book, it's easy to see why.
Set largely in the poorer suburbs of Dublin, a place I know only too well, the narrator Denny returns home from Wales after hearing of his mother's passing. Suddenly, the realities of Irish life return in all their gritty and morally grey forms with Denny - a moral man - thrown back into the moral dillemma of his drug and drink ravaged, prejudiced, and political-correctness-be-damned Dublin lingo and loyalties. This is not the Dublin you see from a tourist bus - a place of colourful boats and scripted histories and Celtic jewellery going cheap. This isn't where you want your roots to be, it's where you want to leave.
Neither is this novel, in many ways, really about ghosts, though it is about hauntings - the memories of the past, of Denny's mother, of misery in all its forms finding transcendence through humour, American wrestling (!), football, drinking and dancing and mythic flights of the imagination (punctuated, at times, by lightning flashes of violence). Denny inherited his mother's wild irreverence and imagination, and with it he takes us on an honest and, occasionaly, frightening tour of Dublin and the surrounding environs, eventually going North in search of meaning and freedom, to mourn, to touch an ancient magic, to make good with his life.
At points, Byrne uses the occasional chemically-enhanced reverie and inborn wild imagination of Denny to weave his way into a kind of Irish magical realism - a giant horse towering 200ft in the air; Goblins and Sprites; or the evocative imagining of a long-extinct giant Elk - a chieftain in high places, a symbol of an older Ireland. These moments are, for me, gold-dust - imbuing the harsh realities with an older form of magic, inking the page with pagan sentiment. (The Fishfinger of Knowledge is sheer, hilarious genius!) By contrast, the quasi-magical scene with the foal, and the consequences, is both beautiful and profoundly terrifying. Byrne can evoke wonder, fear and revulsion - sometimes all at once.
A sense of loss and yearning - of his mother, of Ireland's collective heritage - reveals itself throughout the novel as Denny gazes at the hard men and hard lives about him, made soft and merry for a time by the shared love of stories and a bit of "banter" (often insulting, yet funny, conversation). A violent act merits a song, a saga, a tale. If in only that, Byrne shows us, we are human - flawed, morally grey, self-destructive, and all too human.
As someone who has been in the places Denny inhabits, and seen the woes and wonders, listened to outrageous stories and laughed and felt bad for laughing, I can say that the book is both authentic in its dialogue, and heart-renderingly touching in its humanity. There were many times I laughed out loud, tears streaming down my cheeks, the dialogue veering from insanely creative insults - a common Dublin/Irish artform! - to poetic description. Indeed, Byrne has turned cursing into a poetic form all his own. If you're a prude, trust me, this is authentic. If you open to it, you may find yourself lost in the poetry of language both profane and sacred.
In the beginning I kind of disliked Denny and some of his friends, then, as the tale moved forward, I realised I shared his predicament - the morally grey life of the places Denny inhabits, the sudden emergence of Ireland into multi-culturalism, the frequent hypocrisy of "Cead Mile Failte" (our so-called welcoming attitude to foreigners), all this bubbles up in the fast-talking, hard-hitting, dark and humorous dialogue of the characters. As the tale unfolds, Denny quickly emerges a good man at times compromised by his friends, family loyalties, the poverty of his birth and the hypocrisies of his country. In the end, he and his friends are looking for love and meaning in a hard place, a place only friends can survive.
Indeed, I remember the time when, in an area very close to Denny's fictional home, people would gather about a grassy mound and watch as robbed cars screeched through the night, circling and burning rubber, everyone a supplicant to crime, and the Gardai rarely showing up to do anything about it. I think of some friends from school and childhood, now dead from drugs and drug-related crime, some OD'd, some murdered; the violence and scandals and a different kind of fiddlin'. That's the Ireland Denny knows. It's the Ireland I know. At its heart, though, is a magic, an athmosphere, a love of language and story; tales and insults to make tears stream down your cheeks, like Byrne's did mine, tears of both mourning and laughter.
This is Dublin life, but not the kind you may know or have heard about. I dare say, there are a lot who live in Dublin that don't know this kind of scene. Byrne shows us it all - through a pint glass darkly (pulled by a foreigner!) - yet also gives us hope that laughter and love and friendship beyond breaking can keep back the "Slaughters" of this world, the cold and cruel capitalism, and the hypocrisy of our own immigrant past and modern prejudices. As we sit over that pint o the blackstuff in The Foggy Dew or some other pub, seeing the darkness around us captured in our Guinness, for Byrne and Denny the way we tell stories is the white froth of it all - clean and light and pure.
