I’m not sure that I would have read this book if I hadn’t already read and enjoyed several of Barry’s short story collections, so be prepared to give it a good go to get into its rhythm and language.

Bohane, a city in West coast Ireland, divided into four areas - Back Trace, Northside Rises (Norrie), Smoketown and New Town, with the Big Nothin’ as the rural beyond. Characters include:
• Logan Hartnett (aka the Albino, aka the Long Fella), from the Back Trace, the man of the moment in this mean city
• Gant Broderick, from the Big Nothin’, the gangster returning after twenty five years, whose heart has been hurt
• The Cusacks, from the Northside Rises, gunning for Hartnett
• Miss Jenni Ching, from Smoketown, playing the long game
Set in 2053-54, futuristic Irish noir - is that a thing? Barry makes it so.

It’s very seedy and very foul mouthed, with low down newsmen and middlemen moving the story forward through a year of changing allegiances. With language that sings in its newness but familiarity, and a future time that has degenerated from our own.
And it’s fun, with little conceits and jokes, such as Barry invoking the Norrie tower blocks in chapter 4: Got the MacNiece, the Kavanagh, the Heaney.

It’s just a good time story of the turning of the wheel, in the city Bohane. ( )

fascinating ideas and excellent language ( )

Ulysses meets Clockwork Orange. Quite brilliant. In particular there is a scene where the newspaper editor meets the Gant and a child runner returns from Bohane with news of a gang feud that is hysterical and, at least for me, very reminiscent of Joyce. Not much to say, this book has been widely reviewed. ( )

I don't know how I feel about this book. I may change my rating tomorrow. I really don't know.

update 16 November, 2017: when I first finished this book, I was struck by how little I cared about these characters, how their overwhelmingly negative aspects seemed to outweigh all positive wonder at how unique and interesting a book this is. Really, I'm sooo sick of gangsters.

After thinking about it a while, I decided that the ending, as well as the premise and execution in general, deserve another star. At least. I'm still a little torn.

In some ways, this book bucks expectations (in plot, as well as in generic tropes), but in other ways it seems to go the lazy way forward and that's what's still holding me back from giving it more stars. Right now I'm thinking specifically about Jenni using the "that guy touched me inappropriately" lie to prompt Wolfie to go after Tubby. Booooring. And this book's relationship with women is complicated, which is sometimes useful and intriguing and sometimes just gross. Is it worth it to get through the gross to the end? Sure. I think.

One thing that can be said for it is that it's got me thinking. A LOT.

Update, 7 January, 2017: I'm writing an essay on this and looking through the book I ended up rereading the whole thing. I liked it more this time around. ( )

I liked the swirl of displacement and wonder that I went through trying to get my bearings in this gang-dominated post-apocalyptic coastal Irish city. I'm sure Irish readers would get more from the text than I did but I enjoyed the plunge into unfamiliar territory. By the end I was a little tired of the sartorial details (what economy supported all this fashion action?) and gang leader strategizing. It felt like it was heavily inspired by the 1928 book The Gangs of New York. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gangs_of_New_York_(book)) I read another book that included that work as a mainstay, Helprin's White Horse. A little disappointed by the changing of the guard at the end and the complete disappearance of one of our characters. I would be interested in reading something else by this author. ( )

Wow! Barry has created a future, dark world of Bohane. The description of the city is something right out of Pinky Blinders and the characters are incredible. Be prepared to read a book unlike anything you have ever read. ( )

“It was one of those summers you’re nostalgic for even before it passes. Pale, bled skies. Thunderstorms in the night. Sour-smelling dawns. It brought temptation, and yearning, and ache – these are the summer things.”

“Mouth of teeth on him like a vandalised graveyard but we all have our crosses.”

Bohane, on the west coast of Ireland has seen better days. The novel takes place forty years in the future and this once promising city is now a corrupt morass of dangerous, yet colorful citizenry, all scrambling to survive. Think a mash-up of A Clockwork Orange and Gangs of New York. Barry is a master wordsmith but be forewarned the narrative can be tricky to navigate. There are plenty of rewards for sticking it out though. Bigger than life characters, warring gangs, double-crosses and a simmering, toxic, stew of a city. I have to share another quote, to better showcase his remarkable ability:

“The EL train was customarily sad in this last stretch before dawn, that much had not changed. The screech of it was a soul's screech. If you were lying there in the bed, lonesome, and succumbed to poetical thoughts, that screech would go through you. It happens that we are often just so in Bohane. No better men for the poetical thoughts.” ( )

