J.P. Donleavy Books

george smith is a lot like donleavy's other protagonists in that he seems to have the outer trappings of refinement and composure while actively unravelling from the inside out.

the book, for the most part, is entertaining, though donleavy does tend to dip into his flights of self-indulgent fancy a bit too often for my taste. still, donleavy has his chops and manages to make things funny along the way.

"the lady who liked clean restrooms" is much better--and, of course, "the ginger man." this new one "sunrise on moonville" reminds me of a leaner, snappier donleavy as well. it's a good read, too.

Halfway through this book, I knew I had to get my hands on anything by JPD out there. It is that good. Laugh out loud funny. IMO the gents will enjoy this more than their female counterparts. This book went down like a super fine singlemalt scotch on a warm fall evening. One of the finest works these eyeballs have viewed. And they have seen much. Not to be missed.

Donleavy's humor insists there is something to laugh about in this world, but then you realise that what you are laughing out-loud at is, at best, something disgusting, or rude, or utterly insane... chicken soup for the soul.

I wish I had written this book, but I didn't, so I'm glad he did. On the rare occasion I bring the title up I am not surprised to find that no one's ever even heard of it's author. I wish someone had so we could say to eachother "god, that's a freakin great book. Straight right man." and laugh inside our souls.

It's a perfect story, but not the kind I would read to my nieces or buy for my grandmother. I still recommend it to anyone who has ever thought that something's not quite right and they can't decide if the people they meet are really as convoluted and arrogant as they think, or if maybe it's just them.

Anyone wants to read the greatest book of their life, well this might be it, so don't think too hard and try it.

Hail to the King J.P. Donleavy

Having visciously ensnared every opinion as yet posted upon this board, I am inclined to agree.

I also am of the opinion that this is the greatest book that I have ever read only just after the beastly beatitudes (also by JPD). And, I too wanted to be like Mr Smith the thought that he can have everything that he wants was at first, inconcievable that JPD can have created a character who can be capable of all success and ambition, so unlike Balthazar B.

So I pondered, what does he want and can he have it?

What does he want? He wants Miss Tomson and gets her in a way. He wants to be able to handle himself and he gets this. He wants to feel power and will once he dies but until then, he has to make do with the sound of thirtyfive thousand cheers.

So, yes I now agree that he can have most all which he desires. Naturally one wants to feel welcome, now I feel awkward Sorry for spouting I feel;

all dog all dead

This novel will keep you thinking. The characters are regular people, with their own lifes, feelings and passions. The plot is just very good and he does not use any tricks to captivate you. Is a book to enjoy for a couple of hours and think about it for a long time.

I read this mystery in two hours. You are taken places you have never been, the prose is perfect, the story grips you. A reason to bid the video store farewell!

Fiechter's book won the prestigious Grand Prize for Detective Fiction in France--and with good cause. He's a natural-born storyteller whose masterly use of wit and irony, creative plotting, and compelling style will keep readers entertained and bemused. Sir Edward Destry, one of England's most successful publishers, has labored for years in the shadow of his glamorous, charismatic, successful friend, Nicolas Fabry. A former diplomat turned best-selling author, Fabry has just won the French Prix Goncourt for his new book, and Edward is consumed with jealousy and rage. All his life, he's covered for Fabry, playing father to Fabry's abandoned son, consoling the hundreds of women Fabry has ruined, and even editing Fabry's banal, cliché-ridden writing. But Edward doesn't really care about past injustices. What's really got him in a fury is that the plot of the award-winning book reveals that Fabry stole Edward's first and only true love and then destroyed her. Betrayed, wounded, and filled with rage, Edward plots a revenge that is so cunning, so lethal, so cruel, that even he can't predict the final shocking result. Highly recommended. Emily Melton Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Jean-Jacques Fiechter goes deep into the Psychology of Revenge. It is fascinating to see how the Characters take Shape and Volume as the Plot evolves. A Movie has been made, based on this Book, but the Book is a lot better.

Jean-Jacques Fiechter goes deep into the Psychology of Revenge. It is fascinating to see how the Characters take Shape and Volume as the Plot evolves. A Movie has been made, based on this Book, but the Book is a lot better.

