Presenting... The Fabulous O'Learys

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Pub Date 19 Oct 2017 | Archive Date 31 Oct 2018

Description

“It’s about the pain of being alive. And yet it's so so funny.” Marian Keyes, author of Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, This Charming Man,The Woman Who Stole My Life.


Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen, see the freaks in their natural habitat.  Only cost you your bloody soul.

It is the 1980s: the theatre is crumbling, and show business is changing forever. When veteran actor Ken O’Leary retires, to the disgust of his eccentric, dependent family, they instinctively look to the mute and unendingly withdrawn Glen for salvation. Gentle, starving Delia and her ambitious actor boyfriend Eddie, sexy singer Raquel, circus aerial artist Lesley and a host of midgets, Tourette’s tics and managers squabble - bringing about family breaches, inappropriate sexual relationships, even death.  As the family fractures, their eccentricities raise the question of what it means to be outside of the norm; to be different.  

This is a book about disability – and a book not about disability at all.

“It’s about the pain of being alive. And yet it's so so funny.” Marian Keyes, author of Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, This Charming Man,The Woman Who Stole My Life.


Roll up, roll up, ladies and...


A Note From the Publisher

Caron Freeborn grew up in the new town of Basildon, in Essex, and outside of teachers, never met a middle-class person until she was 24. From childhood, she suffered with an anxiety disorder and although long-recovered, is currently being assessed for autism spectrum condition – which would explain why when young, she never fitted in. As an adult, she has swapped her anti-anxiety meds for tattoos and piercings and a house held together by books.
At 25, Caron inexplicably went to Cambridge to read English, and has lived there ever since. Against class expectations, she has taught at university level for years – first English, then creative writing. Caron has written since she could hold a pen, and first became a novelist (Three Blind Mice, Prohibitions) until gradually she found herself to be a poet. Her first full poetry collection was Georges Perec is my hero (2015). She is now working with photographer Steve Armitage on a multi-media project about Basildon, as most of a new town decays at the same rate. With Presenting the Fabulous O’Learys, Caron Freeborn makes a return to prose fiction because some stories are too big for a poem.

Caron Freeborn grew up in the new town of Basildon, in Essex, and outside of teachers, never met a middle-class person until she was 24. From childhood, she suffered with an anxiety disorder and...


Advance Praise

“Its about the pain of being alive. And yet it's so so funny.” Marian Keyes, author of Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, This Charming Man,The Woman Who Stole My Life.

‘The O'Learys come crackling off the page; their speech has an authentic rhythm at the same time utterly strange. It's like getting your ear in for a different music, and realising you knew it all along. On every page the language bites you, or licks your earlobe.’ Michael Bywater, critic, columnist, and author of Lost Worlds, and Big Babies

 

 “Caron Freeborn's novel is a magnificently tricky piece of work, at once subtle and riotous, poignant and funny. It is a glorious celebration of difference.” Joanne Limburg, author of The Woman Who Thought Too Much and A Want Of Kindness

“Vivid, empathetic and spikily witty, Presenting... The Fabulous O'Learys takes us on a turbulent voyage along familial tributaries, rich with irrepressible characters.” Daisy Black, Circus Performer in The Electric Rodeo Circus,Lili La Scala’s Another F*cking Variety Show, etc.

“There are books that entertain you, books you recommend to others and then, just occasionally, there are books that get under your skin and stay there. Perhaps it's because each time you return to them, there's something you recognise with delight and yet so much else to find. Presenting the Fabulous O' Learys is such a book.” Elizabeth Speller, author of The First Of July, Following Hadrian, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, etc


ABOUT THE BOOK BY THE AUTHOR

Presenting... The Fabulous O’Learys  is a version of King Lear, with more laughs and fewer eye gougings.  It is set in the 1980s against a theatre world in decay, a time pre-google, where we couldn’t all self-diagnose or wildly diagnose each other.  It was a world more innocent about disability and yet harder to negotiate because of that.

When veteran actor Ken O’Leary retires, to the disgust of his eccentric, dependent family, they look in various ways to Ken’s mute brother Glen for salvation. 

Although an ensemble piece, relying on different voices telling the same story, at the heart of the novel is sexy nightclub singer Raquel, with her many disappointments and a need constantly to bleach the kitchen.  Her sister, her burden, is the gentle, starving Delia, whose take on the world is both rigidly limited and enormously wide.  Delia has an ambitious actor boyfriend with a romantic limp, Eddie, who comes between the sisters.  Raquel and Delia also have a circus aerial artist aunt, Lesley, who in some ways has held the family together, and was once married to a malevolent midget.  At the edge of this circle is sweet Tom, the ugly stand-up comedian in love with Delia, whose Tourette’s tics both get in the way of, and facilitate, his career.  If Raquel is the novel’s bloody chambers, Tom is its moral compass.

As you might expect in a version of Lear, there are family breaches, inappropriate sexual relationships, even death.  And while the family fractures, their various apparent eccentricities raise the question of what it means to be outside of the norm.  

Marian Keyes, author of Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, This Charming Man,The Woman Who Stole My Life.

