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The Butcher Boy
The Butcher Boy
The Butcher Boy
Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

The Butcher Boy

Written by Patrick McCabe

Narrated by Patrick McCabe

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

When I was a lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.

Welcome to the mind of Francie Brady. Just what Francie did to Mrs. Nugent is the final, terrifying act of a young boy at the end of a relentless descent into a world of scorn and fear, brought to unforgettably vivid life in this tour-de-force performance by author Patrick McCabe.

Francie Brady, the "pig boy," is growing up in a poor small Irish town in the early sixties, fueled on an adolescent's comic books, Flash Bars, and John Wayne movies. He is determined to win the Francie Brady Not a Bad Bastard Anymore Diploma. But how do you do that when your mother is sent to the madhouse, your father is an alcoholic, and everyone turns their back on you?

Soon to be a major motion picture from Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire, The Crying Game), and read with the bravura performance style that has earned McCabe raves on both sides of the Atlantic, The Butcher Boy is a stunning audio thriller.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 1, 1994
ISBN9780743542210
The Butcher Boy
Author

Patrick McCabe

Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland, in 1955. His other novels include The Butcher Boy, The Dead School, and Call Me the Breeze. With director Neil Jordan, he co-wrote the screenplay for the film version of The Butcher Boy.

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Reviews for The Butcher Boy

Rating: 4.1875 out of 5 stars
4/5

32 ratings13 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I found The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe a powerful, engrossing and disturbing read. Young Francie Brady never really stood a chance at having a normal life. His father spent all his time in the local, drinking and feeling sorry for himself for how his life had turned out. Francie?s mother, whom he loved very much, had emotional problems and at one point is taken off to the ?mad-house?. After his parents have a particular nasty fight, Francie runs away. He makes it to Dublin, but misses his mother, his friends and his village and so returns. He buys a present for his mother, hoping that will make her happy. Unfortunately, while he was gone his mother had killed herself. His father tells him it was Francie?s fault that she did this and he responds by withdrawing further into his violent fantasy world. He takes against one particular family; in particular the mother, Mrs. Nugent and her son, Philip, but it?s obvious that he longs to have his mother back and in such a close, caring and safe relationship. As his obsession grows stronger, Francie?s behavior gets worse and worse until he crosses the line from mischief to madness. A spell in reform school under the care of priests only served to make him worse. When he gets back home, he picks up a job at the local butcher?s, which of course, doesn?t help. The author never uses quotation marks so I found I had to read carefully to figure out who was talking, also Francie was so into his strange visions that the reader had to figure out what was really taking place and what was just happening in his head. Even with these difficulties, this is a book that I am glad that I didn?t miss.The Butcher Boy was a violent, pitiful, sometimes funny and exhausting read. I felt almost traumatized by being placed in Francie?s mind and experiencing the blurring of his reality taking form. You can?t help but feel compassion for this young man even as he shocks and revolts you. The content of Francie?s mind is horrific, but his inner voice can be quite funny. In the end you are left wondering if things would have been different if this boy had only been nurtured on love and hope instead of indifference and despair. This will definitely be a book that I will remember as much for it?s uniqueness as for it?s unrelenting darkness.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I would give this book 10 stars if I could. An utterly brilliant evocation of social and mental isolation. Emotionally gripping. Wildly imaginative. Funny, brutal, and heartbreaking. I will reread this one. One of my new all-time favorites.