JP Donleavy may well be the most hilarious writer on the planet. Darcy Dancer is a Bildungsroman about the coming of age of a young, educated member of the landed gentry in Ireland. He learns about love first- and second-hand through the auspices of a broad range of tutors including the brilliant Mr. Arland, a stablehand named Foxy, the sublime Miss Von B, the artist Clarissa, school chums, butlers and Rashers Ronald. Kildare wanders from one total fiasco of his own making to the next from the hunt and the stables to the mansions of the gentry and private schools and Dublin high society. He always emerges through chance and pluck and the kindness of others none the worse for wear and perhaps slightly wiser. What are we to make of this dubious young "gentleman"? As Kildare correctly surmises: "Every madman thinks everyone else is mad." Donleavy writes with a unique pointillism, using words as brush strokes, that is engaging, endearing and even breathtaking as each chapter ends on a brief poetic note, a pithy line of stacked type. The dialogue is outrageously real and human and uproarious. The character development is precise and each character lives and breathes with a separate unique identity that only a supremely talented writer can render so credibly. Having read nearly all his novels, Darcy Dancer is his best: it's truly a well-written, literary comedy. Discover JP Donleavy -- possibly one of the most under-rated and gifted writers of our era. You'll laugh your head off.

Darcy Dancer live's among the Irish aristocracy. This seems to be something of an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp as the aristocracy is disorderd, drunk and badly behaved. That said, J.P. Donleavy manages to take havoc and add order, excellent writing and a good plot to a fairly slender novel that had me weeping with laughter throughout. His father chasing him through the house, only to crash through a rotted floor to the waist was perfect and only to be outdone by the fox hunt.

This is one of Donleavy's best. It contains everything you could ask for in a book. A tragic love story, meaningless sex, drunken riots, and plain Irish fun. Darcy Dancer is tragic and hilariously funny at the same time. You never know if you will be laughing or crying at the turn of each page.
Read it.

This was the second Donleavy novel I read back in 1980. Since then I have read all of his novels and biographies. This book is also the reason that i stayed at the Shelbourne Hotel.

Full of gratuitous sex, violence drunken ribaldry, indeed it is almost a training manual for students.

It opens the door to positive thinking and instils in one that when things are really bad, they are not as bad as they are going to get, but never give up.

Learn negotiating skills, if a fist in the gob doesn't work, buy your man a drink.

Sex education, from aristocrats, whores, artists, teachers, plebean masses.

In all an excellent life changing book in which Donleavy displays true comic genius and has caused me hours of laughter.

You know - I've always found it odd that the few, the proud, the wierd, who share my literary tastes have never even heard of J.P. Donleavy. While the Ginger Man will always be hard to beat, Destinies isn't far behind. It takes about ten seconds to become hopelessly addicted to Donleavy's style and about five seconds to fall in love with Darcy Dancer and his adventures. Just a wonderful, wonderful novel from one of the most under-appreciated writers of our time.

Having seen the movie "Barry Lyndon" by Stanley Kubrick years ago, I was taken aback by this book which is so markedly different than the 1975 film. In the book, Lord Bullingdon is actually the hero, where Kubrick presented him merely as a cowardly cad. Redmond Barry (later as Barry Lyndon)deserves all the evils that befall him and his first person narrative is quite humorous especially when blaming everyone for his own shortcomings. Unfortunately, the ending leaves one a bit unsatisfied, quite like the dismal end of Mr. Lyndon himself. This novel is not on the level of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", but fun to read nonetheless.

When one is about to take the big plunge and give oneself the trouble of making what is always -in our age of lighter reading, of course - the strenuous effort of reading a XIXth. Century novelist, one - at least me - must make the following question: What was this author's particular attitude, as a man (or woman) of the most bourgeois of all centuries, towards his/her preceding century, the most aristocratic and un-bourgeois XVIIIth. Century? If s/he scorns the XVIIIth. Century, or is indifferent to it, it's quite likely that the author in question is a bourgeois philistine regarding Victorian times as the undisputed acme of human civilization. If s/he is an admirer, than s/he is obviously starting out of a clear sense of alienation from his/her own society, and one should expect at least for this XIXth. Century _avis rara_, genuine sense of humor. Thackeray was one of such Victorians who realized the philisteism of his own society;Eça de Queiroz, his Portuguese disciple (who seems to have learned a lot from reading him) was another. Therefore: Read this book, QED.

Having seen the movie "Barry Lyndon" by Stanley Kubrick years ago, I was taken aback by this book which is so markedly different than the 1975 film. In the book, Lord Bullingdon is actually the hero, where Kubrick presented him merely as a cowardly cad. Redmond Barry (later as Barry Lyndon)deserves all the evils that befall him and his first person narrative is quite humorous especially when blaming everyone for his own shortcomings. Unfortunately, the ending leaves one a bit unsatisfied, quite like the dismal end of Mr. Lyndon himself. This novel is not on the level of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", but fun to read nonetheless.

