As things darken there are fewer laughs, and the final pages are almost unbearably tense. The first half in particular is marvellously fresh and underwrought. He is the author of, among other novels, The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto, both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into feature films by Neil Jordan. Poguemahone is, in content and execution, frequently astonishing, and galloping through a very long novel at the rate of three pages per minute is an exhilarating sensory experience. He was a teacher and then he was not, having become a full-time writer. Patrick McCabe was born in 1955 in Clones, Country Monaghan. Now she sits outside in the Margate sun as her memories unspool from Dan’s mouth, whose own role in her story grows ever stranger-and more sinister. Not to mention the squat itself, seemingly haunted by vindictive ghosts who eat away at the sanity of all who lived there. Young Una’s search for love in a hippie squat in Kilburn, and the two-timing Scottish poet and stoner whose vatic recitals and prog rock vibes she’ll never get over. Exile from Ireland and immigrant life in England.

Una Fogarty, suffering from dementia in a Margate care home, would be alone were it not for her brother Dan, whose free verse monologue tells the story of their clan. Ancient as myth and wholly original, Poguemahone is a masterpiece of formal invention with the rollicking clip of a drinking song and the devastating story of one family’s history-and the forces, seen and unseen, that make their fate.

A swirling, psychedelic, bleakly funny fugue by the Booker-shortlisted author of The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto.The hotly anticipated verse novel by legendary Irish writer Patrick McCabe, Poguemahone combines the fragmentation of cummings and Williams and the spontaneity of Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti with a soundtrack by Mott the Hoople, then douses it in whisky and sets it on fire.

Poguemahone patrick mccabe