OK... this is my first exposure to Patrick McCabe, and it's because I was at the library and just happened to pick this up... Emerald Germs of Ireland. It's a rather dark, morbid story, but one that I found strangely fascinating...

Pat McNab is a 45 year old guy who lives (or I should say "lived") with his mother. She's a domineering sort, and Pat was raised in a somewhat feminine fashion. But one day he cracks and ends up killing his mother by "blunt force trauma". To cover up the crime, he buries her out in the backyard. Of course, the small Irish town he lives in notices her absence, and Pat explains it away as her having left to do some traveling. That matricide event starts the unraveling of what's left of his sanity, and also starts a series of murders (and garden additions) needed to prevent others from "discovering" his previous crime. You're never quite sure what's real and what's not in his world, but it's best not to become part of it...

Many books like this would paint everything in a dark, sinister fashion. McCabe goes more for the comically absurd, and slowly paints a picture of McNab's background with each new encounter. While the subject matter isn't something you'd find funny, I couldn't help but laugh at some of the scenes that he painted for the reader. And once the magical mushrooms were introduced, you really didn't have a clue as to where things were going (or what was real vs. imagined). I'm intrigued enough to put him on my list of authors I need to catch up on...

After reading "Breakfast on Pluto" and not liking it,I thought I'd try something else by McCabe.I soon found this was much the same kind of writing ;I plodded to page 180 ,then packed it in. If dark,troubled,tortured,twisted and morose fiction that doesn't seem to go anywhere is what one enjoys; there's pleanty of it here.I note that other reviewers have rated it very high or very low;which to me doesn't say that it was good or bad ;but that some liked it while others didn't.This can often be determined rather quickly by opening a book and reading a couple of pages at random.

This is about as dark as you can get: a funny tale of an accidental serial killer. Accidental, you say? What could you mean? This poor man does not want to be a serial killer. Blood, guts and gore do not arouse him. He simply wants to be left alone and kills the people who get in the way of his dreams. Ah, black humor...So wonderful and so misunderstood!

This book was truly wonderful. A genuine masterpiece of dark comedy. I've read a few of Pat McCabe's books, and I have enjoyed this one the most. I read the other reviews and was abhorred at the reactions. I encourage potential readers to dismiss these reviews. Pat McCabe is a special author, either you love him or you hate him. These people hated him mostly because of "The Butcher Boy." I'd like to inform them that "The Butcher Boy" was indeed a great book, but it was also a different book. This is distinctly different from his other books. I ask you to just read the first chapter. If you don't like it, put it down. But if you do like it, no one will be able to pry it from your hands.

I read about 8 books a month, all different genres and have done this for most of my life. As a voracious reader I have tastes that range from the sublime to the ridiculous, but this book fit in none of those categories. It was not "An American Psycho" which of course depicted an amusing protagonist with 'an axe to grind'a cultural icon necessary for the books purpose. I am intimately familiar with Irish sensibility and this represented none of it. Your man in this book was a non character and not amusing in the least, to follow this dullard's progress through the book was probably the worst fate he dealt.