 

Oh my God, I'm just speechless. This is a FABULOUS book. I'm so sorry to be so incoherent with admiration, I wish I could sum up how brilliant this book is and how brilliant she is. She is such a gifted, gifted writer. I was GRIPPED, I couldn't put it down. I was so IN it. Its about the pain of being alive, isn't it? I felt it in every single word. And yet it's so so funny.

I'm not doing justice to this amazing book. And it feels so fully-formed. God, the DIALOGUE, it’s pitch-perfect. And the internal worlds, every one of them in their own separate agonies, which funnily enough I found comforting. It's so nice to know that other people struggle and suffer and how we all have to just get on with it. I feel this will be published with a lot of fanfare. It's very profound, but it's also just a bloody great read! I rattled through it, I couldn't STOP, I DEVOURED it and I miss it already. This is my favourite of her books so far, but I feel VERY VERY STRONGLY that there will be many more to come, that she is growing in her power and talent.

 

 

Michael Bywater, critic, columnist, and author of Lost Worlds, and Big Babies

 

It's one of the oldest stories in the book but I'll not tell you which one. There's a clue and anyway the oldest stories get to be that way because they're the best. The most enduring. Look at the O'Learys. They come crackling off the page; their speech has an authentic rhythm at the same time utterly strange. It's like getting your ear in for a different music, and realising you knew it all along. Even when it's beckoning you in, the story's got something up its sleeve: flags or gurning or lemon puffs or a string of semi-phony Tourette's. Like being glassed in the wrong bar you shouldn't have gone in to start with. Or, same bar, being felt up. On every page the language bites you, or licks your earlobe. "Anger only looks like one thing, it’s easy to read. Actors get that wrong, they make it too complicated, but it’s simple. A moving ugliness." or "People have called me mad all my life, so I thought it was my mind catching up" (it's the comma that does it), or "The pub was one of them done-up ones, that do food": little things, meticulously done, with a London/music-hall *sprezzatura* we don't have in most English. The man who did the best-know (and equally peculiar) version of the story would have loved this one. It's the real, unreal thing.

 

Elizabeth Speller, author of The First Of July, Following Hadrian, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, etc

There are books that entertain you, books you recommend to others and then, just occasionally, there are books that get under your skin and stay there. Perhaps it's because each time you return to them, there's something you recognise with delight and yet so much else to find. Presenting the Fabulous O' Learys is such a book.

The novel defies any one category. Ancient stories of loyalty and betrayal and modern perceptions of the pursuit of power and money, are woven into this tale of a deliciously dysfunctional family, a troupe of players whose ability to dissemble, instinct to perform and questionable loyalties, go far beyond the stage. But at its heart are three characters who drive the narrative forward in its darkly funny, knowing but tragic, journey: the paterfamilias, the almost great actor at the end of his almost great career; his daughter, as wise and strange as she is innocent - in contrast to those around her, she is unable to lie; and her half-sister, whose story this becomes. But - as befits its topic - many cross this novelistic stage perhaps most memorably the comedian who plays his Tourette's for public laughs and finds dignity in in his own powerlessness.

Caron Freeborn is a poet and an academic but mostly she is a magician of words, a creator of worlds and an animator of flawed but irresistible characters. She is a mistress of dialogue. Her joy, sometimes devilish, in playing out the dynamics of family life, has been central to all her novels, but it reaches its apogee here. 


“Its about the pain of being alive. And yet it's so so funny.” Marian Keyes, author of Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, This Charming Man,The Woman Who Stole My Life.

‘The O'Learys come crackling...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781910688359
PRICE £9.99 (GBP)

Average rating from 9 members


Featured Reviews

I'll be honest - it was the cover art that first drew me in. The synopsis was intriguing, but it was the unique cover that sold me.

Any how - on to the meat of it: I really quite thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read most of it in the past 24 hours as I got increasingly absorbed in the characters.

This is most definitely a character driven book, and oh what a cast of characters we have. The author does a fabulous job creating colourful and uniquely damaged individuals that though at times almost seem to be caricatures they also seem so very real.

These are the most perfectly imperfect kinds of people - with their mental health foibles and strange dynamics but obvious love for each other. They just felt so real. And so unique. Each chapter is told from a different characters perspective and voice - you truly feel as though you are inside each individual head. And they each have such strong voices that the author keeps true throughout.

Would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys a glimpse inside a dysfunctional family that is close because of and in spite of their dysfunction. For anyone who appreciates characters with different mental illnesses and physical illnesses - the disabilities are woven seamlessly into the narrative, and it is a beautiful thing. And for anyone who likes finding the humour in the hard realities of life and relationships.

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Such a funny, intriguing book. I’ve never laughed as much as I did while reading this book

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This was a strange book. It reminded me rather of an Angela Carter novel in places. Maybe it was the circus background, but I think there is some resonance in terms of characters too. I enjoyed the book. I particularly liked Delia as a character and her relationship with her sister was compelling. Having said that, it ended too abruptly for me. It’s not that it isn’t finished off, like some novels are, but that I wanted more from it.

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