Terrific characters. The plot dragged a bit

The quickest way to thin out a shelf of great novels is to restrict yourself to the funny ones. Instead of alphabetizing the bounty that pours in every year, you'll be left casting about for a small vase to hold up the two or three contenders from each decade.

We've got plenty of good humorists in America, but looking for a really substantive comic novel could turn the National Book Award into one of those obscure mathematics prizes that grows dusty waiting for someone to find the last digit of pi.

Perhaps because they got an earlier start or the weather is so bad, the British Isles always seem to have produced more serious comic novelists than America (but we still have more Krispy Kremes). The latest writer to join that pantheon of wit is Irishman Paul Murray. His debut, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, was a finalist for The Whitbread First Novel Award last year, but it lost to Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre's rancid satire of the Columbine tragedy, which also won the Booker Prize in a depressing suspension of literary taste.

Murray follows the well-trod path of comic novels narrated by pompous windbags. (Which reminds me, to be fair, I should acknowledge the Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Confederacy of Dunces in 1981. But in that rare exception, the prize arrived long after the author had killed himself, which muffles the laughter somewhat.) Murray's narrator is Charles Hythloday, a penniless young aristocrat who seems to have wandered out of a Noel Coward play in his dressing gown. At 24, Charles has abandoned college and taken to the chaise longue to sip cocktails, watch old movies, and stand guard against anything modern that might threaten the eternal stability of his ancestral estate.

Between his incurable laziness and his infuriating superiority, there doesn't seem to be much to admire about Charles. He's a double-wrapped egotist, protected from the world by the walls of his mother's decrepit mansion and by his impenetrable sense of privilege. He's the kind of snob who accidentally knocks down the overworked cook while she's carrying his late-night snack and then generously tells her to go off to bed and get some rest -- as soon as she's cleaned up the floor.

"To the casual observer it may have looked like I was living a life of indolence," he says. "It was not true, however, to say that I did nothing.... I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. The idea was to do whatever one did with grace, to imbue one's every action with beauty, while at the same time making it look quite effortless."

We meet him at the moment that his convincing simulation of effortlessness is disturbed by a series of challenges:

First, the bank is about to repossess the house by collecting on mortgages that Charles didn't even know his late father had taken out. For months, he's been stuffing collection notices into a spare drawer.

Second, his theatrical sister, who hates the house and is determined to escape it, has brought home the latest and lowest in a line of lovers whom Charles loathes. (His objections to her previous boyfriends sound suspicious: One wore socks with sandals, another was "so Scottish.")

And finally, his glacial mother returns from rehab filled with the fervor of tough-love and self-help lingo, determined that Charles should get a job. "A job!" he thinks, stunned by the audacity of that suggestion. "This was the thanks I got for trying to save a few shreds of family dignity." But his mother is immovable on this point, and Charles storms out of the house, sans allowance.

As wittily as Murray satirizes his bombastic hero in a crumbling castle, some of the best scenes in this novel focus on the equally inane working world that Charles plunges into, hoping perhaps to find something paying six-figures in that information-technology revolution he's heard rumors about.

Clueless as Charles is, his acidic sarcasm provides a delicious commentary on the vacuous cant of employee motivation efforts, the venal world of temp agencies, the slave conditions of immigrant workers. His awful experiences in a "yule log" factory are enough to convince us that he may be right: There is something dreadful about modern culture, so consumed with getting and spending.

There's plenty of zany slapstick mixed in here, too: explosions, dueling, opening-night disasters, dinner-party brawls, a drunken postman hiding in the bushes. For reasons I won't ruin for you, Charles spends most of the novel with his head entirely bound in gauze like some dashing version of "The Mummy Takes Manhattan." But the serious currents of Murray's novel come in like the tide, so gradually that we hardly notice until it's too late and the laughter catches in our throats. Deep down, Charles loves his sister very profoundly, very tenderly, and what he's really trying to preserve -- the delight of their childhood -- seems all the more beautiful and tragic once he understands that it's irreparably shattered.

