When did matricide become comical? When Patrick McCabe started writing about it.Emerald Germs of Ireland is a story about Pat McNab and his sick and twisted little mind. He has a strange relationship with his mother, a little Norman Bates-esque at times. This strange relationship ultimately ends (and the story essentially begins) with Pat killing her, and his father, and then starting off into the town to knock off other "germs". The story is told through a series of short stories all revolving around Pat and his... well, experiences.Not quite as shocking as The Butcher Boy, and it's told from a third-person perspective so the flow is different, which makes me appreciate both of these McCabe books a little more now. I read a review of this book where someone mentioned he started listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds around the time he was reading this, and that seems wholly appropriate. There's a lot of murder in this book, and most of it is actually good - not gratuitous at all, which is hard to accomplish in most writing.
What do You think about Emerald Germs Of Ireland (2002)?
