During the summer months, lacking benzodiazepines, I plowed through a ton of different books from just as many authors. Some were decent reads that helped ease the surrounding crock of boiling feces known as ”life”. Some just fuelled my rage.
Then I discovered Ken Bruen and my life changed. Um, for the better that is.
Pardon my analogy, but: If Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Charles Bukowski had a child, they would obviously have to give that child up. If it were to be adopted by Raymond Chandler... then maybe, just maybe we would have a person skilled enough to equal what Bruen is able to put on paper.
It is black and it is bleak. Almost to the point that you want to check if your fingertips have darkened. But not unlike another great master of ”noir” - Kafka that is - you just have to laugh at the seemingly bottomless abyss. And I haven't even mentioned the one-liner's. Bruen certainly doesn't kill his darlings, he seems to be able to produce line after line that most aspiring writers would gladly sacrifice a limb for.
In just a month I finished all eight books in the Jack Taylor series, and I could breathe again.
Go raibh maith agat Ken Bruen, and thank you Marcus Sakey for pointing out this gem of an author to me.
Then I discovered Ken Bruen and my life changed. Um, for the better that is.
Pardon my analogy, but: If Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Charles Bukowski had a child, they would obviously have to give that child up. If it were to be adopted by Raymond Chandler... then maybe, just maybe we would have a person skilled enough to equal what Bruen is able to put on paper.
It is black and it is bleak. Almost to the point that you want to check if your fingertips have darkened. But not unlike another great master of ”noir” - Kafka that is - you just have to laugh at the seemingly bottomless abyss. And I haven't even mentioned the one-liner's. Bruen certainly doesn't kill his darlings, he seems to be able to produce line after line that most aspiring writers would gladly sacrifice a limb for.
I waited.
Spent all my bedraggled life doing that, though for what, I don't know.
I'd lived in the dark so long.
Had the darkness come to live in me?
Now we know everything and talk to nobody.
All quotes from the book ”The Devil”
Spent all my bedraggled life doing that, though for what, I don't know.
I'd lived in the dark so long.
Had the darkness come to live in me?
Now we know everything and talk to nobody.
All quotes from the book ”The Devil”
In just a month I finished all eight books in the Jack Taylor series, and I could breathe again.
Go raibh maith agat Ken Bruen, and thank you Marcus Sakey for pointing out this gem of an author to me.