Set in locations from New York to the west of Ireland, and to the nameless realms of the imagination, it is a world where beautiful but deranged children make lethal bombs, talented sculptors spend careers dismembering themselves in pursuit of their art, and wasters rise up with axes and turn into patricides.

McCormack's celebrated debut collection is richly imaginative, bitterly funny, powerful and original.

***

"Sharp as knives, mixing tongue-in-cheek bog Gothic with metaphysical flourishes and lashings of ultraviolence" - Guardian

"McCormack is one of our bravest and most innovative writers - he shoots for the stars . . . and does not fall short" - Kevin Barry

"Remarkable, even at the most extreme moments"  - Irish Times

"Funny, fantastical tales that trample on the toes of the twentieth century itself" - New York Times

"McCormack's first collection of short stories ranges from the west of Ireland to New York to Purgatory . . . A helpless howl of protest that presages not only the end of the [twentieth] century but the end of civilisation itself" - Times Literary Supplement

"When venturing into the realm of the macabre, a writer gains a distinct advantage if he has a sense of discipline and a sense of humor . . . Mike McCormack has both to spare . . . Like parables in their easy transcendence of setting and time, the most audacious stories are classics" - The New York Times Book Review