The Poor Mouth — Flann O'Brien

“The funniest book by Flann O'Brien. . . . Unhappiness is the comic goldmine from which he extracts The Poor Mouth's raw material.” -- The Millions

Growing up in Western Ireland, Bonaparte O'Coonassa is introduced from birth to the never-ending poverty and suffering that constitute the Gaelic character. Downpours unfailingly happen each night. Potatoes are eaten for every meal. His grandfather, Old-Grey-Fellow, regales him with tales of the ill luck and evil that have befallen the Gaels (and always will). Such is life in Corkadoragha.

From sharing a small, unkempt house with their pigs (one is too fat to fit through the door), to getting hit on the head for not speaking English on his first -- and last -- day of school, Bonaparte is constantly reminded of the bleak fate that awaits him as a Gael: “after great merriment comes sorrow and good weather never remains forever.”

This hilarious parody of rural Irishness “shows a comic genius working close to his best capability. Humor of this quality, this intensity, is very rare; as witty in its language as in its invention” (Newsweek).

“The Poor Mouth is wildly funny, but there is at the same time always a sense of black evil. Only O'Brien's genius, of all the writers I can think of, was capable of that mixture of qualities.” -- London Evening Standard

“A fine book, hilarious, moving, gorgeously written.” -- Harper's Magazine

“O'Brien was one of the comic geniuses of the 20th century. . . . The Poor Mouth is wildly funny.” -- The Boston Globe