In short, Ghosts and Lightning is brilliant, beautiful, comic, grotesque, and frightening - a tale told by a half-demented Seanachai, a warrior-poet of old who can metre and rhyme his "fucks" as much as his "cunts". It was simply a strange and wondrous joy to read and see evoked in ways poetic, tragic, yet filled with hope, the harsh realities where I, like Denny, live. This "buke" (not book!) marks Byrne an original, authentic, and powerful new voice in literature to watch and wait for. Highly recommended.
November 28, 2010
This is not a perfect novel but if it lacks anything then the top of that list would be pretentiousness. The author tells it as it is. He looks back, looks around him and considers the future with eyes wide open. Its biggest weakness is that to get a fuller understanding of the book it would help to be Irish. Many of its subtleties — yes, it is surprisingly subtle — will be lost on foreign readers but the book doesn’t depend on an in-depth knowledge of Irish mythology; it is, however, enhanced by one. The swearing will put some people off. Byrne did a word count and of the 80,000-odd words a thousand are ‘fuck’ or some variant thereof. In an audio interview he says that he has simply written the dialogue the way he has grown up with it, that the swearing can almost be regarded as a kind of punctuation. And here he quotes Billy Connolly who famously said that there is no such thing as bad language, there was only language in the same way as there was no such thing as bad weather, there was only weather and the wrong clothing. I thoroughly enjoyed this I have to say but I can see why others might not.
You can read my full review on my blog here.
You can read my full review on my blog here.
February 17, 2015
"Never even heard o these places before, never mind been to them, and yet, I dunno why, it all seems familiar. Mad that, isn't it? This feelin I get that nothin is new, not really."
WHY DID I READ THIS BOOK?
I'm not really sure. i don't remember buying the book and the cover isn't something that would normally catch my eye.
PROS:
●This book is raunchy, yet tender, & well-written
●I felt like i was being carried along on this meandering adventure
●The protagonist is honest and he's a thinker.
●I enjoyed the setting in Dublin and the small surrounding towns
●I like that the language is totally foreign to me, it being Irish and slangy. I didn't mind the use of bad words because I felt like it added authenticity to the setting.
●The book ended well.
CONS:
●There really wasn't a plot, per se.
●While the back cover describes the book as having dark humor, i didn't see much humor in the story. it just seemed sad. i mean, there were some interesting adventures and insights, but the overall tone was definitely sad.
VERDICT:
it's a short story that gives you a little snapshot of the youth culture of Ireland. it's a dark book with a sweet protagonist. i enjoyed it.
WHY DID I READ THIS BOOK?
I'm not really sure. i don't remember buying the book and the cover isn't something that would normally catch my eye.
PROS:
●This book is raunchy, yet tender, & well-written
●I felt like i was being carried along on this meandering adventure
●The protagonist is honest and he's a thinker.
●I enjoyed the setting in Dublin and the small surrounding towns
●I like that the language is totally foreign to me, it being Irish and slangy. I didn't mind the use of bad words because I felt like it added authenticity to the setting.
●The book ended well.
CONS:
●There really wasn't a plot, per se.
●While the back cover describes the book as having dark humor, i didn't see much humor in the story. it just seemed sad. i mean, there were some interesting adventures and insights, but the overall tone was definitely sad.
VERDICT:
it's a short story that gives you a little snapshot of the youth culture of Ireland. it's a dark book with a sweet protagonist. i enjoyed it.
June 10, 2024
This was a really funny, really sad, really Irish story where not a lot happens but you really feel like you went on a journey by the end. The story very much pulls apart the young, aimless, and lost generation of Irish 20 somethings at the turn of the Millenium, and that feeling is so relatable all over the world. Having never been to Ireland, I feel like I've seen a side of it with an intimacy that many would never notice with their own eyes.
June 14, 2010
Written as part of an M Phil in Creative Writing, Ghosts & Lightning is the first novel of young Irish author Trevor Byrne.
The story begins when the main protagonist Denny’s is called back to Ireland from Wales by his sister after a family bereavement. It then follows the well meaning exploits of Denny and his misfit friends and squabbling family.
Surrounded by others who seem set on destroying their own lives and that of those around them, Denny keeps trying to do the right thing but being swayed by temptation and bad choices. Eventually he realises that only he can change his life and sets out to do so.
