City of Bohane

Even though Kevin Barry's City of Bohane is set in the 2050s, I wouldn't call this a science fiction novel. For one, it isn't clearly until at least the middle third of the book the time period that it's set in, and for two, even this is clearly post-apocalyptic, there's no tech here -- just nothing digital, and nostalgia for the "Lost Time", where something clearly Very Bad(tm) happened.

City of Bohane is at once cinematic and musical. Cinematic in scope, and musical in dialogue. Scenes are sketched out as though there was a camera panning through them, and we see cuts that are worthy of a screenwriter. Here's one character talking to another in a shady bar-cut-here's a third character plotting-cut-here's someone else stalking the streets. Bang bang bang. Not that there are any guns in Bohane -- technology has definitely reverted. The only photography is with "a medieval Leica", movies are on reels, and there are no motor vehicles.

A strength of Barry's is pacing -- at least at first. He's very good at ratcheting up the tension as a specific event approaches (gang war, festival), but not so much at resolving the situation, and a feeling of anticlimax pervades. There's a lot to like here, but this isn't totally successful.

Ordinarily, describing something as "post-apocalyptic" would send me screaming for the exits, but City of Bohane is interesting enough to keep me engaged. That said, I'm not sure there's a there here -- it's readable, but this almost reads like a prologue to something that never gets going.

The Third Policeman

Written after At Swim Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman is not as fantastic or chaotic as the previous work -- lack of focus only shows up in the copious footnotes, regarding a fictional Irish polymath named de Selby, whose theories are revealed to progress from eccentric to insane as the novel unfolds.

The book is apparently intended to be read as a straightforward murder-mystery, but a major fact preventing this from occurring is revealed in the Introduction (in the form of quotation from a letter written by the author). While this doesn't spoil the big reveal entirely (because it's still an interesting journey), it does take a little air out of the tyres.

Our narrator is an unnamed simpleton who inherits his parents' farm and public house, and is convinced by his co-tenant (due to their poor means) to murder a wealthy, miserly landowner. This act results in the co-tenant hiding the dead man's cashbox, which causes the narrator to make himself and his co-tenant inseparable: "the situation was a queer one, and neither of us liked it."

These events then lead to the narrator encountering the man he had murdered in the latter's house, discovering a strange country right down the road from where he had lived, conversing with his soul, meeting some very odd policemen, and riding an atypical bicycle, among other fantastic occurrences and adventures.

Overall, The Third Policeman is an engaging, surreal work, but not necessarily the best introduction to Flann O'Brien, nor his best work (of course, this is my humble opinion, not the critical consensus). (Some critics disagree here -- Hugh Kenner is quoted in the Wikipedia article on this as writing ". . .There's no killing a piece of mythic power like that," in his essay The Fourth Policeman (which is available via Google Books, and is worth reading after digesting the novel)). The book's ending produces a wry smirk, and is that not reason enough to pick it up?