First published 2012
A lazy Dublin college student spends his days in bed, drinking with friends, and living under the watchful eye of his grumpy uncle. Between bouts of sleeping and reading, he crafts a peculiar novel about Dermot Trellis, a mediocre writer who creates characters drawn from Irish mythology. These fictional beings grow tired of Trellis's poor storytelling and decide to fight back. They drug their creator while he sleeps and drop ceilings on his head, making him suffer for his literary crimes. The student narrator weaves together multiple plots and invents absurd scenarios, including characters who develop methods for women to give birth to fully grown adults. His stories spiral into a comic maze where fiction bleeds into fiction, and mythological figures take revenge on the writers who poorly portray them. This inventive tale captures the chaos of a young mind trying to make sense of Irish culture and literature through the lens of pure nonsense and wit.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, academic
Vibes: thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Dublin, Ireland
Period: 20th-century
239 pages · Paperback · Dalkey Archive Press