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Can children be evil? In literature this is certainly the case. I am reminded of the evil little girl, Rhoda Penmark, in The Bad Seed by William March. In Patrick McCabe's third novel we have a rival for Rhoda with Francie Brady. It is a journey into the heart of darkness: the mind of a desperately troubled kid one step away from madness and murder. Francie Brady is a schoolboy in a small town in Ireland. His father is a mean drunk and his mother a slovenly housekeeper, but Francie has a good buddy, Joe Purcell, and their Tom-and-Huck friendship is what sustains him. Then a seemingly trivial incident alters the landscape: Francie and Joe con the very proper Philip Nugent out of his prize collection of comic books, and Philip's mother calls the Bradys ``pigs.'' Like many of Edgar Allan Poe's narrators, Francie will blame all his troubles on someone else, in his case Mrs. Nugent; it doesn't help that the Nugent household is a cozy haven, maddeningly out of his reach. Matters rapidly deteriorate. His mother enters a mental hospital. Francie runs away to Dublin; he returns to find that his ma, whom he had promised never to let down, has drowned herself. He breaks into the Nugents' house, defecates on the carpet, is sent to reform school, and (the unkindest cut) loses Joe to Philip Nugent. Francie tells us all of this in a voice that is the novel's greatest triumph--a minimally punctuated but always intelligible flow of razor-sharp impressions, name-calling, self-loathing, pop-culture detritus culled from comic books and John Wayne movies (the time is 1962), all delivered with the assurance of a stand-up comic. We see in this story the longing for childhood innocence, now lost forever, and just an inkling of the gathering mental darkness that will lead to an inevitable denouement. Reminiscent of Salinger and Sillitoe, McCabe has created something all his own--an uncompromisingly bleak vision of a child who retains the pathos of a grubby urchin even as he evolves into a monster not unlike some of those that issue from Poe's imagination. His novel is a tour de force.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Eigentlich ist Francie Brady ein ganz normaler Junge aus einer irischen Kleinstadt. Sein Vater s?uft lieber, als sich um die Familie zu k?mmern und seine Mutter lebt in ihrer eigenen kleinen Welt, in der es mal hoch und mal hinunter geht. Brady vertreibt sich die Zeit mit seinem besten Freund Joe, doch die Spannungen in der Familie und in der Stadt kochen soweit hoch, dass Brady eines Tages von zu Hause ausrei?t. Als er wieder zur?ckkommt, hat seine Mutter sich das Leben genommen.Und f?r Francie wird nichts mehr so sein wie fr?her. Immer mehr verliert er den Hang zur Realit?t und wird immer w?tender auf die verbohrte Kleinstadt, die wiederum versucht, ihre Kinder von dem kleinen seltsamen Jungen fernzuhalten. Als dann sein bester Freund Joe ihm dann auch noch den R?cken kehrt, brennt eine Leitung in Bradys Gehirn durch.In Patrick McCabes Roman lernt der Leser den jungen Brady kennen. Er begleitet ihn von dem Moment an, in dem er ein kleiner fantasievoller Junge ist bis zu dem Moment, in dem er durch die Gesellschaft weggesperrt wird. Vielleicht ist es zum Teil die Veranlagung der Mutter, die selbst suizides Verhalten an den Tag legt, dass sich Brady mehr und mehr in eine Traumwelt zur?ckzieht. Er betrachtet die Welt aus den Augen eines Kindes, erkennt sehr wohl die Falschheit der B?rger und sehnt sich nach einer gewissen Akzeptanz. Diese wird ihm immer wieder verwehrt und eine immer gr??ere Distanz entsteht zwischen ihm und den Menschen, die noch dadurch gef?rdert wird, dass er in ein Heim gesteckt wird. Niemand kann so recht etwas mit dem Jungen anfangen. Nur der Schl?chter Leddy gibt ihm aus Mitleid eine Anstellung in der Schlachterei.Brady lernt nie wirklich, erwachsen zu werden. Das ist oft zu merken, denn der Junge h?lt an in seiner Kindheit vorgefallenen Sachen und Dingen fest und kommt in seiner Erz?hlung immer wieder darauf zur?ck, w?hrend sich seine Mitmenschen kaum noch erinnern k?nnen. Der Leser verfolgt seinen langsam anwachsenden Wahnsinn und doch ist hier die Figur des Jungen so sympathisch beschrieben, dass man es nicht als absto?end empfindet, als er schlie?lich das tut, was getan werden muss. Es ist wie eine Art Erleichterung.In diesem Buch fehlt es komplett an w?rtlicher Rede und doch ist sie vorhanden. Sie ist lediglich nicht durch Anf?hrungszeichen gekennzeichnet und so ist es manchmal schwierig, zwischen einer Fantasie und der Realit?t zu unterscheiden. Durch dieses Mittel schafft es der Autor, den Leser in Bradys Welt der Verwirrung und Verzweiflung zu ziehen.DER SCHL?CHTERBURSCHE ist ein wirklich sehr zu empfehlender Roman. Der Wahnsinn ist hierin so gut beschrieben, dass man trotz der Verwirrtheit des Jungen, all seine Motive und Handlungen nachvollziehen kann und so seine eigene Wut auf bornierten B?rger der Kleinstadt entwickelt. Wenn ein Roman sowohl emotional als auch technisch den Leser fesselt, dann kann ich einfach nur sagen: Gro?artig!