Flann O’Brien – At Swim Two Birds

ISBN: 0140026363

“At Swim Two Birds” is a wonderfully convoluted comic novel about a boozy student, clearly drawing on the author’s own practical experiences, who is writing a book about an author, Trellis, who is also writing writing a novel, the characters of which are in turn writing about him! This “Russian doll” theme recurs in O’Brien’s “The Third Policeman”. The student’s narrative is frequently interrupted by entertaining “biographical reminiscences” mixed with his wild literary theories.

The secondary “author”, Trellis, is writing a salacious morality tale on the wages of sin, utilising a range of “borrowed” characters from the likes of Irish mythology and 30′s cowboy novellas. These characters in turn rebel agains the roles Trellis is assigning them and drug him so that they can rewrite his narrative while he sleeps. This engenders a highly entertaining farrago of literary styles, intermixed with the various texts which the student is pillaging for his own literary creation.

The end result is a highly amusing tour-de-force which is alway good to come back to. O’Brien (original name Brian O’Nolan) must have been great craic in the pub!

Reviewed By: Brian Frew

Posted in Book Reviews