The Shelbourne Ultimatum - by Ross O'Carroll Kelly (AKA Paul Howard)
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
Edmund Burke
As the Celtic Tiger recedes into history, leaving behind the materialistic dregs which are at all times the only things neo-Liberalism ever delivers, one man stands like a Colossus above the wreckage of post-boom and now completely busted Ireland, and his name is Ross O'Carroll Kelly. Where others, like his appalling, fluffy bunny wife, construct trickle-down theories of social cohesion designed ultimately for no other purpose than to convince themselves that they are actually “good people”, but which – curiously – never involve any real sacrifice on their part, Ross is having none of this hypocritical old claptrap. He's a greedy, lascivious, unprincipled, underhanded little rat and the only man in the whole show with the integrity to admit it to himself. These are the voyages of the star who is The Rossmeister General, his continuing mission to sate his apatites, to lay more women, to boldly screw what no man has screwed before.
Of course, in Ireland today, screwing a virgin almost inevitably means doing time as a paedophile, so Ross makes do with what he can get. In this one, he is recovering from a brief encounter with a sixty-something cougar, her fruitcake daughter and a couple of criminal skangers whom he used to live next door to until he made a big mistake and nailed one of their girlfriends. Being Ross, he emerges sort of intact, but somewhat the worse for wear. He is, however, in the happy position of having the goods on Regina, his amorous pensioner and, always being up for a new experience, goes into the blackmail business.
This thread of the story, however, is on the back burner through most of the book, as Ross, recovering from his earlier adventures, happily farms the milking of Regina out to Hennessy, his father's scumbag solicitor, a walking exemplar of everything that is wrong with what is left of the country and one of the creepiest characters in literature since Uriah Heep. It is a testament to Howard's ability as an author that he can actually get away with writing something like this
I come downstairs for breakfast to find Hennessy in the kitchen – get this - having a casual root through the laundry basket, basically inspecting Sorcha's underwear. He doesn't even have the decency to stop when I walk in on him
then have the protagonists conduct a business-like conversation involving Hennessy promising to put Ross in the hospital and concluding with
...he goes out the door and up the path before I've said another word, a pair of Sorcha's blue plaid cotton ruched-back hiphuggers hanging form his pocket.
Before all of this reaches a head, however, Ross still has to deal with Ronan, his chip-off-the-old-block son, 14 years old and following in the master's sexual footsteps, Honor, his six year old total wagon of a daughter and a major league bully, now empowered by being cast as the child star of a movie being filmed in Ireland and based on the best-selling novel written by the mother he despises (“I think you're the reason God gave me these babies”, flicking his two middle fingers in her direction), and Kenneth, the father of Ro's girlfriend, and known to the insurance industry as “Edward Scissorhands” for his habit of cutting off his own fingers to bolster dubious compensation claims. Through it all there is also the ongoing sub-plot concerning the wedding of Erika, Ross's total bitch of a half-sister, and Fionn, his friend and a thoroughly decent guy. Maybe I'm over-analyzing here, but Ross's Cassandra-like stance as the only character who can see that this wedding is never going to happen – especially after Fabrizio, Erika's polo playing, Argentinian ex shows up (“one player recognizes another”) - could stand as a metaphor for the wilderness voices during the Tiger years warning it would all end in tears; good can't lie down with bad.
The Ross books have been becoming progressively darker as Howard has got older, but never so dark that there's no light at the end of the tunnel. By the end, there is a nice little pay-back for Hennessy when he inevitably double-crosses Ross (I'm not really giving anything away with that; you always kind of knew it was going to happen) and Ross, for once, takes care of business using his head instead of his dick. Ross's entanglement with a Welsh shop-lifter on Fionn's stag weekend is perhaps one of the most hilarious episodes I've read in a Ross novel, and is alone worth the price of the book, and Howard's effortless and pin-point accurate depiction of the shallowness of those who control Irish society would be terrifying if it weren't so funny.
Highly recommended, but with the usual rider: it's written in South Dublinese, so try to imagine it being narrated by Bob Geldolf.
