Reviews
In The Irish Times , Eugene O'Brien wrote that "Howard’s satire is as sharp as ever, with a parallel Ireland existing more concretely in this latest book, which sheds interesting lights on the real Ireland […] Howard keeps the reader off balance by developing seemingly flat characters into whole new levels of complexity." [3]
In The Stinging Fly , Kevin Power wrote "Our rulers serve themselves: the books remind us of this fact repeatedly. They gratify overtly our secret contempt for the powerful. On the other hand, Ross is a “beloved character”. There he sits, at the heart of our popular culture, reminding us that our society is unjust; that our elites are shallow and self-serving; and that materialist greed is a hollow pursuit. We love him. We think he’s great. And his family and friends, that nest of vipers: we love them, too. Should we? Of course we should. That’s how class works. The Ross books enable us safely both to love and to fear our rulers; to envy their wealth and to disapprove of their behaviour; to experience naked capitalist ambition and sheer class hatred at one and the same time and without contradiction; to map the shifting landscapes of an increasingly unstable world." He also noted that "Ross books are masterpieces of denotative realism. A century from now, an interested cultural historian will be able to reconstruct a near-total catalogue of contemporary upper-middle-class lifestyle accoutrements from Howard’s pages: the clothes, drinks, food, make-up, coffee machines, music, movies, actors and actresses." [7]
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