Long Goodbyes is probably too long by 100 pages, as though Murray thought he'd only have this one chance to get everything in. But he needn't have worried. As a searing critic of contemporary life, a searching observer of sibling relations, and particularly a comic writer, he's at the beginning of a long, witty career. Tuck this one in your robe to pursue some valuable leisure of your own.

Originally published in The Christian Science Monitor.

Murray's sophomore novel, Skippy Dies was on my top ten list for 2011. I was delighted to discover his first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, after finishing Skippy Dies . Reaction to the first one is mixed here on GoodReads and I do agree that it's picaresque structure often meandered a wee bit too much to sustain deep interest. Nevertheless, I think this was brilliantly done and is a perfect indicator of the talent that Murray displayed with his second effort. I suspect that the mixed reaction to it is due somewhat to a change in what seems like the theme but is more the opening premise. The protagonist, Charles Hythloday, is introduced to the reader as a Bertie Wooster for the 21st century and for the first sections of the book Charles fulfills those expectations brilliantly. Murray, however, is up to something more than emulating the sainted Wodehouse, and so Charles is ejected from the stately confines of Amaurot, the family mansion and forced to make his way in the world. Thus begins the journey and a strange and often hilarious one it is. It's just that he's no longer Bertie. perhaps, as an Amazon blurb puts it he now more like Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. No matter, I think the journey worth following. Murray's reflections on modern Dublin in the midst of the now vanished "Irish Miracle" are spot on. An additional delight is that Charles, who occupies his spare time watching classic movies, is composing a "monograph" on 50s star Gene Tierney and chunks of that project are scattered throughout the novel. Although some have found these parts distracting I enjoyed them. Tierney's tragic story is gripping -- once one of Hollywood's biggest female stars--she broke down and was committed to a hospital where she underwent electric shock therapy. Like Charles, however, she overcomes those obstacles and makes peace with life as it is.

Perhaps the goodbyes went on a little too long?

An absolute mess of a plot--especially near the end--and generous helpings of melodrama do not outweigh the fact that Murray's picaresque novel is wildly funny at the sentence level and in several whole sections as well. Some of the best parts are those in which the layabout wastrel Charles is ejected from his stately home and, in an exceedingly improbable move, takes refuge in a hovel with his sister's loutish ex-boyfriend. Naturally the lout turns out to have a heart of gold etc., but luckily not until readers get their money's worth out of him. Murray makes a few obligatory points about the new Ireland vs the old Ireland, but you don't get to cook up a story this implausible and then have people take you seriously.

There are some very creepy incestuous overtones here, and furthermore why Gene Tierney? She's just not camp enough. Still, a good tune-up for SKIPPY DIES.

Brilliant

This book was okay!
Initially I was really charmed by the main character who reminded me of myself as a naive college dropout a little bit, and somehow the fact he was obsessed with 40s movies made him seem quintessentially early ‘00s. The character sketch was fantastic, but as the book went on for over 400 pages the plot was less enthralling. I never really felt tied to any outcome or anxious about what would happen next, it just felt a bit like it was going on and on and on.

I don't know how to express how much I absolutely loved this book. I read it while I was unemployed and looking for work and this book was my best friend.

I laughed so much I cried, and I kept forgetting his head was mummified which just had me laughing even harder when it was mentioned.  

Charles is an infuriating yet lovable character, I loved every last minute of reading this book and was so sad to see it end.

This earlier novel was very different to The Bee Sting.

I overcame my dislike of long chapters for Murray's later book as I was so drawn into it. This one had interesting parts and showed promise but it didn't really engage me and most chapters felt over-long.

I read his more recent novel, Skippy Dies, several months ago and loved it, so I sought out An Evening of Long Goodbyes, his first book. It was funny and quirky, but in a different vein than Skippy Dies and I had a little trouble getting into it. The main character is a throwback to another time and completely clueless, but that is his appeal.

I have other books waiting for me that are more appealing. This one was okay, but pretty long for a book that I was only marginally interested in.

“You had seabirds, as I recall? I believe you kept several egrets?"
Hoyland stood a moment, looking off into the distance. "Egrets?" he said. "I've had a few. But, then again, too few to mention…”

i mean come on that’s a great line