Here, in this relatively obscure work, Thackeray is at his ironic and satiric best. Modern critics lightly dismiss the book as a piece of journalistic hack work, but it is much more than that. Redmond Barry, later Barry Lyndon, chronicles in a fairly sophistocated and always lighthearted manner his rise from a poor Irish country boy to the astral heights of polite English society from 1750-1820. Mr. Barry is always Machievellian in his way, and is quick and efficient with his sword. He is Odysseus, Holden Caulfield, Don Juan, and Nabokov's Humbert Humbert merged. In a word, he is very, very entertaining and very, very good. The book's only glaring flaw is it's belabored and uninspired ending. But it is much worth reading to watch Redmond Barry when young

I had this book some 20 or more years ago & somehow misplaced it in a move. I've been trying to find it for years! Am still awaiting search results - I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK in my possession again & one for my brother. It is ridiculously funny - a great better-than-spoof of the usual Miss Manners and Emily Post advice. I want to read it again and again.

Absolutely the drollest, driest work of humor I have ever read. So painfully funny, it'll send you to the ICU.

I stumbled across "The Unexpurgated Code" in a used-book store in Boulder, Colorado in 1993, and picked it up thinking it was by someone else. I forget now who I thought had written it, but I have not forgotten this one. I once accidentally delivered a serious snub to a dear friend, and, wondering how to excuse myself, I checked this volume for etiquette advice, to find that the entry under "How to Excuse the Unforgivable Insult" reads, in its entirety, "Don't try." I apologize if my quotes are not quite accurate; the book has been making the rounds of my friends lately, and I don't have it on hand. If you can find this one, do not hesitate to buy it; you will never be sorry (though your friends and loved ones may).

It is a royal shame that Donleavy's best work since The Ginger Man is so insanely out of print. I discovered this book at a very young age, thanks to my dad, and finally acquired my own copy in Canada, of all things. Donleavy's take on the old Emily Post manners books is spot-on evil, giving advice and directions for even the stickiest situations. By starting from the assumption that you are an S.O.B. to begin with, this book will merely add fire to your arsenal. If a bee should sting your you-know-what while on the golf course, you'll hope you've read this book, as it tells you the most socially appropriate response! Other sections deal with how to attend your own funeral, where to blow your nose at a party when no hankerchief is avialable (see summary line), what to do if you find you are at an erotic massage parlor, only to discover that your masseuse is a family member, and so much more. The misanthropy it must have taken to write this book seems boundless and endless, and finishing the entire book almost feels like an endurance test. Resoundingly negative in a healthily positive way. Search every used book store everywhere for a copy. I plan to buy every copy I find so I can lend them out without worrying about whether the cad S.O.B. I'm lending it to will bother to give it back.

This rollicking novel will invite readers who've spent decades living responsibly to critique their lives and wonder if they've taken the wrong path and should've allowed their hormones full reign instead, as the hero does. An idealist of the purest form, he remains mired in poverty and remains baffled that the people around him treat him to limitless bonanzas. Emerging from the navy after WWII, he finds himself lavishly entertained in New York's finest restaurants, zipping around in the world's most expensive sports cars and amorously pursured by the ravishing, sophisticated, elegant, Manhattan hostess (named "Dru") who also just happens to be "the wealthiest woman in America". Dru summarizes his advantage over many rivals when she observes in a well-bred, trembling voice, ("Oh, my! You really are, aren't you, EXCEEDINGLY well endowed!") There is no doubt that he is. His wife has a fantasy that he's drowned and she is shown his cadaver on a mortuary slab. As the sheet is slowly pulled up from his feet, she only needs to view the lower half of his body. "Never mind pulling it up any more; that's him." People lavish things on him, while not alleviating his poverty, because they see things in him they want to exploit. The tensions that result between his idealisms and the satisfactions pressed upon him by other people's money and Dru's lusts, provide the comic richness of the book. (The contrasts between Dru's refined vocabulary ["oh, how utterly droll!"] and her kinky, macabre sexual needs shows the formula at full strength.) Under all the comic intensity, he slowly realizes the gap between hedonism and merit, and he purifies himself. But he purifies himself not of what he's done, but from what he's observed and because of what's been done to him. So by novel's end, straight-laced readers can comfort themselves he's finally arrived where they've always been! Whether they salivate over his detours or not recalls the dilemma of St. Augustine in his memoirs, "Lord, make me chaste, but not too soon." The dominant theme of the novel, however, is comedy, not sex, and as comedy it is robustly and hedonistically triumphant. This is the robust product of an astute and moral writer.

Of all the novels I've read for pleasure or for review purposes during the past decade, none entertained and moved me as much as this splendid novel. At the age of 72, J.P. Donleavy hasn't lost a bit of his ability to pluck a fine elegiac melody on your heartstrings, nor has he lost his lively way with words, that "signature" of sentence fragments that make better English than any other writer's of our time. And here he returns to his home town, New York City, to depict it as no other writer ever has.

