THE DALKEY ARCHIVE (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

A masterpiece. Captivating and hilarious. I somehow identify strongly with the main character. It's no surprise that the publishers initially didn't like it as too bizarre a story but the combination of the everyday humdrum and the incredible constitute the story's attraction.Desperately want to visit Dalkey now!

I bought Dalkey, after having read O'Brien's surrealistic masterpiece "The Third Policeman", anticipating more vivid imagination and inspired writing. Oh dear.It starts promisingly, with our hero Mick encountering the villain de Selby, who has decided to eliminate the unworthy human race, using a substance he has concocted, which removes all oxygen from the atmosphere. A side-effect is that it also eliminates time, and so de Selby and Mick spend time in an underwater cave, all oxygen removed, wearing breathing apparatus, where de Selby talks to religious saints like St Augustine.And here I got my first warning. The conversation with St Augustine is long-winded & theological, & I had to skip to the next chapter. The remainder of the book is really quite pedestrian writing, entailing a long slow meander as Mick endeavours to thwart de Selby's plans. The only imaginative passage from then on is the strange theory expounded by Sergeant Fottrell about "mollycules", whereby he holds that extensive riding of bicycles results in a mingling of the molecules between bike & rider, with amusing results.However this is not enough to rescue the book, nor is Mick's subsequent recruitment of James Joyce, whom he unearths quietly retreated from the world as a simple barman near Dublin. His conversations with Joyce are like the Augustine sequence, filled with theological meanderings concerning Catholic doctrine, and tedious.In fact the final chapter featuring Mick and Joyce could well have been written by a rather dull 16-year old schoolboy, so lacking in substance is it.If you're an O'Brien fanatic (and some are) then you might read it for completeness, but don't expect anything much from the philosopher/scientist de Selby, whose thoughts run madly through "Third Policeman". After the intriguing beginning, he just peters out, as does the book as a whole.

A classic, neo-scifi tale Lem would have been proud to have written, but Joyce would have too. That's the sort of writer O'Nolan was. These are not the tortured explorations of a troubled soul (though O'Nolan had his problems); these are the hilarious camfire tales of a superhuman imagination.

I fell 8n love with flank in my 20s and this has to be his most splendid work surreal yes but surprisingly very philosophically deep.

All fine and on time

very enjoyable book typical Flann

Good value and prompt delivery.

excellent