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by Frank Ronan (Author)

Synopsis

Born on a Devon commune in the sixties to a teenage single mother, Coorg is declared to be the new Merlin by the group (until he is supplanted by Marc Bolan) and grows up on peace, love and brown rice - until Coorg's grandparents abduct him when he is 6, taking him back to Ireland where he is renamed Joseph and introduced to Mass, sweets, and the back of his grandmother's hand. Joe grows up in a small seaside town trying hard to fit into a dysfunctional family and a Church that doesn't seem to reward his efforts, but when he decides to be bad he finds sinning gets him no further. Then his feckless mother reappears, on the trail of the Holy Grail and (when Marc Bolan dies) after Joe as the messiah who will save the world. On the cusp of adulthood, his head churning with Catholicism, mysticism as well as the more usual teenage concerns, Joe finally cracks.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 19 Sep 2002

ISBN 10: 0340819049
ISBN 13: 9780340819043

Media Reviews
'Brilliant... delightfully sharp and funny' - Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday; 'His writing is wonderfully quirky and his social satire resembles an unholy marriage of E. F. Benson and Patrick McCabe... His wryly affectionate portrait deserves to become a cult.' - Michael Arditti, Daily Mail; 'Both worlds are brought to life with an outsider's eye for the ridiculous in this lovely novel about a boy growing up surrounded by dysfunctional adults.' - Big Issue; 'A sparkling satire of religious upbringings, conventional or otherwise.' - The Face; 'It's Father Ted meets Hair as Ronan expertly satirises the suffocating repressiveness of rural Ireland... this is a lovely book' - Big Issue in the North
Author Bio
Frank Ronan was born in 1963 in Ireland. His first novel, 'The Men Who Loved Evelyn Cotton', won the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize. Since then he has published the novels 'A Picnic in Eden', 'The Better Angel', 'Dixie Chicken' and 'Lovely', as well as a collection of short stories, 'Handsome Men Are Slightly Sunburnt'. He has also had work published in Best Short Stories. The Best of Cosmo Fiction and the Daily Telegraph, as well as broadcast on BBC Radio 4.