Product Description

A literary thriller with a heart. 'The Valparaiso Voyage' blows the lid off the Celtic Tiger and looks at the corruption that spawned today's Ireland. Dermot Bolger is one of the leading figures on the Irish literary scene: very influential, amazingly energetic and prolific, popular and well respected. This is his eighth novel (and his third for Flamingo). Bolger's previous novel, 'Temptation', was a departure for this author. It was a story of family life, told from a woman's perspective. 'The Valparaiso Voyage' is, as you might say, Bolger returning to familiar territory -- back to chronicling the darker side of contemporary Dublin life. It is the story of Brendan Brogan, who grew up in the small town of Navan on the outskirts of Dublin. An unhappy childhood, spent searching for love and affection, leads to an unhappy adulthood spent gambling and trying to hold a difficult marriage together. When circumstances offer Brogan a chance to fake his own death, he seizes the chance and runs -- far away to Portugal where a new life beckons. But no one can escape the past entirely, and when his father is found murdered, Brogan returns to Dublin. Here he finds a new Ireland, wracked with corruption, everyone -- politicians, bankers, businessmen, councillors -- caught up in it, including his own father. Tormented by memories and old resentments, Brogan nevertheless feels he must solve the riddle of his father's death. And he finds himself not in the least surprised to discover that the rot set in many years ago, back in the Navan of his childhood. A cracking, fast-paced literary thriller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #423652 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
'No Irish novelist since McGahern has been so obsessed with the poetics of love, death and sex. No Irish novelist has so brilliantly captured the suburban underbelly of the city, the crazy unofficial lives.' Colm Toibin 'Joyce, O'Flaherty, Brian Moore, a fistful of O'Briens, this is a succulent Who's Who of Irish writing, and Dermot Bolger is of the same ilk. An exceptional literary gift.' Independent 'Bolger's writing is so strong, so exact, so much the right colour for each moment. Bare and passionate.' Financial Times

About the Author
Dermot Bolger was born in Dublin in 1959. His novels and plays have won many awards, in Ireland and internationally. He has also published several volumes of poetry. Bolger has been a notable and energetic champion of new Irish writers in his capacity as founder-publisher of Raven Arts Press, which he ran until 1992, whereafter he went on to start New Island Books. He is also the editor of the Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Writing, and editor of Finbar's Hotel and Ladies' Night at Finbar's Hotel.

Customer Reviews

A Sort Of Homecoming...
Ten years after faking his own death and wandering around Europe, Brendan Brogan returns home to Ireland to avenge his fathers death and protect his own son from subsequent imminent danger. His return brings him to Navan, his first home, a town where at eight years of age he became a second class citizen to his step brother. Banished to an out house and deprived of the love of his father Brendan has grown up with an inferiority complex that has manifested itself in gambling and self destruction. He returns as a nobody, a dead man, but one that must ingratiate himself back into the lives of those he abandoned in order to save them from harm.
If his last book 'Temptation' was something of a departure for Dermot Bolger, then 'The Volparaiso Voyage' sees a resounding return to more familiar territory for this much-respected Irish writer. Back are the themes of political corruption, social alienation and the quest for personal identity of earlier works. Indeed some of his more recent works have read like a compilation of all these issues. But while Bolger does return to certain subjects it is never to write the same story twice but rather more so to update the changing social climate of the contemporary Ireland he finds around him.
Here, through his characters he explores issues as diverse as political tribunals, racism towards refugees and for the first time, Dublin's thriving gay scene. As always, Bolger's approach is highly individualistic, taking a first person narrative to give a very personal voice to the story.
However, over its 385 pages there is a lot to take in, much swinging back and forth between the past and present, much explaining and linking together the various plots and subplots. While the quality of the writing remains, there is at times a sense of too much happening for it all to fully gel. By taking on so many themes there is a danger of reducing the impact of what is a touching story of father and son relationship. And it is this thread which could have been explored more centrally. But luckily, through the creation of the flawed but sympathetic Brendan Brogan, scarred from a disenfranchised childhood there is enough left between him and his abandoned son, now seventeen years old, to make this a memorable and original book from one of Irelands most distinguished voices. A tough but thought provoking and enjoyable read. One for the head and the heart.

Excellent read
This book reminded me of another Bolger title "The Journey Home". The themes of political corruption and a depiction of small town Ireland really hit the nail on the head. Having visited Navan on many occasions one gets the impression that the characters in Valparaiso Voyage still lurk somewhere in it's streets. Great stuff!