Patrick McCabe - The Butcher Boy

The Butcher Boy

by Patrick McCabe

Back Cover:

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 1992 BOOKER PRIZE

WINNER OF THE IRISH TIMES-AER LINGUS

LITERATURE PRIZE FOR FICTION

"BRILLIANT, UNIQUE. Patrick McCabe pushes your head through the book and you come out the other end gasping, admiring, and knowing that reading fiction will never be the same again. It's the best Irish novel I've read in years." -- Roddy Doyle, Author, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

"STUNNING... PART HUCK FINN, PART HOLDEN CAULFIELD, PART HANNIBAL LECTER." -- The New York Times Book Review

"AN ALMOST PERFECT NOVEL... A BECKETT MONOLOGUE WITH PLOT BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK... STARTLINGLY ORIGINAL." -- The Washington Post Book World

"BRILLIANT... Francie is a shrewd and amusing observer... his voice is mordant, colloquial and brash as a punch in the nose." -- Scott Turow

"A ROLLICKING NASTY NOVEL." -- The Village Voice

"There are a number of fine novels about violent youth, and Patrick McCabe's frightening and sorrowful The Butcher Boy stands up to any of them... Francie portrays himself in every word he utters, and his language gives Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy its valuable dread power." -- The Atlanta Journal & Constitution

"A CHILLING TALE OF A CHILD'S HELL... OFTEN SCREAMINGLY FUNNY... THE BOOK HAS A COMPELLING AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY." -- The Boston Globe

THE CRITICS LOVE

THE BUTCHER BOY

"A tour de force." -- Kirkus Reviews

"IT'S AS BRIGHT AS IT IS DEPRESSING, AS FUNNY AS IT IS GRUESOME. We see Francie clearly as psychopath, and we ache with sympathy for him. It's almost impossible to pinpoint the moment in his growing up when the imagination of an ordinary boy shades over into something dangerously loony. The key is Francie's slangy, angry, '60s-flavored voice, which McCabe renders with a minimum of punctuation and a maximum of control." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"AN UNRELENTING, UPBEAT STREAM OF PATTER. McCabe's acclaimed third novel... walks the path of dementia with remarkable assurance." -- Entertainment Weekly

"McCABE'S FRANCIE SPEAKS IN A RICH VERNACULAR SPIRITED BY THE BRASSY AND ENDEARING RHYTHMS OF PERPETUAL DELINQUENCY; even in his gradual unhinging, Francie remains a winning raconteur. By looking so deeply into Francie's soul, McCabe subtly suggests a common source of political and personal violence -- lack of love and hope." -- Publishers Weekly

"PATRICK McCABE IS AN OUTSTANDING WRITER. The Butcher Boy is fearful, original, compelling and very hard to put out of your mind. American readers should pay close attention to this man." -- Thomas McGuane

"A BRILLIANT BOOK SO VERY FUNNY AS WELL AS BEING HEARTRENDINGLY SAD." -- J. P. Donleavy

"Written with wonderful assurance and a technical skill that is as great as it is unobtrusive... Perhaps the novel is best read as a twisted coming-of-age story; imagine Huck Finn crossed with Charlie Starkweather, and you have Francie Brady, the young narrator of The Butcher Boy." -- The Washington Post Book World

"A POTENT AMALGAM OF COMEDY, HORROR AND PATHOS... The Butcher Boy is a prime slice of modern Gothic... McCabe presents a study in spiritual derangement that rivets." -- The Sunday Times (London)

"DEADLY SERIOUS, TERRIFICALLY LOONY AND SCARY, AND ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS... Francie Brady's story is reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's Molloy, Moran, Malone, and the Unnameable even, with Anthony Burgess's Alex tossed in for good measure." -- James McManus

"THE MOST ASTONISHING IRISH NOVEL FOR MANY YEARS, A MASTERPIECE." -- Sunday Independent

"A POWERFUL AND DEEPLY SHOCKING NOVEL where the seemingly innocent logic of a child imperceptibly turns into the manic logic of an unhinged mind. Patrick McCabe portrays 1960s small-town life from a bizarre perspective where the aliens from Outer Space on the television are as real as the emotional poverty of one child filled with unconscious envy for another." -- Dermont Bolger

A Delta Book

Published by

Dell Publishing

a division of

Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

1540 Broadway

New York, New York 10036

Copyright 1992 by Patrick McCabe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher,

except where permitted by law. For information address Fromm

International Publishing Corporation, New York, New York.

The trademark Delta is registered in the U.S. Patent and

Trademark Office and in other countries.

ISBN: 0-385-31237-7

Reprinted by arrangement with

Fromm International Publishing Corporation

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published in the United Kingdom in 1992 by Pan Books Limited

September 1994

10 9 8 7 6

BVG

For the McCabes,

Brian, Eugene, Mary, and Dympna

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG LAD TWENTY OR THIRTY OR FORTY years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent. I was hiding out by the river in a hole under a tangle of briars. It was a hide me and Joe made. Death to all dogs who enter here, we said. Except us of course.

You could see plenty from the inside but no one could see you. Weeds and driftwood and everything floating downstream under the dark archway of the bridge. Sailing away to Timbuctoo. Good luck now weeds, I said.

Then I stuck my nose out to see what was going on. Plink -- rain if you don't mind!

But I wasn't complaining. I liked rain. The hiss of the water and the earth so soft bright green plants would nearly sprout beside you. This is the life I said. I sat there staring at a waterdrop on the end of a leaf. It couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to fall or not. It didn't matter -- I was in no hurry. Take your time drop, I said -- we've got all the time we want now.

We've got all the time in the world.

I could hear a plane droning far away. One time we were standing in the lane behind the houses shading our eyes from the sun and Joe says: Did you see that plane Francie? I said I did. It was a tiny silver bird in the distance. What I want to know is, he said, how do they manage to get a man small enough to fit in it? I said I didn't know. I didn't know much about planes in them days.

I was thinking about Mrs Nugent standing there crying her eyes out. I said sure what's the use in crying now Nugent it was you caused all the trouble if you hadn't poked your nose in everything would have been all right. And it was true. Why would I want to harm her son Philip -- I liked him. The first day he came to the school Joe says to me did you see the new fellow? Philip Nugent is his name. O, I says, I'll have to see this. He had been to a private school and he wore this blazer with gold braid and a crest on the breast pocket. He had a navy blue cap with a badge and grey socks. What do you make of that says Joe. Woh boy, I said, Philip Nugent. This is Philip Nugent, said the master, he's come to join us Philip used to live in London but his parents are from the town and they have come back here to live. Now I want you to make him feel at home won't you? He was like Winker Watson out of the Dandy in this get-up of his only Winker was always up to devilment and Philip was the opposite. Every time you saw him he was investigating insects under rocks or explaining to some snottery-nosed young gawk about the boiling point of water. Me and Joe used to ask him all about this school. We said: What about these secret meetings and passwords? Tell us about the tuck shop -- come on Philip but I don't think he knew what we were talking about. The best thing about him was his collection of comics. I just can't get over it, said Joe, I never seen anything like it. He had them all neatly filed away in shirt boxes not a crease or a dog-ear in sight. They looked as if they had come straight out of the shop. There were comics there we had never seen before in our lives and we thought we knew plenty about comics. Mrs Nugent says: Make sure not to damage any of those now they cost money. We said: We won't! -- but afterwards Joe said to me: Francie we've got to have them. So you could say it was him started it and not me. We talked about it for a long time and we made our decision.