Title: Dated Venom
Product review: Biting at the Grave, now justly forgotten, was intended to revile the ten IRA hunger-strikers whose deaths were creating trouble for Thatcher. O'Malley doesn't do a particularly good job of it; the same sort of slander was being done much better by Paul Johnson. O'Malley--whose absurdly Irished-up name is intended to wrap the green vowels 'round his obvious loathing for all things Irish--is only a servile, native auxiliary.Irish Uncle Toms have never been difficult to find, and for obvious reasons they have no difficulty finding publishers. But even in their grimy company, this would-be author (who's never produced another book, having expended all his venom on this one) stands out as a perfect metonymy for the cruelty, self-serving, and above all the sheer stupidity of the rightwing pseuds of the Reagan/Thatcher era.
Would you say this review depicts the product in a flattering or unflattering light?