I wasn’t sure about the book at first, but Denny is an endearing character and the motley cast of characters were quite entertaining. Most of the book is written in dialect, which, not being Irish, I found initially a bit difficult to follow, but soon became accustomed to it.
Although it reminded me slightly of an older, Irish version of Skins, it was a good read and is an accomplished first novel.
The story begins when the main protagonist Denny’s is called back to Ireland from Wales by his sister after a family bereavement. It then follows the well meaning exploits of Denny and his misfit friends and squabbling family.
Surrounded by others who seem set on destroying their own lives and that of those around them, Denny keeps trying to do the right thing but being swayed by temptation and bad choices. Eventually he realises that only he can change his life and sets out to do so.
I wasn’t sure about the book at first, but Denny is an endearing character and the motley cast of characters were quite entertaining. Most of the book is written in dialect, which, not being Irish, I found initially a bit difficult to follow, but soon became accustomed to it.
Although it reminded me slightly of an older, Irish version of Skins, it was a good read and is an accomplished first novel.
July 24, 2011
Plain and simple, I LOVED reading this book! I happened across this one on overdrive.com and decided to give it a go as it was a story based in Dublin, Ireland. I'm of Irish decent and have been meaning to delve into some Irish literature, so this seemed to fit the bill by the description.
What I immeditally got drawn into was the writing style. The language is written in the modern Dublin street dialect. Lots of "Yeh" and "o" and a fair smattering of "F@#k Sake" bring the true voice of the story forth. The language is crass and real. The plot is heavily character driven and moves along well on the strenght of those characters.
This is author, Trevor Byrne's, rookie effort and he nails it out of the gate. He presents an honest account of a typical Dublin twenty -something trying to find his path in life after the death of his mother. Along the way we get a look at the less polished areas of life in Dublin. This story is real and harsh and purely fictional. That's what makes it grand. That's what makes any story grand.
What I immeditally got drawn into was the writing style. The language is written in the modern Dublin street dialect. Lots of "Yeh" and "o" and a fair smattering of "F@#k Sake" bring the true voice of the story forth. The language is crass and real. The plot is heavily character driven and moves along well on the strenght of those characters.
This is author, Trevor Byrne's, rookie effort and he nails it out of the gate. He presents an honest account of a typical Dublin twenty -something trying to find his path in life after the death of his mother. Along the way we get a look at the less polished areas of life in Dublin. This story is real and harsh and purely fictional. That's what makes it grand. That's what makes any story grand.
May 14, 2010
ghosts and lightning was an ok book. byrne is a really great writer and i admire his skills at writing the story completely in dublin dialect. you felt like you were friends with all the characters and knew their personalities and mannerisms like you had grown up with them. however, i never got completely absorbed in the book. i could relate to some of the pro-wrestling descriptions and a couple of the british shows they watched, but the book had one of those "coming to terms with myself" plots that i couldn't relate to.
July 3, 2010
An irishman's gift for storytelling and a flourish of prose does not save this book from drowning and floundering. It is only a slice of life book- no matter what the dust jacket would have you believe. If the story had woven the Sean e and ghosts in deeper or more often, there would have been a tether, but instead it floats an drifts without a clear focus. Beautiful nonetheless in most places and worth the read.
May 4, 2021
“Ghosts and Lightning” was very unique in that it seemed so familiar. Trevor Byrne is able to paint such a clear picture of Ireland and Denny that I felt I was part of Denny’s journey. Certainly not going to be everyone’s cup of tea but very well written and 10/10 would recommend.
June 6, 2010
It made me miss Ireland and my friends there. Aside from making me nostalgic, it was a lovely story. Good craic.
February 13, 2022
Trevor Byrne is a fantastically talented creative writer. This book has such a great, fast-paced narrative with wonderfully interesting, believable characters that keep you engrossed in the world of underclass Ireland from cover to cover. Beyond that the book is thematically rich, dealing with loss, life, struggle, love, ambition, and the search for purpose in life in a way that's done just right, neither too subtley nor on the nose. It strikes such a great balance between being a fun, relatable slice-of-life story and a weighty literary novel, that it's an immensely enjoyable and satisfying read.
Read
March 21, 2024Narrator John (Rafter) Lee once again demonstrates his prowess over accents by reading this entire novel in an Irish accent! I wouldn't have recognized his voice had I not tried this solely because he's my fave performer, though he still has a bit of his signature growl/purr even with the higher lilt of his Irish voice.
