Himself

Product Information

Kidd's writing is altogether lyrical, bursting with imagery, delightfully irreverent, folkloric and devilishly humorous.

Himself by Jess Kidd | Waterstones

I hope this is not a cliche as I'm not Irish and haven't had the pleasure of visiting Ireland, but Kidd's writing for me has a lilt. Because just recently, he found out that one of his chief nemeses at the orphanage where he was raised, Sister Veronica, left him an envelope when she died. She’s put him out like a cat a million times but like a cat he has a habit of slinking back and curling up in the warm corners of her mind.Meanwhile, the ghost of Cauley’s jilted lover Johnny floats around the gardens of Rathmore House, to little purpose. Last Thursday, Father Gerard McNamara walked into the Bridge Tavern with a black leather folio in his hand and an envelope inside the folio. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for discussion. For the blood inside Tadhg has begun to belt around his body for the first time in a very long time and he knows that it can’t be good to stir up a system that has been sumping and rusting to a comfortable dodder.

HIMSELF | Kirkus Reviews HIMSELF | Kirkus Reviews

Mulderring is a town simmering with fiercely kept secrets, quite a few miscreants and a chorus of ghosts that lurk at every corner and crevice.

Aside from ghosts, consider the other supernatural elements that the author introduces into the universe of her novel. Mahony shoulders his rucksack, steps off the bus, and stands in the dead center of the village of Mulderrig. They almost reach the foot of the staircase when a voice rolls out into the hallway and along the faded carpet. There are token efforts to link her story to Synge’s great play about the duplicities of rural Irish society.

Himself | Book by Jess Kidd | Official Publisher Page | Simon

The town is filled with people with something to hide, some who are canny and charming, others who are bitchy or brutal. With looks like that, thinks Tadhg, the fella is either a poet or a gobshite, with the long hair and the leather jacket and the walk on it, like his doesn’t smell. For Mahony, who has always been a bit of a rake (yet a handsome one) and a ne'er-do-well, this is powerful stuff. I literally set it down for a week at a time, and I'm a person who had to set a 'no mysteries after 10 pm' rule so I would go to sleep more or less on time.

His physical appearance (even though he's a bit of an unwashed hippie-type) and his newness appeal to women of all ages, who react in unusual ways. He can almost feel a big fecker of a blood clot hurtling towards his brain to knock him clean out of the living world. Every page of Kidd’s who-done-it novel is filled with magic, spirit, peppery characters, and ghosts of the village dead, including their pets, who are visible only to some. At its dark heart is the tale of a long-ago murder in a remote coastal village in the west of Ireland, and the young man who, nearly 30 years later, seeks to avenge it.