The Stray Sod Country

A Novel

By Patrick McCabe

The final novel in Patrick McCabe's "small-town" series-a sardonically funny, strangely elegiac novel of a civilized place with a dark heart.

It is 1958, and as Laika, the Sputnik dog, is launched into space, Golly Murray, the Cullymore barber's wife, finds herself oddly obsessing about the canine cosmonaut. Meanwhile, Fonsey "Teddy" O'Neill is returning, like the prodigal son, from overseas, with Brylcreem in his hair and a Cuban-heeled swagger to his step, having experienced his coming-of-age in Skegness, England. Father Augustus Hand is working on a bold new theatrical production for Easter, which he, for one, knows will put Cullymore on the map. And, as the Manchester United football team prepares to take off from Munich airport, James A. Reilly sits in his hovel by the lake outside town, with his pet fox and his father's gun, feeling the weight of an insidious and inscrutable presence pressing down upon him.

As these imperiled characters wrestle with their identities, mysteriously powerful narrator plucks, gently, at the strings of their fates, and watches the twitching response. This novel is a devil's-eye view of a lost era, a sojourn to the dark side of our past, one we may not have come back from. With echoes of Peyton Place and Fellini's Amarcord, and with a sinister narrator at its heart, this is at once a story of a small town-with its secrets, fears, friendships, and betrayals-and a sweeping, theatrical extravagance from one of the finest writers of his generation.

Reviews for The Stray Sod Country.

“As in his previous books – including his best-known, The Butcher Boy - McCabe uses The Stray Sod Country to examine how madness, alienation and violence play out in a small community.”—Julia Scheeres,The New York Times Book Review

“Beyond fun and games with language - sometimes shockingly bad language - and cruel visitations, McCabe is writing an anti-nostalgic book about the Irish past, mocking quaint images of it…. Readers who like their Irish lit on the bitter side may find that The Stray Sod Country is just the devil's brew for them.” —Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Read full review

“[The Stray Sod Country] may be [McCabe’s] greatest work to date.” —Cahir Doherty, Irish Voice. See feature.

“The slowly unfolding plot—including flashbacks and flashforwards—and the complexity of the subplots produce scenes of heartbreaking tragedy alternating with humor that ranges from the burlesque to the darkly sardonic. Followers of modern Irish fiction as well as admirers of stylists such as Cormac McCarthy are the audience for this fictional take on one historical era in the country’s long and difficult history.”—Ellen Loughran, Booklist

“[McCabe] expands and distorts his distinctively creepy creative landscape. Ultimately, he brilliantly upends James Joyce’s view of the artist as a disinterested god to explore the satanic desires and impulses that move some of us to author evil. Funny and alarming, McCabe’s latest provides a compelling counterpoint to other recent Irish fiction, notably Roddy Doyle’s The Dead Republic and Trevor Byrne’s Ghosts and Lightning.”—J. Greg Matthews, Library Journal

“[A] charming and often dark ensemble story…. McCabe astutely paints a portrait of life in one Irish village, where people struggle both to adapt to modernity and to keep their traditional demons at bay. Historically authentic and with a timeless resonance, this tale provides an appreciable balance of humor, poignancy, and that signature Irish warmth.” —Publishers Weekly

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The Stray Sod Country

A Novel