Plenty of f-bombs and raunchiness right out of the gate -- to which I always say why not, do it XD But I DNF'd this since it doesn't seem much more than a slice-of-life piece set in Ireland, which I've unfortunately not had the pleasure to visit yet, so I didn't feel much attachment to what was going on.
Plenty of f-bombs and raunchiness right out of the gate -- to which I always say why not, do it XD But I DNF'd this since it doesn't seem much more than a slice-of-life piece set in Ireland, which I've unfortunately not had the pleasure to visit yet, so I didn't feel much attachment to what was going on.
October 15, 2019
At the beginning it was really hard for me to get used to the irish dialect in which this book is written. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes secound nature though. The story isn't something super special, but if you are in the right mindset, it may become interesting after all. With that said, I wasn't really feeling the story right from the start, but the secound half of the book became much more joyful to read for some reason unknown to me.
July 15, 2024
This book didn't do too much for me. The main character isn't someone I can get behind in any way. I guess I could relate to some of their youthful foolishness and maybe that frustrated me. I could use a whole lot more ghosts in a book whose title starts with Ghost.
February 9, 2020
So fuckin glad I read this book, especially out fuckin loud 😅
December 27, 2022
Very good and accurate insight into the lives of the Neilstown working class
June 5, 2025
holden caulfield vibes...
December 17, 2018
A delightful, unique portrayal of Ireland with unforgettable characters. The audiobook is especially good.
November 8, 2009
It takes only a few words to turn Denny Cullen’s life upside-down: ‘Ma’s gone. Jesus Denny, yeh have to come home.’ And it takes only a few pages for Trevor Byrne to establish himself as a writer who needs to be read. In that first chapter, Denny makes a hasty return to Dublin, leaving his life in Wales behind; the fragmented second-person impressions of the city, interspersed with the chatter of the twerp from the bus whom he’d rather ignore, convey brilliantly Denny’s sense of numbness at his abrupt loss and return.
The rest of Ghosts and Lightning is told in first-person, in Denny’s Dublin vernacular. It does feel a little awkward, structurally, that the initial ‘frame’ is never returned to; but this is a minor gripe when set against the way thaat the narration brings Denny to life as a character. More than that, actually, I’d say it comes to symbolise Denny’s situation — unable to leave his old life behind, just as his accent will go with him wherever he goes.
Not that Denny’s going anywhere right now. ‘I’m runnin and gettin nowhere at the same time,’ he says. ‘I remember feelin, when I first left for Wales, that I was in control. And I feel anythin but in control now.’ He’s stuck: no job, no transport of his own, living in his mother’s old house with his sister Paula (who has let the place go to seed), estranged from his brothers (one of whom legally owns the house, and may threaten eviction), friends mixed up in drugs… The list goes on. Ghosts and Lightning is a chronicle of how Denny tries to navigate his way through all this.
If all that sounds like hard going, rest assured it is not. The use of vernacular gives the telling an energy that keeps one reading, and there are some nicely amusing scenes along the way (such as when Denny goes to buy a clapped-out old car from his brother, and it turns out to be full of chickens).
However, Byrne’s novel has a serious heart, and is especially concerned (I feel) with how we may try to deal with tragic events, like the death of a close relative. One of the themes that really stands out for me is that of using stories to give shape to life. In Denny’s rather desperate words: ‘Stories though, man. The way they work on yeh. They’re a kind o spell, aren’t they? Or a prayer, maybe, some o them. An article of faith. How the fuck else can yeh make sense o things, like? [...:] There has to be meanin.’
But must there? Ghosts and Lightning is (deliberately, I think) somewhat episodic in structure, its chapters feeling like a series of anecdotes; and it demonstrates how life’s uneven edges are usually smoothed off to create fiction. One sees this, too, in the way Bryne deploys supernatural and mythical concepts. Denny and other characters frequently refer to such things: most prominently, Paula thinks there’s a ghost haunting the house; but there’s also that last quotation above, and many other examples. Yet none of it turns out to be real, nor does it really feel as though Byrne wants us to entertain the possibility — rather, I see it as another manifestation of stories not working in the real world.
If there are problems with Ghosts and Lightning, I think they’re artefacts of the episodic structure to which I referred above. Maybe the plot is not as tight as one might wish, but that’s probably the point. And the structure sets up a particular rhythm of reading that (for me) lessens the impact of some of the shifts in tone (they become one small jolt among many).
