A review by R J Dent
Even though David Noone’s novella, Saint of the City, is set firmly in Dublin and is narrated by Dublin-born Sean Aloysius Ignatius Connolly, there is a decidedly French decadent sensibility at work in this novella; a novella that is part noir thriller and part fictionalised autobiography.
As to what gives it its decidedly French ambience, it may be the sex: ‘She rose and fell violently onto my prick as the beginnings of a lupine scream escaped her mouth eventually filling the room at its crescendo. I came like a machine gun inside her as she continued on to her own climax, dragging her nails down the side of her face as she did so.’
It might be the death: ‘Getting myself a knife. Finding the bastard and slitting his fucking throat. One more dead scumbag wouldn’t bother the cops.’
Or it may be the booze: ‘I’d seen it a thousand times and wondered how I could have spent six years drinking two bottles of wine a day and still manage to have ten times the brain they had.’
Or perhaps it’s the rock and roll: ‘The Velvets’… ‘Nine Inch Nails, Type O Negative… When I looked at the younger clientele I wondered how many of them had any idea who Diamanda Galas was. Or The Birthday Party. Or Lydia Lunch. Bauhaus had brought androgyny back to the fore, taking their cue from Bowie and Roxy Music. These kids looked like they were more into Motorhead and Metallica than T. Rex.’
It could even be the authors: ‘Houellebecq, Camus, Kafka’… ‘Sylvia Plath’… ‘de Sade’, because as everyone knows, especially Sean Aloysius Ignatius Connolly, the French value writers – their own and those ‘others’.
What is more likely is that the distinctly French sensibility which permeates David Noone’s incisive and insightful Saint of the City is due to a combination of all of the above-mentioned ingredients, along with ‘a charming psycho’, of a narrator who’s more than happy to recount his current life anecdotes with a tone of unflinching honesty and unrepentant black humour. If Baudelaire had written a crime novella, Saint of the City would be that book.
Saint of the City is a serious, darkly comic work of fiction, and is well-worth reading – more than once.
Product Details:
Title: Saint of the City
Author: David Noone
ISBN: 978-0-244-31325-8
Publisher: Murder Slim Press
Pages: 107
Language: English
David Noone’s Saint of the City, published by Murder Slim Press is available here:
http://www.murderslim.com/SaintOfTheCityReviews.html
David Noone’s Goodreads author profile is available here:
ttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16172928.David_Noone
And details of David Noone’s work can be found at:
R J Dent 