The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad

September 15, 2003
In his second comic saga (after Killoyle) set in a fictional Irish port, Boylan both lampoons and pays homage to absurdist literary inspirations, including James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Monty Python's Flying Circus. This time, the loony story concerns a terrorist conspiracy against the beer competition of the book's title. The raucous and sometimes violent action involves a large collection of manic personalities (including an ambitious librarian and a sexpot intelligence agent), who are drawn together by circumstances arising from a car crash involving dreamy drunk Mick McCreek and a transvestite church sexton. But while the improbable plot and bizarre characters are amusing, the book sparkles because of the author's antic wordplay, especially the running commentary addressed to the reader in a hilarious sequence of lengthy footnotes. Buy for academic and public libraries where readers enjoy a bit of clever blarney.-Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA

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