As a Skippy Dies superfan, I approached this book with a lot of excitement. I was disappointed for the first half of the book (hence the 3 stars), although Murray found his stride in the second half, and brought things together in powerful ways that would warrant 4 or 5 stars. However, I went with the lower marks because it was such a slog to get to that part that I was tempted on several occasions to put it aside.

Despite my lower review, there is a lot to love. There are several passages that are laugh-out-loud funny. There are some madcap plot twists that are outrageously bold and manage to pull it off. And there is a deep humanity to the protagonists that emerges slowly and satisfyingly, after spending too many chapters in caricature.

If you have time and patience, it's well worth a read. It's especially impressive that this is a first novel, and you can see Murray's considerable talent as he hones and sharpens it mid-stream.

Typical Paul Murray hilarity! Only Paul could make me laugh at someone's last words and deepest troubles. This is the third book by Paul that I have read and while it was perhaps not his most refined work, I definitely enjoyed it immensely. I hope he's working on another book!

As a debut novel, I suppose one has to commend this for attempting a high degree of difficulty. Set in late 1990s Ireland, the author has explicitly taken some of the plot and themes of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and remixed them in the surprisingly spot-on pastiche of a Wodehouse farce. And while Chekhov's play also mixes tragedy and farce, the combination here didn't quite work for me.

The protagonist is a Bertie Woosterish 24-year-old college dropout, who lolls around his family's large country mansion outside Dublin, drinking through the family cellar and watching old black and white movies, and gathering material for a proposed critical study of actress Gene Tierney. His aspiring actress sister also lives there, while their mother is in some kind of asylum and their father is dead.

The first third of the book is largely a send-up of this anachronistic mode of pseudo-aristocratic life, and while it's amusingly done at times, it does drag on a bit as the reader waits for reality to intrude. The middle third covers the hero's absurd attempt to rescue the house from foreclosure, introduces a family of Bosnian refugees to the story, and sees the return of the mother. Her return leads to a promising plotline that sees him kicked out of the house, forced to move into a crumbling shared apartment in a shabby part of Dublin. There are some decent fish-out-of-water comic scenes (imagine Wooster contending with modern world manners of his just released from jail, junkie/DJ roommate, and you get the idea). The final third focuses on the schemes to save the house by turning it into a non-profit cultural space (with the help of an Irish mobile phone company), and veers off into satire about the "Celtic Tiger" economic boom, including a subplot about immigrant workers at a bakery factory.

Behind all the comedic elements lurks the pain of a dysfunctional family, and it's that contrast that didn't work for me, especially when things get heavy at the end. The problem is that you need the frothy, shallow characters to pull off the comedy, but they can't bear the weight of real pain. There are some great scenes and some great lines, but too few and too scattered in too long a book for me to recommend it.

I've finally learned to put a book down when I don't like it, but I have not yet learned to immediately cull it from my shelves. As a result, I'm hit with pangs of guilt whenever I walk by. Until this past weekend, this one was still politely clearing its throat at me any time I said, "Hmm, what should I read next?" It's finally out of my house and on its way to seduce and disappoint the next reader.

There's promise here, there really is, but the rest of it was so hard to enjoy that had to give up on those few promising nuggets. If every time I hang out with you, you're enjoyable for about 5 out of 60 minutes, my self-esteem is eventually going to forbid me from continuing the relationship.

Starts well, finishes very well but sags significantly in the middle. Much of what makes his two most recent novels so outstanding, is, however, on display in this debut.

It’s both funny and depressing. The plot meanders about around family drama, friendship, and the story of an actress. I found it a fascinating and generally uplifting read though it deals with some heavy themes.