A rollicking read. Mad Max meets The Sopranos in the ruins of a future Ireland. Funny, violent and full of twists with a memorable cast of characters - but pretty sure it could’ve done without the casual racism (minus one star). ( )

This is my second experience of Kevin Barry - I read the equally compelling and original but very different Beatlebone in January. This one is a mixture of genres that I would normally steer well clear of - gangland thriller, dystopian fantasy, steampunk and graphic novel cliches abound. What carries it is the sheer vibrancy and humour of the language and the many cultural reference points that echo the likes of Joyce and Flann O'Brien.

The setting is the fictional city of Bohane, on the west coast of Ireland and the time is 2053 to 2054, in a country that has become an anarchic battleground between rival gangs, loosely under the watch of a corrupt city authority and a police force that is largely content to keep the main players in place. For a futuristic setting, the reference points are surprisingly old-fashioned, in fact the dominant inspiration seems to be the 50s and early 60s, and many Irish traditions and cultural divisions survive in modified form. The language is a complex hybrid of Irish street speak and other influences such as Rastafarianism and the Catholic church, and the characters are all cartoonish and larger than life.

I found the whole thing surprisingly compulsive and satisfying, and although Barry's vision is a bleak, profane and violent one, dark humour is never very far from the surface. In some ways this reminded me of his compatriot and namesake Sebastian Barry's Days Without End, another book which shouldn't work but is sustained by the brilliance of its narrative voice. ( )

It took me forever to get through this, but I did really enjoy it. The prose requires a certain fluid kind of mindset to enjoy--it's written in dialect, and some of the slang is made up, so you kind of just have to go with it.

I'm not much for books that are about the journey rather than the destination, but in this case I enjoyed both. I returned my library copy just so I could buy my own. ( )

In this not too far future, Bohane is a dark place fueled by dark hopes. An initial first person plural narration, occasionally renewed and eventually sourced to a specific individual, distances the reader from the stew of grubby ambitions. The language is the vast bulk of the value of this book. Where most modern language provides a dirt path that you can travel at your own comfortable pace, Kevin Barry's is made up of sharp word rocks, each requiring attention to be assembled into a sentence for the next step. The meaning isn't unexpected, but won't be assumed. There are many descriptions of clothing, but they are inset with all the flow of footnotes, and completely stripped of fun or passion which could conceivably add the flavor of creativity to the lives depicted. ( )

https://shawjonathan.com/2017/06/23/the-book-group-at-kevin-barrys-city-of-bohan... ( )

I was very disappointed with this. The writing is seriously oool and even the premise is interesting, but the story never goes anywhere. I read the last 50 pages waiting for it to be over. ( )

This book had a "Clockwork Orange" feel to it. Barry creates this futuristic town in Western Ireland in 2053. Yet there is little or no technology in this crime ridden city. We see the waring factions like an old time western. What make this book interesting is the language and prose the Barry uses. It is incredibly creative and does a great job of developing a vision of the city. The plot and character development are a bit thin, but the feel of the book is excellent. The language takes getting used to and this may not be for everyone but it is not a long book and work the try. ( )

a great writer, sentences to die for, plot was a tad thin, the city was intriguing, inventive, perhaps a little over-reminded of 'how things were', the characters were good, but a little too thinly brought out, I didn't really find myself caring too much about any of them, yet I was intrigued. Overall, the writing is great, but a great book by by the author is yet to be written. ( )

Man leaves town, comes back mysteriously 25 years later. The town is an imagined city, Bohane, a sort of Irish Tijuana on the west coast of Ireland in a parallel universe run by ultra violent teddy boys, dune dwelling rastas and inbred slum dwellers. The pleasure in reading "City of Bohane" comes from the invented patois of the various factions. Interesting, but the story, as it were kinda fell flat @ the end. ( )

In 2053/4, Bohane is a brutal, hedonistic city with “a thin enough layer of civilization” in the West of Ireland. Crime boss Logan Hartnett ostensibly runs the town, but his ninety year-old mother, Girly, is the true brains. Logan is facing competition from two separate sources. Young Jenny Ching and Gant Broderick represent the future and past of Bohane crime lords and are both breathing down Logan’s neck.

