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Title: Baring All in Barntrosna
Review: From behind the shield of his narrative's narrator, Phildy Hackball, Patrick McCabe hazards forth once again to peel away the myths we'd still like to believe about Ireland and about human beings. It's the sort of expose he's done before, masterfully, in the Butcher Boy and again in The Dead School. Unfortunately, for this reader, Mondo Desperado lacks the narrative focus, depth of insight, and most importantly, any shred of sympathy for the human curiosities on display. By telling his tales through an eccentric narrator, McCabe allows his own eccentric voice too much free rein. The lack of discipline is telling: the verbal riffs are not as sharp, the flashes of embarassing insight not so difficult to ignore. Ultimately the humour, black as ever with McCabe, fails to be funny because the pillory is overcrowded. Barntrosna becomes little more than a roadside attraction; the serial of stories a sort of "Failte Isteach" in a funhouse mirror. I failed to find the fun though.