However, these are easily ouwteighed by all the good things about the novel. I haven’t yet elaborated on Byrne’s sharp observation of charatcter. Take, for example, this description of two ‘old women obsessed with the clergy’, who attend a funeral: ‘two pious vultures, their eyes filled with gleeful sorrow.’ Or the comment about Denny’s brother’s wife, who insisted they erect a satellite dish because ’she didn’t want people assumin she hadn’t the money for cable TV.’
Places, too, are strikingly described, with Denny suggesting that Ireland has issues of its own to work through: ‘We’re a shoddy country ourselves too, full o guilt and doubt and hidden nastiness. It’s just that, given a possibly brief period o financial well-bein, we happen to scrub up well.’ Denny and his country might, then, be seen as being in analogous situations. During the course of Ghosts and Lightning, we see the difficulties that both have — and, by novel’s end, that there may be a way forward for both. It’s a realistically optimistic end to a fine first novel.
The rest of Ghosts and Lightning is told in first-person, in Denny’s Dublin vernacular. It does feel a little awkward, structurally, that the initial ‘frame’ is never returned to; but this is a minor gripe when set against the way thaat the narration brings Denny to life as a character. More than that, actually, I’d say it comes to symbolise Denny’s situation — unable to leave his old life behind, just as his accent will go with him wherever he goes.
Not that Denny’s going anywhere right now. ‘I’m runnin and gettin nowhere at the same time,’ he says. ‘I remember feelin, when I first left for Wales, that I was in control. And I feel anythin but in control now.’ He’s stuck: no job, no transport of his own, living in his mother’s old house with his sister Paula (who has let the place go to seed), estranged from his brothers (one of whom legally owns the house, and may threaten eviction), friends mixed up in drugs… The list goes on. Ghosts and Lightning is a chronicle of how Denny tries to navigate his way through all this.
If all that sounds like hard going, rest assured it is not. The use of vernacular gives the telling an energy that keeps one reading, and there are some nicely amusing scenes along the way (such as when Denny goes to buy a clapped-out old car from his brother, and it turns out to be full of chickens).
However, Byrne’s novel has a serious heart, and is especially concerned (I feel) with how we may try to deal with tragic events, like the death of a close relative. One of the themes that really stands out for me is that of using stories to give shape to life. In Denny’s rather desperate words: ‘Stories though, man. The way they work on yeh. They’re a kind o spell, aren’t they? Or a prayer, maybe, some o them. An article of faith. How the fuck else can yeh make sense o things, like? [...:] There has to be meanin.’
But must there? Ghosts and Lightning is (deliberately, I think) somewhat episodic in structure, its chapters feeling like a series of anecdotes; and it demonstrates how life’s uneven edges are usually smoothed off to create fiction. One sees this, too, in the way Bryne deploys supernatural and mythical concepts. Denny and other characters frequently refer to such things: most prominently, Paula thinks there’s a ghost haunting the house; but there’s also that last quotation above, and many other examples. Yet none of it turns out to be real, nor does it really feel as though Byrne wants us to entertain the possibility — rather, I see it as another manifestation of stories not working in the real world.
If there are problems with Ghosts and Lightning, I think they’re artefacts of the episodic structure to which I referred above. Maybe the plot is not as tight as one might wish, but that’s probably the point. And the structure sets up a particular rhythm of reading that (for me) lessens the impact of some of the shifts in tone (they become one small jolt among many).
However, these are easily ouwteighed by all the good things about the novel. I haven’t yet elaborated on Byrne’s sharp observation of charatcter. Take, for example, this description of two ‘old women obsessed with the clergy’, who attend a funeral: ‘two pious vultures, their eyes filled with gleeful sorrow.’ Or the comment about Denny’s brother’s wife, who insisted they erect a satellite dish because ’she didn’t want people assumin she hadn’t the money for cable TV.’
Places, too, are strikingly described, with Denny suggesting that Ireland has issues of its own to work through: ‘We’re a shoddy country ourselves too, full o guilt and doubt and hidden nastiness. It’s just that, given a possibly brief period o financial well-bein, we happen to scrub up well.’ Denny and his country might, then, be seen as being in analogous situations. During the course of Ghosts and Lightning, we see the difficulties that both have — and, by novel’s end, that there may be a way forward for both. It’s a realistically optimistic end to a fine first novel.