What amazes me is that hordes of "readers" are falling all over themselves to buy Tom Wolfe's latest, and so few people are jumping at the chance to savor a truly great novel like this one. There's no justice in the book-buying world.

J.P. Donleavy's narrative voice is unique. Setting him apart from all other writers. With a lyrical pointillism that is fragmented. Painting pictures of incredible poetic beauty. Sad and tender. And then, again, hilarious. Evoking all of one's senses. This tale is very New York. Where Donleavy was born. Before moving to Ireland, TCD and the Irish countryside. His subject, this time, is a starving composer living among wealthy friends and in-laws. Tormented by every woman he meets. Unable to understand just one of them. Even briefly. Bewildered by popular American culture. Which rains fortunes on untalented artists. Hiding the gifted in total obscurity. And starving them into anonymity. They await redemption. And recognition of their artistic merit. As the astonishing talents of Donleavy go unrecognized by the literary mainstream. Read Donleavy -- one of the most gifted and worthy and unheralded writers of our day.

If you enjoy Donleavy, you should give this novel a try; it's marvelously well-written. If you like his prose style you might conclude, as I do, that he's writing better than ever. The prose is, at times, simultaneously fractured and yet perfectly constructed. A paradox, I know, but that's what Donleavy can pull off at his best. The reviews of the novel will likely (and reasonably enough) focus upon its ribald scenes, characteristic outbursts of blarney, etc., etc...Donleavy has certainly not lost the flair for the comic and absurd scene. Beyond that, however, is an emotional punch that really hangs with you after finishing the book. The scene from with the title is taken is, for instance, quite brief and very powerful.

Steve Vivian

I am actually a publisher and we have a line called Humour Classics, in which we reissue out of print classics of humour. And a book I read many years ago, that I loved (I love all of J.P. Donleavey - he is one of my all-time favourite writers) is Fairy Tale of New York. I was checking on Amazon to see if it was available and in print. It is. But I was amazed no-one had done a review. SO here goes: it's brilliantly funny, it would make a great film. The action sequences in the funeral parlour are superb. His prose style is pure magic. Read it!

This is, without a doubt, one of the funniest books I've read. Donleavy's bizarre wit and lyrical style are superb. If you enjoy absurd humor, you will love this book.

My Irish father bought this book years ago, one rainy day in a department store, He dragged me up the the top floor, I remember because he was very keen to get the latest J P Donleavy novel. After he had read it, I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about, and I was hooked immediately! After this I moved onto the Ginger Man then all his others, but this one's the best for me, this book is a classic!

Having been a Donleavy fan for many years i may be a bit biased but i think ONION EATERS is a cracking read.
However i do not think it is the type of book that fans of Dan Brown, or books in the "Top Twenty" would enjoy.
If you want to read an irresistible,wickedly funny,bawdy classic of Irish literature then this is for you,it has fabulous characters and a great storyline,i thoroughly recommend it.
Its different!
By the way after you have read this read THE GINGER MAN.

JP Donleavy's The Onion Eaters is his finest and funniest work to date. Matching the brutish comedy of A Singular Man and The Ginger Man, Donleavy's over-endowed Clementine is the perfect character to inherit his great aunt's castle on Ireland's craggy western coast. Expecting peace and solitude in this lonesome outpost, Clementine soon realizes that he is at the center of some strange phenomenon that inexplicably draws strange people to his door, and eventually, into all of his newly-inherited rooms.

His style is forceful, resolute and even-handed. Notice there are no question marks or exclamation points in this work. He writes with a sense of purpose that many of the characters in the book possess, only their purposes range from measuring stranger's genitalia to excavating for minerals all over the castle. Single-minded and yet still multi-functional, Donleay's characters drive the action through twisted tunnels and forgotten rooms of Charnel Castle, itself a marvel of deviously enjoyable design, much like book itself. The seemingly-bottomless wine cellar provides the assembled crowds with enough reason to act irresponsibly, which only furthers the development of the plot.

While Clementine appears to be overwhelmed with it all, a number of intimate encounters keeps his spirits, and other parts as well, from sagging.

It is with a touch of the cap to Donleavy that I say, while onions may make you cry, The Onion Eaters will make you laugh out loud and wish you knew how to get to Charnel Castle.

This is a damn fine book. Yes, it beats you about the head and face with its raw humor, which is relentless, and yes the lead character is beyond redemption, as if that matters. And yes, the plot is just one impossible pickle after another for this poor guy! And all of his own creation. But the point of the book is not anti-semitism (as has been suggested in the review up top here on amazon), it's the story of a man who, like all Donleavy characters, is inexorably caught between high aspirations and low desires, and knows it.

To top it off, the patented Donleavy prose is in fine form as always.

A little in here for everyone- read it if only to read Ginsberg's famous "Howl".