 First edition cover | |
| Author | Patrick McCabe |
|---|---|
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
Publication date | March 1, 2001 |
| ISBN | 0-06-019678-5 |
Emerald Germs of Ireland (2001) is a black comedy novel by Irish author Patrick McCabe. [1] [2] [3] [4] Each chapter uses the title of a different song and begins with an epigram of the lyrics.
The title "Emerald Germs of Ireland" is a reference to a music book, mentioned in McCabe's earlier novel The Butcher Boy titled "Emerald Gems of Ireland".
The book focuses on the story of Pat McNab. Through the use of flashbacks and hallucinations it tells of the alternately adoring and critical attention of his mother, Maimie, and the abusiveness of his father describing how it finally sent him over the edge.
After initially killing both his father and mother, he proceeds to kill his neighbors and local visitors to the village whom he believes to be aware of his crimes and attempt to blackmail him.
Eventually, after the removal of each successive "germ", he exhumes his mother's body as an act of closure.
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"A Boy Named Sue" is a song written by Shel Silverstein and made famous by Johnny Cash. Cash recorded the song live in concert on February 24, 1969, at California's San Quentin State Prison for his At San Quentin album. Cash also performed the song in December 1969 at Madison Square Garden. The live San Quentin version of the song became Cash's biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and his only top ten single there, spending three weeks at No. 2 in 1969, held out of the top spot by "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones. The track also topped the Billboard Hot Country Songs and Easy Listening charts that same year and was certified Gold on August 14, 1969, by the RIAA.
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Patrick McCabe is an Irish writer. Known for his mostly dark and violent novels set in contemporary—often small-town—Ireland, McCabe has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), both of which have been made into films.
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The Butcher Boy is a 1992 novel by Patrick McCabe.
The Dead School is a 1995 novel by Irish writer Patrick McCabe.
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"The Maid and the Palmer" is an English language medieval murder ballad with supernatural/religious overtones. Because of its dark lyrics, the song was often avoided by folk singers. Considered by scholars to be a "debased" version of a work more completely known in European sources as the Ballad of the Magdalene, the ballad was believed lost in the oral tradition in the British Isles from the time of Sir Walter Scott, who noted a fragment of it having heard it sung in the early years of the nineteenth century, until it was discovered in the repertoire of a living Irish singer, John Reilly, from whom it was collected in the 1960s, although subsequently other versions have surfaced from Ireland from the 1950s to the 1970s; an additional full text, collected and notated in around 1818, was also recently published in Emily Lyle's 1994 Scottish Ballads under the title "The Maid of Coldingham", having remained in manuscript form in the intervening time. Based on a tape of Reilly's performance provided by the collector Tom Munnelly, the singer Christy Moore popularised the song under its alternate title "The Well Below the Valley" with the Irish folk band Planxty and later solo performances/recordings, this song providing the title of that group's second album released in 1973; the song has subsequently been recorded by a number of more recent "folk revival" acts.
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Breakfast on Pluto is a 2005 comedy-drama film written and directed by Neil Jordan. It is based on the 1998 novel of the same name, written by Patrick McCabe, as adapted by Jordan and McCabe. The film stars Cillian Murphy as a transgender woman foundling searching for love and for her long-lost mother, in small town Ireland and London in the 1970s.
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