June 9, 2009
Totally captivating from the first scene in which Denny learns he is bereft of his mother, Ghosts and Lightning is a deeply emotive novel. He is forced to return to Dublin, whilst the ‘city of his birth’, Denny dreamt he had escaped Dubh Linn, the black pool. However, he must once more endure many dark adventures. Bryne’s plot is compelling and the pace, perfection itself.
The reader follows Denny as he meets up with old friends with their wild, often ill-judged, schemes and his family, including his eccentric sister, Paula. Bryne’s characterisation is superb. With masterful subtlety, Ghosts and Lightning deals with the legacy of the characters’ seldom easy pasts while delivering stories that are, above all, amusing. Pajo, with his addled mind and hotchpotch philosophy is a realistic and well-drawn individual who must be almost universally endearing.
One central theme within Ghosts and Lightning is identity, particularly young Irish male identity within the Irish Diaspora. With a near unsurpassable knowledge of Celtic myth, Bryne uses the seanachie, oral storytelling tradition but gives it a modern, urban folkloric flavour too. Bryne clearly comes from the great Irish literary heritage of James Joyce and Roddy Doyle, the rendered dialogue and sometimes choice vocabulary is perfect for his characters. However, Bryne develops those conventions to reflect the reality of present day west Dublin. A place that combines a proud and ancient past with a multicultural modernity created in a decade of the Celtic Tiger. Bryne’s descriptions are breathtaking, at one and the same time poetic and filmic.
“Maggit, his shaven head and angry mouth, the lips pale and stretched, a loopin, cursin, tracksuited shape in the wild evenin, the tent packed high on his back…
Pajo claps and laughs, the three of us beneath the swayin branches of a huge and ancient oak, raindrops fallin fat and sparse about us and ragin beyond. Red mud on the narrow road and the mountaintops wrapped in rags o mist.’
April 22, 2016
Ghosts and lightning cast no shadows
Back home in Dublin after his mum's death, Denny Cullen deals with his sister, who insists the family home is being haunted by a male ghost who is pretending to be a girl. Then, he and some old mates bobble aimlessly from pub to party, as the book devolves into a series of anecdotes about humorous, sad, and violent incidents. There's an interesting seance, and a pretty hilarious bit where Denny tries to buy a car that's currently being used as a chicken coop, AND will need to be lifted by a crane out of the back garden, but on the whole, the book seems empty and pointless. It never really goes anywhere.
Byrne belongs to that peculiar breed of Irish authors who eschew quotation marks, which really never makes for a pleasurable reading experience. This one took me over a week to finish as I wasn't really enjoying it much.
Here's a sample for your perusal to see if it might be your cup of tea . . .
- Yeah so anyway, says Maggit. - There we were playin away, the tree all sparkly and the cards everywhere and wrapping paper on Pajo's head and wha happens? Me da comes in - fuckin sneaks in like; we never heard a fuckin sound, the sleeveen fucking shite - and he whacks me full force in the back o the head with the bleedin leg o ham for the Christmas dinner. The leg o fuckin ham!
I probably should have warned you, this book is NOT recommended to supporters of Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and/or graduates of Liberty University.
Back home in Dublin after his mum's death, Denny Cullen deals with his sister, who insists the family home is being haunted by a male ghost who is pretending to be a girl. Then, he and some old mates bobble aimlessly from pub to party, as the book devolves into a series of anecdotes about humorous, sad, and violent incidents. There's an interesting seance, and a pretty hilarious bit where Denny tries to buy a car that's currently being used as a chicken coop, AND will need to be lifted by a crane out of the back garden, but on the whole, the book seems empty and pointless. It never really goes anywhere.
Byrne belongs to that peculiar breed of Irish authors who eschew quotation marks, which really never makes for a pleasurable reading experience. This one took me over a week to finish as I wasn't really enjoying it much.
Here's a sample for your perusal to see if it might be your cup of tea . . .
- Yeah so anyway, says Maggit. - There we were playin away, the tree all sparkly and the cards everywhere and wrapping paper on Pajo's head and wha happens? Me da comes in - fuckin sneaks in like; we never heard a fuckin sound, the sleeveen fucking shite - and he whacks me full force in the back o the head with the bleedin leg o ham for the Christmas dinner. The leg o fuckin ham!