"An Evening of Long Goodbyes" is that rare character-driven novel rich in wit and humor accompanied by periods of endearing poignancy and an engaging story line. Paul Murray can really write and his themes seem to come from his own experience in Ireland as a TCD man and impoverished as an English tutor, like Joyce, in Barcelona to blend his life among both the upper and working classes. Charles is a man born into the upper-class of Dublin in a family whose financial fortunes are currently in a state of rapid decline. Charles has a fond sensibility and even an obsession for the troubled actress, Gene Tierney. His father is enriched until his death as a wealthy inventor of make-up and perfumes which transform women by virtue of their masks into daunting figures of power. Consequently, after living a life of ease Charles is compelled to see what it's like to struggle economically just to survive. The twists and turns of life in reversals of fortune inevitably seem to bring out the true character of a person in that s/he either rises or falls after a series of catastrophes like a kind of Irish Job amid the height of the economy of the Celtic Tiger. In the case of Charles we are pulling for him to get his life together to become a real human being with a grown-up sense of responsibility to his family and friends who desperately need his support. Murray writes effortlessly and convincingly in both high and low society settings. The best parts of the novel for me turn up when Charles is paired against his social antithesis, Frank, who deals in the low-end salvage business: he's a tough guy with a big heart. The interplay between these two polar opposites synthesized some high caliber, comic wit. Other characters emerge as undocumented aliens living in Ireland as refugees of the Croatian War. The dialogue is stunning in its verisimilitude both high and low. Murray states that as a Dubliner he was influenced by Joyce and Beckett: how could he not be? The influence of Beckett is easy to see as the main character is overwhelmed on many occasions by disasters shot like lightning bolts from the gods and by epic self-inflicted wounds. His hardships prove instructive and his transformation through his suffering fortify his character until we ache for him as one disaster after another befalls him like a script from Beckett and the theater of the absurd. When confronted with the beastly hardships of life, Charles longs just to escape into a romantic ideal but life won't let him linger long in this treacherous self-imposed place of false refuge. Existence is constantly dragging him outside his refuge to get knocked down, beat-up, mugged, struck by explosion so that he wanders bruised and bandaged and about the head like a mummy to be chastened for his inability to deal with harsh reality. Charles is the first-cousin of every protagonist of the novels of that other Irish genius, JP Donleavy. Murray presents us with two endings focused upon the fate of his actress sister, Bel, including one "with the endless dreams of seaweed braided arms, the countless glimpses of her in clouds, billboards, the faces of strangers... where people disappear only to reappear elsewhere, with French accents and false mustaches, where everything is constantly changing and nobody ever dies." He evokes in a dream the living persona of Yeats who is liberally quoted throughout the novel. There is high intelligence in the writing of this first novel and great craftsmanship, which strongly suggest that Murray may well enjoy a prolific future as a novelist. I certainly hope so: this novel was a real joy to read and leaves me eager to explore his other work.

Couldn’t read it

Maybe more like 3.5.

This insufferable and unreliable narrator was very entertaining! I didn’t realize at first that it was written in the early 2000’s so between the anachronistic language and setting, I had a hard time figuring out quite where I was, but also I kinda just leaned into the mystery. It was indeed too long and there were paragraphs that I skipped. I’m still happy I read it though and plan to read other Murray novels.

One of those when you start into it and start dreading the number of pages, as it's only mildly amusing, and probably would have worked better as a much shorter experience.

I had picked this up from a thrift store because it had a bunch of stuff on the cover about being a funny read - and it was clearly new/modern enough to be a very easy read. It was ~460 pages, so it took awhile. But there were some good laughs. I enjoyed the repeated use of the word "Golem" when describing a mysterious and sort of revolting person.

I felt the book was both too heavy and too loose with metaphors and what not. The characters were alright. The fussy sister was just ok, but ultimately it felt like the book was about her even though the "main character" was Charlie. Charlie had a fun sort of ignorance that felt a lot like Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. I didn't much care for the "twist" at the end, and how it felt like Charles didn't really confront the problem in any way. I guess that might be a part of the character I didn't like though - and not the actual book.

I was continually surprised when the book referenced something modern because with all the talk of a castle-like mansion I was really thinking it was older. Not that it really matters. And I'm not sure how I really feel about the lesson or whatever was trying to be gotten across with the refugee talk or if it was just more rambling - but I DID laugh about the *There are Bosnians In My Attic* title.

Probably won't read again, but was good enough.

I’m not the first to compare the narrator, Charles, to Bertie Wooster, the spoiled ignoramus of P. G. Wodehouse books. By paragraph two, I had him pegged as a Wooster clone, when he confessed, “I’d been out the night before with Pongo McGurks and possibly overdone it a little, insofar as I’d woken up on the billiard table with a splitting headache and wearing someone else’s sarong.” I don’t suffer fools gladly unless they’re the stuff of comedy, but this novel is hilarious, ranging from wry, very literate humor to laugh-out-loud slapstick. Poor Charles doesn’t have a Jeeves to save the day after he’s muddled things up.

The story begins a bit slowly; after all, we do need to know how do-nothing Charles comes to be in a serious predicament that puts his family and future at risk. Then boom! Things explode and the plots head off into many directions and dimensions foreign to a Jeeves-Wooster book. This novel is more intimate, sometimes vulgar, dangerous, full of angst, pain, worry, and tenderness. I love the humor involving Chekov and W. B. Yeats. Unlike Wooster, Charles does eventually come to some new insights, self-awareness, and changes in priorities. He grew on me, though I’d be wary of inviting him to my home for a stay.