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a wonderful novel that charts the disintegration of an intelligent, all-too-conscious of his declasse position, even within the confines, or maybe, more pronounced because of, his living in a small village. A strange likeability hovers around the main character. I don't know if other readers might agree, and this is certainly not meant as a criticism, McCabe's novel overtly pays homage to that 1950s classic of the clever youth Caulfield's retelling their story in first-person narrative, 'The Catcher in the Rye'.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When Mrs Mulholland next door asked me what I thought about this book I said "It's a load of old shite Mrs Mulholland." No I didn't I said It's alright. But what I was really thinking was this book is really dark and funny. It's quite scary really. I was a bit like the boy Francie when I was about 8. I loved comics and I was jealous of a kid who had nice parents and toys and stuff and I battered shite out of him. I grew out of it and I haven't got mental health problems but I know people who are proper psychos because they are really bitter about their upbringing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Follows the life of a young boy after trauma with a great end to piece it all together.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "A Beckett monologue with a plot by Alfred Hitchcock", 18 June 2015This review is from: The Butcher Boy: Picador Classic (Paperback)Narrated by the seriously disturbed - yet curiously empathetic - Francie Brady, as he recalls his youth: "When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent."The narrative covers around four years, during which time Francie's dysfunctional family life (mother having a breakdown, father a drunk) completely comes to an end. The only stability in his life is his friend Joe - their friendship harks back to an innocent time. But Joe is turning away from Francie's extreme behaviour; growing up, no longer interested in comic books. Worse, he is hanging out with middle class Philip Nugent, on whose family - most particularly his mother - Francie's mind has come round to pinning all his woes.Strange, delusional yet extremely compelling read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had seen the movie version of this book before reading it. And although I don't remember the movie entirely, it did prepare me for some of what to expect. I imagine going into this one cold would be a bit of a wild ride.We're thrust into the mind of Francie Brady, a young Irish boy who lives in a troubled home. In short order, we start to realize that Francie himself is a bit troubled. I feel like this book defies description or pinning down. It is sometimes horrifying, sometimes funny, often confusing. Francie's view of things is often unreliable, and his disordered mind isn't the easiest to spend time in. But the book manages to dance enough on the edges that it pulls you back in just when you think things are going to become completely unbearable. Still, it's not a book for the genteel crowd.Recommended for: fans of Requiem for a Dream, A Clockwork Orange, people who like their humor black.Quote: "I says I will ma and she says I know you will son and then we'd just sit for hours sometimes just staring into the firegate only there never was a fire ma never bothered to light one and I wasn't sure how to go about it. I said what fire do we want its just as good sitting here staring into the ashes."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A very disturbing book about a boy's descent into obsession, mental illness, and murder. I'm surprised I ever read another Patrick McCabe book after this. As hard as this book is to read though, McCabe is a brilliant writer. Just be prepared to see what it's like inside the mind of a child psychopath.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Phew it was grim, but an amazing feat of writing. If I was a more sophisticated reader no doubt I would have given it five stars.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Francie Brady lives in a small town in Ireland, likes comics and is regarded as a bit of a ne'er do well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Leave The paper to pick you next read and like me you may find yourself reading a disturbing as fuck, scary as hell, beautiful jewel like this? in other words? this books creepy but awesome! and fun ontop of that!