I probably should have warned you, this book is NOT recommended to supporters of Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and/or graduates of Liberty University.
October 28, 2010
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
At first I was tempted to dismiss the 2009 character dramedy Ghosts & Lightning, the latest by hip Irish writing professor Trevor Byrne, because of it being almost identical in both theme and tone to so many other youngish Commonwealth authors like Roddy Doyle, Nick Hornby and Irvine Welsh; it is yet another look at charming yet troubled blue-collar underemployed males in a former part of the British Empire (Dublin in this case), the women who love them, and the trouble they are always getting into, told through phonetically sounded-out dialogue from that actual region. But I'll be damned if I didn't end up loving it anyway; because despite the above being true, Byrne at least does an impeccable job at it, turning in a story that is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, in a style that is both exotic to American ears yet easy to understand and follow. I don't really have much to say about it that hasn't been said a thousand times already about other such books; but if you're looking for yet another one in this vein to enjoy, it'd be hard to go wrong with this leisurely paced deep character study.
Out of 10: 8.9
At first I was tempted to dismiss the 2009 character dramedy Ghosts & Lightning, the latest by hip Irish writing professor Trevor Byrne, because of it being almost identical in both theme and tone to so many other youngish Commonwealth authors like Roddy Doyle, Nick Hornby and Irvine Welsh; it is yet another look at charming yet troubled blue-collar underemployed males in a former part of the British Empire (Dublin in this case), the women who love them, and the trouble they are always getting into, told through phonetically sounded-out dialogue from that actual region. But I'll be damned if I didn't end up loving it anyway; because despite the above being true, Byrne at least does an impeccable job at it, turning in a story that is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, in a style that is both exotic to American ears yet easy to understand and follow. I don't really have much to say about it that hasn't been said a thousand times already about other such books; but if you're looking for yet another one in this vein to enjoy, it'd be hard to go wrong with this leisurely paced deep character study.
Out of 10: 8.9
February 23, 2010
I won this book in a First Reads giveaway.
A strong debut novel about life among lower-class Dubliners, Trevor Byrne uses a colloquial, unorthodox, writing style to disorient and entrap the reader, forcing them to empathize with his despairing protagonist or, if the reader is less determined, make them give up entirely.
While the plot itself offers little new, the patient reader will find joy in the finer details of character development and humorous moments shared by the not-quite-grown-up Denny and his friends as they get by on very little, unsure of how to get out of their rut.
Byrne's work was not genericised for American consumption and I say that to its credit. However I feel there are portions, not in vocabulary where one can pick up meanings contextually, that are probably more rewarding if you have a deep knowledge of Irish lore and culture, or at least knowledge significantly less shallow than mine.
Worth a look if you like stories about underdogs and/or Ireland in particular.
A strong debut novel about life among lower-class Dubliners, Trevor Byrne uses a colloquial, unorthodox, writing style to disorient and entrap the reader, forcing them to empathize with his despairing protagonist or, if the reader is less determined, make them give up entirely.
While the plot itself offers little new, the patient reader will find joy in the finer details of character development and humorous moments shared by the not-quite-grown-up Denny and his friends as they get by on very little, unsure of how to get out of their rut.
Byrne's work was not genericised for American consumption and I say that to its credit. However I feel there are portions, not in vocabulary where one can pick up meanings contextually, that are probably more rewarding if you have a deep knowledge of Irish lore and culture, or at least knowledge significantly less shallow than mine.
Worth a look if you like stories about underdogs and/or Ireland in particular.
March 23, 2010
This is lazily copied from the review I wrote for Amazon.
When it comes to Celtic Noir, Declan Hughes gives us the tragic tough guy, Adrian McKinty the poetic, now, Trevor Byrne introduces us to Denny, a guy whose toughness only comes out in his ability to take a punch.
Denny mourns both the Mother he's lost and the brothers and sister he still has. He wants a car, a girl, and a clean house, but each time he's presented with an object of desire, he'll do anything except hold on to it.
Yet, he's fun, and honest, and naively romantic without romanticizing drink, drugs, or Dublin.
Ghosts and Lightning is delightfully profane and reeking of Joycean paralysis. In it, Byrne juxtaposes professional wrestling, casual police beat downs, and the implacable brutality of low-tech violence. Not to mention terrifying sheep, giant moths, and a spirit that just might be Chuchulainn.
I wanted to re-read it as soon as I turned the last page.
