The Butcher Boy - by Patrick McCabe (Paperback)

About the Book

The winner of The Irish Times-Aer Lingus Prize and nominated for the Booker Prize, this brilliant story of a killer coming of age reads like "part Huck Finn, part Hannibal Lecter" (New York Times Book Review). Dark, haunting, and hilarious, the book stuns readers with its language and chilling portrait of a macabre and dangerous mind.

Book Synopsis

"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."

Thus begins Patrick McCabe's shattering novel The Butcher Boy, a powerful and unrelenting journey into the heart of darkness. The bleak, eerie voice belongs to Francie Brady, the "pig boy," the only child of and alcoholic father and a mother driven mad by despair. Growing up in a soul-stifling Irish town, Francie is bright, love-starved, and unhinged, his speech filled with street talk, his heart filled with pain...his actions perfectly monstrous.

Held up for scorn by Mrs. Nugent, a paragon of middle-class values, and dropped by his best friend, Joe, in favor of her mamby-pamby son, Francie finally has a target for his rage--and a focus for his twisted, horrific plan.

Dark, haunting, often screamingly funny, The Butcher Boy chronicles the pig boy's ominous loss of innocence and chilling descent into madness. No writer since James Joyce has had such marvelous control of rhythm and language... and no novel since The Silence Of The Lambs has stunned us with such a macabre, dangerous mind.

Review Quotes

Shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize.

Winner of the Irish Times-Aer Lingus Literature Prize for Fiction.

"An almost perfect novel...A Beckett monologue with plot by Alfred Hitchcock...Startlingly original."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Stunning...part Huck Finn, part Holden Caufield, part Hannibal Lecter."
--The New York Times Book Review

"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 of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

"A chilling tale of a child's hell...often screamingly funny...the book has a compelling and terrible beauty."
--The Boston Globe

"Lyrical and disturbing, horrific and hilarious."
--The New York Times

"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

About the Author

Patrick McCabe was born in Ireland in 1955. His novels include Music on Clinton Street, Carn, The Butcher Boy, and Breakfast on Pluto. The latter two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Butcher Boy won the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize in 1992 and was made into a film, directed by Neil Jordan, in 1997. The film Breakfast on Pluto, also directed by and co-written with Neil Jordan, was released in 2006 to great acclaim. His play Frank Pig Says Hello was published by Methuen Drama in Far From the Land: New Irish Plays in 1998. Patrick McCabe lives in his home town of Clones, County Monaghan.