NO LAUGHING MATTER by Anthony Cronin (First published by Grafton Books, 1989)
There are certain novels, like Robert Musil’s ‘The Man Without Qualities’, that I find too daunting to even attempt and others, such as Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under The Volcano’ that I have tried but failed to complete.
‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ by Flann O’Brien was, until this year, gathering dust in my unfinished pile. I have Anthony Cronin’s candid and informative biography of O’Brien to thank for finally completing this short, comic but notoriously challenging novel.
Cronin skillfully puts the work into a literary and historical context while bluntly presenting the man behind it as a sad character. Continue reading
Wilkie Collins once asserted that “the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story.” 