Besides, how can you not love a book that introduces "manky" to your vocabulary.
When it comes to Celtic Noir, Declan Hughes gives us the tragic tough guy, Adrian McKinty the poetic, now, Trevor Byrne introduces us to Denny, a guy whose toughness only comes out in his ability to take a punch.
Denny mourns both the Mother he's lost and the brothers and sister he still has. He wants a car, a girl, and a clean house, but each time he's presented with an object of desire, he'll do anything except hold on to it.
Yet, he's fun, and honest, and naively romantic without romanticizing drink, drugs, or Dublin.
Ghosts and Lightning is delightfully profane and reeking of Joycean paralysis. In it, Byrne juxtaposes professional wrestling, casual police beat downs, and the implacable brutality of low-tech violence. Not to mention terrifying sheep, giant moths, and a spirit that just might be Chuchulainn.
I wanted to re-read it as soon as I turned the last page.
Besides, how can you not love a book that introduces "manky" to your vocabulary.
October 15, 2010
I wasn't sure if I was going to finish this book when I started it. A lot of foul words and the Irish brogue was so heavy I really had to listen. I got sucked into this crazy bunch of characters and was glad I finished it. It was rather comical and I had to know where he was going with this story or rather a maze of stories. I guess for this group of people the language was appropriate but I swear :) the f work was in every paragraph had I actually seen the paragraph to see the words. This was the quirkiest book I have listened to in a long time. The story is told by Denny who is suddenly called back to his homeland, Ireland when is mam dies. He hooks up with his old buddies and the escapades begin. One of my favorite parts is when he is given a book that is 4 years overdue from the library. Cool.....
December 12, 2011
This is not a book for the linguistically faint of heart. Do not read it if you are at all offended by bad language, because the characters, using Dublin colloquialisms, curse every other word. That is also part of what makes this book so funny.
Denny's mother has just passed away and he is forced to leave his life in Wales, to be with his family in Dublin. He spends time with his old friends, who like him, have seemed not to have done much growing up. They get involved with drugs, drinking, general trouble-making and even a seance!
I liked this book after a while. I think my biggest problem with it was that I listened to it as an audiobook. It is written (and narrated) in full-on Dublin street dialect, which proved to be a real challenge to my untrained ears. Once I got used to the language, this was an often hilariously funny books, with almost no plot.
Denny's mother has just passed away and he is forced to leave his life in Wales, to be with his family in Dublin. He spends time with his old friends, who like him, have seemed not to have done much growing up. They get involved with drugs, drinking, general trouble-making and even a seance!
I liked this book after a while. I think my biggest problem with it was that I listened to it as an audiobook. It is written (and narrated) in full-on Dublin street dialect, which proved to be a real challenge to my untrained ears. Once I got used to the language, this was an often hilariously funny books, with almost no plot.
October 23, 2012
This is a book where not much happens and I usually don't go for that as someone who likes a good amount of plot. The book is short enough however to make you feel like you have to finish it and I'm glad I did. The basic plot is a guy's mom dies and he comes to Ireland and falls back in with his old crowd and tries to figure out why he left in the first place.
For a place that is fetishized for its history its good to see Ireland portrayed in this as a place firmly in the 21st century. Dublin is a globalized city for good or ill and the characters are each making their own way with the reality they have. A lot of it is masked in the characters telling stories about what they used to do and avoiding talking about the present which adds to the melancholy. Things are slowly pulled back and can make things feel like slowly pulling a band aid off.
For a place that is fetishized for its history its good to see Ireland portrayed in this as a place firmly in the 21st century. Dublin is a globalized city for good or ill and the characters are each making their own way with the reality they have. A lot of it is masked in the characters telling stories about what they used to do and avoiding talking about the present which adds to the melancholy. Things are slowly pulled back and can make things feel like slowly pulling a band aid off.
December 19, 2009
I received Ghosts and Lightning through the Goodreads giveaways and was happy to find it was a pretty great read. It was bold, sweet, funny, frightening, and hopeful. The story is of a lost young Dublin man just after his mother's death, coming to terms with that and with the rudderless feeling that comes with settling into who you are at that point in life. It's mad and real, and seems effortless in the way that many novels by first-time authors fail to be. Author Trevor Byrne perfectly captures the voice of a man smarter than his surroundings and unsure what to do with the bigger-than-life thoughts and desires to love and protect his friends and family when he feels powerless and adrift. Definitely recommended.
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