Here Are the Young Men

“God may be dead, but a new literary star is born.” —The Sunday Times

Meet Matthew, Rez, Cocker, and Kearney. They've just finished school, and are facing the great void of the future, celebrating their freedom in this unpromising adult reality with self-obliteration. They roam through Dublin, their only aims the next drink, the next high, and a callow, fearful idea of sex. Kearney, in particular, pushes boundaries in a way that once made him a leader in the group, but increasingly an object of fear. When a trip to the U.S. turns Kearney's violent fantasies ever darker, the other boys are forced to face both the violence within themselves and the limits of their own indifference.

Here Are the Young Men portrays a spiritual fallout, harbinger of the collapse of national illusion in "Celtic Tiger" Ireland. Visceral and chilling, this debut novel marks the arrival of a formidable literary talent, channeling an unnerving anarchic energy to devastating effect.

Rob Doyle was born in Dublin and holds an honors degree in philosophy and an Ph.M. in psychoanalysis from Trinity College Dublin. His fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in the Dublin Review, the Stinging Fly, Gorse, the Moth, the Penny Dreadful, and elsewhere. Having spent several years in Asia, South America, Italy, England, and the United States, he now lives in Dublin. Here Are the Young Men is his first novel.

“What we see when we pass through the sullen, monosyllabic and defensive exteriors that comprise most teenage boys will terrify parents everywhere—a vast, swarming cesspit of troubled thoughts, anxiety, turbulent sexual desires and disturbing violent ideation . . . [Doyle] has a remarkable way of articulating the innermost thoughts of young men . . . [He] perfectly describes the disaffected experience of most suburban teenagers . . . The result is a dark and intoxicating debut.” —Irish Independent

“A Clockwork Orange, Less Than Zero, Trainspotting, Fight Club: delinquent fiction warrants a bookshelf of its own. Rob Doyle’s debut novel, Here Are the Young Men, merits special attention . . . [It] probably won’t go down well in polite society . . . So be it: brutalism is a young man’s game . . . A rough but powerful debut.” —Irish Times

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