The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad: A Mostly Irish Farce

by Roger Boylan

Book Overview

Roger Boylan's first novel, Killoyle, established him as a brilliant successor to such Irish masters as Joyce, Beckett, and J. P. Donleavy. Now his new farce follows the hapless inhabitants of Killoyle, Ireland, through the frenetic week of the Pint-Pulling Olympiad. After local lush Mick McCreek gets into a car crash with a cross-dressing church sexton, he enlists a lawyer, Tom O'Mallet. As it turns out, the lawyer's real gig is selling missiles...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802140327
• ISBN13: 9780802140326
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

An outrageous humane comedy.

Hilarious--Boylan has scored another comic triumph. The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad keeps the reader reeling with dazzling displays of erudition, caustic commentary, and a constant barrage of laugh-out-loud episodes. But this is a farce with a heart; even at their most ridiculous, Boylan's characters are deftly drawn and fully human. If you think you'll finish this book without caring about the people within it, then the joke's on you.

Keep this by your bed if you don't want to sleep

More captivating than Boylan's Killoyle. The Olympiad has characters that are rich in their actions, preoccupations and obssessions. Boylan is witty and erudite, and his book is a treasure-trove of deliciously clever details and footnotes. There are some hysterically funny scenes you shouldn't miss. A book unlike any other. Buy it!

Hilarious and smarter than you OR me - especially me.

I am not quite finished this book - it's taking a while because I keep putting it down to laugh. The footnotes are a great addition and an entertaining read in and of themselves. Boylan's language is as fast and intriguingly unpredictable as Mick McCree's test drive. Don't know what that means? RYou'll have to read the first several pages to find out. If you have despaired of reading a book that is both hilarious and literary, despair no more. I also recommend that you drink a pint or two while reading.

Absolutely hilarious

I teach comic fiction, and this is one of the funniest novels I know. It has been years since I was so sorry to see a book end. It is, however, far more than a collection of laughs. Like the work of other Irish masters from Swift and Sterne to Beckett, Flann O'Brien, Patrick McCabe, and Martin McDonagh, Boylan's novel continually blends the comic with the dark, revealing profound connections. He provides, for example, access into the minds of terrorists, from Irish ultranationalists to Basque separatists, yielding insights you will find nowhere else. His characterizations are masterful, and, like Sterne, Joyce, and Beckett, he is also a great formal innovator. I will never again consider teaching my Irish Comic Writers course without this marvelously rich novel.

He Do the Irish in Different Voices

A splendid novel in every way: very funny, very inventive, and very insightful into Ireland's many problems. A variety of Irish "types" take part in a comically convoluted plot, with a biting commentator heckling from the footnotes. Perhaps even better than Boylan's first novel, "Killoyle," to which this is a sequel. Highly recommended.