<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Books

A broad farce about banking’s dirty secrets in post-Celtic-Tiger Dublin

The Mark and the Void, Paul Murray’s follow-up to the much acclaimed Skippy Dies, is sharp, satirical and utterly of the moment

1 August 2015

9:00 AM

1 August 2015

9:00 AM

The Mark and the Void Paul Murray

Hamish Hamilton, pp.462, £12.99, ISBN: 9780241145128

It’s not Paul Murray’s settings or themes — decadent aristocrats, clerical sex abuse, the financial crisis — that mark him out as original, it’s his handling: the wild plotting, the witty dialogue and the eccentricity of his characters. The follow-up to his widely admired second novel Skippy Dies swaps the adolescent funk of a Catholic boys’ boarding school for the testosterone whiff of a fictional investment bank in Dublin.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Get 10 issues
for $10

Subscribe to The Spectator Australia today for the next 10 magazine issues, plus full online access, for just $10.

  • Delivery of the weekly magazine
  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £10.99 Tel: 08430 600033

You might disagree with half of it, but you’ll enjoy reading all of it. Try your first month for free, then just $2 a week for the remainder of your first year.


Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close