A brilliantly funny book which takes a darker turn towards the finale. Reminiscent of Wodehouse at times, An Evening of Long Goodbyes concerns Charles, a bumbling, workshy middle/upper class buffoon, who has never had to lift a finger his entire life. However things go awry for him when the details of his deceased Father's finances become apparent, meaning there may be no money left to keep up his idle lifestyle.

That said, despite the book being written in the first person as Charles', it's arguably more about his sister Bel, a frustrated actress who seems much more clued up on life than her brother. She has some dark family secrets in her locker and is frustrated by Charles' hedonistic pastimes.

It's also a general overview of society in general. Charles initially holds Bel's boyfriend Frank in low disregard, due to him being of the coarse working classes. But as the book progresses the two become quite close and Frank re-evaluates both the man and his background. Not to mention the immigrant families and workers whom Charles comes into contact with.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. It gave me quite a few belly laughs, some pause for thought and a few moral (if predictable) niceties, as well as a bunch of involving characters. It's more than just a comedy however, with an engaging plot that's not without a few twists. Great stuff.

To mark this as "read" would be a lie but I just can't read this anymore. I kept trying, hoping it would pick up, but I'm half way through and I'm sick of Charles. In my opinion the book needed extensive editing...or complete rewriting. There was promise but it couldn't keep up with a wandering plot.

paul murray always wins writing people who keep messing up their own lives in a comical fashion (though doesn't win writing women to be as fleshed out as his hapless male characters) and this is so debut novel--names pulled from references to Hamlet, Utopia, Chekhov, secret societies, huge conceptual projects that are summarized in the last 90% of the novel, etc.

This is a lovely tale and a heroic effort by Paul Murray in his first outing. Parts of the book are hilariously funny and the characters, particularly Charles and Frank are very well drawn. Paul Murray's father was the professor of my postgraduate course in Modern Drama, and much love (and satire) of Chekhov and others is passed down to his son. Yeats is prominent too, and this may be the only novel in the English language where Ozymandias has been suggested as a name for a dog!

There are some weaknesses too. Murray hasn't quite found his voice and his ideal rhythms. The book is sometimes too ambitious and digresses into quasi philosophical and pseudo intellectual wanderings. These are out of sync with the humour, ironies and implausibilities that make large parts of this book such a beguiling tale. I'm not sure how well he manages to hold humour and pathos in tension at critical moments. Thankfully these weakness are rectified magnificently in the wonderful Skippy Dies.

I love this writer. His mix of dark humour and thoughtful social commentary is delightful.

Gosh I had such high hopes for this book. Described as a combination of P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster, "with a cantankerous dash of A Confederacy of Dunces' Ignatius J. Reilly", I didn't think how it could possibly go wrong - expect I wondered how could it pull off that sort of out-dated language? And in fact that might be the weakness of the book. It just doesn't. I laughed out loud right away, as it happens, and yet it didn't sustain. It was a DNF for me. I just didn't care about the characters.

For all the fun, a serious message did come through toward the end. It is a fun romp but not my usual preferred style. Great for folks who like Wodehouse.

Didn't read

DNF @ 32% I wanted to like this book, but I just don’t get the point of it. There was no plot to it, while it was funny at times, I just did not get the overall point of the book.

Pretty funny, but somewhat too long-winded. It could have been punchier and shorter.

The Shortest Ian Graye Review in the Cosmos

Bog Irish Lad Lit takes a turn for the better.



But Wait There’s More!

Yeats meets “Ulysses” meets “The Cherry Orchard”.

Yeats

Paul Murray quotes Yeats liberally throughout.

I don’t know Yeats well enough to comment on the significance of his poetry to the themes of this novel.

That would require research rather than "sprezzatura". (1)

"Ulysses"

There is a subtle affinity with James Joyce’s “Ulysses”.

Just watch me make my case.

There are 18 Episodes in “Ulysses” and 15 in “An Evening of Long Goodbyes” (“AEOLG”). Put this difference down to the new Irish economy.

Both novels are set in Dublin (Aha, got you there!).

“Ulysses” is set in one 24 hour period. “AEOLG” is not.

Both novels allude extensively to mythology, “Ulysses” to classical mythology and “AEOLG” to Hollywood legend (in particular, that of the actress Gene Tierney).

The comically self-absorbed protagonist, Charles Hythloday, could be a latterday wastrel version of Stephen Dedalus.

The novel could almost be entitled "A Portrait of the Bullshit Artist as a Young Man" or "A Portrait of a Young Man as a Bullshit Artist ".

Both novels concern a return to house and family, i.e., a return home (for a house is not necessarily a home).

OK, that’s about all I can come up with, without having to think about it.

"The Cherry Orchard"

Paul Murray refers extensively to this play throughout the novel.

It is the favourite play of Charles’ sister, Bel, although she stuffed up her lines in a student production.

The novel concerns an ancestral home, Amaurot (you could call it the House of Hythloday), that is insolvent and under threat of foreclosure.

The home is a symbol of the oppression of the family and the expectations of each generation for those that follow.

In a sense, a toxic home gives rise to a toxic family.

At a personal level, a family that was once apparently independently wealthy has to accommodate the new economy and the need to make new money.

One generation can only achieve its potential by breaking free of the bonds of the previous one, even if it has to commit its own follies to acquire wisdom.

Sprezzatura

(1) According to Wiki:

"Sprezzatura is ‘a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it’.

"It is the ability of the courtier to display ‘an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them’.

"[It is] ‘a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance’."

This reviewer will keep these characteristics in mind for the term of his natural life, in case they come in handy.

It’s Not Over Until the Fat Boy Slims

Beneath this fat boy of a novel is a slim athletic figure who knows his chops.

It comes across as all Lad Lit, but then reveals something more significant underneath.

Paul Murray writes with “sprezzatura”, so much so that it’s easy to infer that nothing much is going on beneath the surface.

I almost gave up on the novel numerous times, until I got to the last 100 pages, when I decided I was almost at the bottom of the slippery slide, so I might as well stay on and finish the ride.

I’m glad I did. I’m also glad I read it before “Skippy Dies”.

A bit irritating to begin with, then quite an amusing story of a hapless chap, then it takes a turn for the serious, with an interesting parallel (largely true) story of the American Hollywood star, Gene Tierney. Other serious themes emerge as well, to do with Irish society, the Celtic Tiger times, money and the hollowness (all fur coat and no knickers) of opportunists on the make.

I’m not sure I liked it, but I did warm to most of the characters (not the parents!). He’s a good writer. It’s a bit irritating that in the latter stages the language is spoiled by Americanisms (‘bangs’ instead of ‘fringe’ and “pants“ instead of “trousers” - trousers had been used correctly earlier in the text).

It would probably appeal more to male readers in its puerile sections.