The
Edmund Burke
As the Celtic Tiger recedes into history, leaving behind the materialistic dregs which are at all times the only things neo-Liberalism ever delivers, one man stands like a Colossus above the wreckage of post-boom and now completely busted Ireland, and his name is Ross O'Carroll Kelly. Where others, like his appalling, fluffy bunny wife, construct trickle-down theories of social cohesion designed ultimately for no other purpose than to convince themselves that they are actually “good people”, but which – curiously – never involve any real sacrifice on their part, Ross is having none of this hypocritical old claptrap. He's a greedy, lascivious, unprincipled, underhanded little rat and the only man in the whole show with the integrity to admit it to himself. These are the voyages of the star who is The Rossmeister General, his continuing mission to sate his apatites, to lay more women, to boldly screw what no man has screwed before.
Of course, in Ireland today, screwing a virgin almost inevitably means doing time as a paedophile, so Ross makes do with what he can get. In this one, he is recovering from a brief encounter with a sixty-something cougar, her fruitcake daughter and a couple of criminal skangers whom he used to live next door to until he made a big mistake and nailed one of their girlfriends. Being Ross, he emerges sort of intact, but somewhat the worse for wear. He is, however, in the happy position of having the goods on Regina, his amorous pensioner and, always being up for a new experience, goes into the blackmail business.
This thread of the story, however, is on the back burner through most of the book, as Ross, recovering from his earlier adventures, happily farms the milking of Regina out to Hennessy, his father's scumbag solicitor, a walking exemplar of everything that is wrong with what is left of the country and one of the creepiest characters in literature since Uriah Heep. It is a testament to Howard's ability as an author that he can actually get away with writing something like this
I come downstairs for breakfast to find Hennessy in the kitchen – get this - having a casual root through the laundry basket, basically inspecting Sorcha's underwear. He doesn't even have the decency to stop when I walk in on him
then have the protagonists conduct a business-like conversation involving Hennessy promising to put Ross in the hospital and concluding with
...he goes out the door and up the path before I've said another word, a pair of Sorcha's blue plaid cotton ruched-back hiphuggers hanging form his pocket.
Before all of this reaches a head, however, Ross still has to deal with Ronan, his chip-off-the-old-block son, 14 years old and following in the master's sexual footsteps, Honor, his six year old total wagon of a daughter and a major league bully, now empowered by being cast as the child star of a movie being filmed in Ireland and based on the best-selling novel written by the mother he despises (“I think you're the reason God gave me these babies”, flicking his two middle fingers in her direction), and Kenneth, the father of Ro's girlfriend, and known to the insurance industry as “Edward Scissorhands” for his habit of cutting off his own fingers to bolster dubious compensation claims. Through it all there is also the ongoing sub-plot concerning the wedding of Erika, Ross's total bitch of a half-sister, and Fionn, his friend and a thoroughly decent guy. Maybe I'm over-analyzing here, but Ross's Cassandra-like stance as the only character who can see that this wedding is never going to happen – especially after Fabrizio, Erika's polo playing, Argentinian ex shows up (“one player recognizes another”) - could stand as a metaphor for the wilderness voices during the Tiger years warning it would all end in tears; good can't lie down with bad.
The Ross books have been becoming progressively darker as Howard has got older, but never so dark that there's no light at the end of the tunnel. By the end, there is a nice little pay-back for Hennessy when he inevitably double-crosses Ross (I'm not really giving anything away with that; you always kind of knew it was going to happen) and Ross, for once, takes care of business using his head instead of his dick. Ross's entanglement with a Welsh shop-lifter on Fionn's stag weekend is perhaps one of the most hilarious episodes I've read in a Ross novel, and is alone worth the price of the book, and Howard's effortless and pin-point accurate depiction of the shallowness of those who control Irish society would be terrifying if it weren't so funny.
Highly recommended, but with the usual rider: it's written in South Dublinese, so try to imagine it being narrated by Bob Geldolf.
The