The novel is speculative fiction, set in the near future, the year 2053, in a city on the west coast of Ireland, namely Bohane.
Not a lot of explaining in the novel as to the Bohane world of the future. In some ways, its very much like what we know, but things are obviously altered. There doesn't seem to be much use of the energy sources we rely on these days, hence a lot of walking and public transport. It seems a darker place, without ready electricity, garbage pickups, proper sewage. No computers or cellular communications. No Facebook "friendships".Bohane reminds me a bit of places like Somalia, where central authority and order as we know it have ceased to exist. It is clan vs clan, neighborhood vs neighborhood. The language at first was difficult for me to fathom, which complicated my attempts to fathom Barry's shambling Malthusian society. Think of James Joyce, Anthony Burgess, Irvine Welsh and the new Scottish School, as to the language. In some ways I think of the great J.G. Ballard's novels like Concrete Island, and High Rise. In his novel, the evolution of language and accompanying slang continues as one would logically expect. Even people who remember the near past, before things change have a fuzzy memory, and people often misremember things as much as they recall. Much like that old childhood exercise where you have children whisper a message to each other--when the message reaches the final child it is quite different, often unrecognizable from the original.
I also think a lot about the E-network, and of course Adam Ant, Bow Wow & the New Romantics, and all that punk-rock pirate foppery. There are constant detailed descriptions of the clothing that everyone wears in the book, making you wonder at times whether this was set in Italy instead of Eire.
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| K Beez wit the Remedy... |
And just the outrageous ostentatiously colorful garb described, particularly the Fancy Boys who are for the most part running Bohane at the start of the novel, reminds me of the whole Adam Ant deal. I could see a film adaptation of this with Joan Rivers asking the characters "who are you wearing".And even though for a lot of people Adam Ant signifies some of the more ridiculous aspects of the 80's, some of his music is quite interesting and pretty clever. Mostly the early stuff--I like the drums. And as this novel, suggests, as much as the world changes, as long as there are people, there will still be celebrity and celebrity worship, pomp and pageantry, propaganda as produced by newspapermen like Dom Gleeson, and sociopathic politicians like Logan and fixers like Ol' Boy Mannion. And of course the cruelty and viciousness, the profane vitality, the human on human violence seen in the brutality and machinations of the main characters in the novel. A cautionary tale yet also a celebratory of life at the same time. There is no shortage of nostalgia and warmth, even in the tough, uncertain world the characters of the novel inhabit.
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| Turn off the cellphone, and do us all a favor. |
Don't want to spoil the book for those of you who are interested, so let me just say that I recommend it pretty highly. I've read a few good books the past few months, but this is up at the top of the list, along with Swamplandia! by Karen Russell and The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht. Not as excited about A Visit from The Goon Squad, though I wanted to be. Though not a bad read, definitely worth reading. Maybe if I read it again I will enjoy it more. But take City of Bohane out for a spin. It's a cool blend of science fiction, linguistics, popular culture, sociology, history, political science all thrown together in a big sweaty, smelly heap. I can't wait to read his next short story collection, Dark Lies the Island. His earlier collection, There are Little Kingdoms was pretty brilliant. Barry is definitely well on his way.
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