With Bohane, Kevin Barry has created his own world, language and culture. Fashion is all-important. Calypso music is in. Everyone smokes “herb.” Barry twists words and language in unique ways. It makes for highly poetic and stimulating reading. ( )

This is just an exceptional piece of writing. The invention never feels forced, never feels overly showy - despite how incredibly showy it might be; the man created an entire slang language, for the sake of the Sweet Baba Jay. Instead, he has breathed life into a story and city as (I daresay) only he could've done. There's sex and fighting and a city as magical as Ambergris and a future that feels both gritty and lovely all at once. If our world tends towards hell, as it very well might, I sure hope we at least end up as well dressed as the likes of Jenni Ching and Logan Hartnett and The Gant and Macu. And have a bit of their personalities in the face of such a future, too.
This novel shows an author who will, I have no doubt, come to be regarded as one of the very best to've ever bent his pen towards a trembling blank page. It is, again, exceptional. A thing of power and beauty and delightful fancy. His two short story collections are out this month and Bohane is on shelves now. I so very rarely do this - but I implore you, with all speed, to acquire all three. You will not regret it.

A full, even more considered, rave to come at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-O5 ( )

A novel in futurist language I just could not grasp.

Loved this book and can't wait to read it again! ( )

*** spoiler alert ***

An original work of well fleshed out imagination. The language is a mixture of Hiberno-English and credible future Irishisms. The book is very readable. ( )

Great for the lingo, though not the strongest plot ever. ( )

This was an incredible book. Kevin Barry has a real lyrical tilt to his writing, he captures the raw, real feel of a the city of Bohane, a little outpost on the cold, murky Atlantic with such vivid strokes you believe, by the end, in this little city and all of its broken inhabitants. He's done similar things, in the past, with his collection of short stories (There are Little Kingdoms), so I expected a good read, but have been let down by the high praise for other similar-ish works before, with similar blurbs: Joyceian, Flann O'Brian-esque... but, I have to say, Barry comes as close as you're going to to living up to such high billing.

His recent New York Times Book Review cover was well deserved, and I feel he was shorted a bit, by having Pete Hamill write the review, because his review was something like his own writing (I've read his book _Forever_, which was a painful, stilted read), and didn't quite do this book justice, with it's bustling *life* to it.

So if you're looking for a novel filled with sand pikeys, turf wars, Sweet Baba Jay appearing in the bogs, and the single greatest named character of all-time (F***er Burke), give this one a read. ( )

I started this book with the idea that it might turn out to be a waste of time. All I knew about it was the blurb inside the front cover. It's about a city, forty years in the future, in which social order breaks down and the running of commercial and social life are under the direction of the strongest gang.

Dialogue in the book is in a slang developed to reflect the passing of forty years from now. The city is in the West of Ireland and the dialect is a mixture of Irish slang, bits of Scottish, and new words and twists of old, not to mention some interesting sentence constructs derived from various social groups, primarily itinerants.

So, is it Clockwork Orange, or Trainspotting?

It touches on similar elements, but it is something different. After reading two chapters I was open to the idea that the book might prove ok. Having finished the book I can say it is.

It does take getting used to, but the language used is worth it. Despite the heavily phonetic and oddly constructed sentences, it works and reading it does not jar or cause disturbance. I admit I was reading it quite slowly to begin with, but very quickly I got used to the style and found it helped build the atmosphere.

The core theme is power, and we follow the life of Logan Hartnett, the leader of the dominant gang, and we see how he fairs with three ambitious lieutenants at his back, competing gangs wanting to make a move against his gang's dominance, and the return of his own gang's former leader.

This is a fascinating study of power struggles, power-broking, and, surprisingly enough, the nostalgia one feels for bygone days.

An enjoyable read that demonstrates the comparatively young author understands feelings and emotions of people significantly older than him. ( )

Got as far as page 102 and realised that I was just skimming and not really reading and what's more I didn't care if every character died on the spot. Stopped reading. Joseph O'Connor on the back talks about it being "Joyce meets Anthony Burgess and as funny as Flann O'Brien"; Irvine Welsh says "He's destined to be a true literary Star" and Huno Hamilton says "An extreme adventure in pure language and fictional daring". When I read all these my heart sank. This is usually a sign of the more literary fiction that doesn't usually satisfy me Your mileage may vary. For me the slice-of-life novel masquerading as fantasy or sf don't satisfy. Actually slice-of-normal-life novels don't fire me up at all. I live that, don't need to read about it.