Himself

Part mystery, part supernatural and 100% compelling. I absolutely adored this book, it was a pure joy to read and is utterly charming. It is a masterclass in fiction and reads like poetry. I look forward to its release because it's going to become one of the must reads of 2016. I feel really privileged to have discovered Jess Kidd and cannot wait to see her follow up. 5 out of 5 doesn't seem enough.

A superbly crafted, enjoyable romp through rural Ireland with a host of eccentric characters, ghosts and lies. Jess Kidd effortlessly creates a parochial small-town environment whose secrets are loosened by the return of a sparkling town son. Muhony, searching for the story behind his missing mother, ruffles the feathers of both the living and the dead in this darkly comedic thriller.

I loved this book . It's full of Irish charm and wit.The prose is brilliant and with sentences like "Having a man like Mahogany would be like wearing slingbacks in a cowshed". what's not to love.It involves ghosts from the path, an evil priest and an eccentric old woman who is out to find the truth. Truly wonderful.

I LOVED this book - a crazy combination of murder mystery, supernatural tale, love story and an insightful funny look into a small Irish town in the 70s. Sounds like it shouldnt really work but in Jess Kidds skilful hands it does!

The story centres on a young man, Mahony, who was left outside a church as a baby, who returns to the town he was born in to discover what happened to his mother.

The action switches between Mahonys search in the 70s and the events leading up to his abandonment in the 50s.

Mahonys search for the truth is both hampered and helped by a close knit town filled with quirky yet oh so real characters... oh and a townful of ghosts which only Mahony can see.

I couldnt put this book down - Jess Kidd has created a world where both the living and dead seem full of life and personality.

Kidd expertly manages to weave comedy moments alongside intrigue and suspense.

I would not hesitate to recommend this and I am looking forward to Jess Kidss next book!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review :-)

MILD SPOILERS A strange yet brilliantly inventive book that manages to be both modern and fresh and rather old-fashioned all at the same time. Utterly charming, slightly supernatural and horribly violent the story weaves happily through a quaint Irish village that hides some rather dark secrets. And it's full of ghosts who we are introduced to, I was worried at first they would be a distraction and merely an unusual device, but they add to the story. I adored the vivid pictures the author painted and the characters - especially Mahony who I fell in love with (along with all the other women in the village).

The only thing I would say is that the story sometimes meanders off into red herring territory (I'm not sure why the Roisin relationship happened and it was left open) and the ending was a little rushed, I re-read the final chapters a couple of times but I am still unsure as to who Mahony's father was - especially as Doosey and Mrs Cauley are talking at the end and say 'It wasn't Jack'. So if anyone can enlighten me then that would be great. I also wanted to know if after he saw his dead mother for the first time she remained with him?

Still a satisfying read however you end it, it was so full of colour I would love to read more about the village of Mulderrig.

When Mahony returns to Mulderrig, a speck of a place on Ireland's west coast, he brings only his handsome face, a photograph of his too-young, long-lost mother, and a determination to do battle with the village's lies.
Mahony also somehow wakes the dead from their graves, those folk who once lived here, with their foggy memories and hidden stories, floating greyly amongst the unseeing living. No one though - living or dead - will tell what happened to the teenage mother who abandoned him as a baby. Despite Mahony's certainty that more than one of them knows.
Between Mulderrig's sly priest, an implacable nurse and a caustic elderly actress throwing herself into her final village play, this beautiful and blackly comic debut novel creates in crystal-clear, musical language an unforgettable world of strange kindnesses, bloody violence and buried secrets.

I was given this ARC by Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The book is beautifully written. The story spans from the 1950s to the 1970s in a tiny village in rural Ireland. The author paints the village with her words so well that you could close your eyes and see it laid out before you. You can imagine that you know every single character.

There are some brilliantly written black comic moments. The characters all interact so well. Mahoney makes a fabulous protagonist and is likeable right from the off.

The story builds slowly and you feel an impatience to turn pages as you reach the final chapters, just hoping that the characters you love are OK. The ending was not to be expected and the book maintained a level of suspense that any good thriller certainly should.

A five out of five star read.

I am profoundly grateful to Netgalley and Cannongate Books for my copy.

This is a beguiling, dark atmospheric and wondrous literary read interwoven with the supernatural and the fantastical. It is a stunning debut from Jess Kidd that draws the reader into what is a spellbinding read. A dark fairytale brimming with folklore, humour and flawless comic touches. For me, it called to mind the talented Kevin Barry and other Irish writers, past and present. The past gives us Orla's story and the present in the 1970s focuses on Mahony, her son. It begins with the murder of teenage single mum, Orla, and when the murderer looks to kill her baby, plants and nature have grown to magically protect the child.

Now in his twenties, Mahony rides into Mulderrig, County Mayo, armed with a letter and a photograph he has just received to find out what happened to his mammy. Mahony is scruffy, has a devil may care smile that floors every woman he encounters and oozes charm. Everywhere he goes, the ghosts of the dead, human and animal, tumble out all around him, on occasion to help him. Despite resistance from a village that harbours lies, secrets and a murderer, he is implacable in his determination to discover what happened to his mother. He finds himself allied to and protected by a trio of Irish women you would not want to mess with. Mrs Cauley, a strong, yet frail and elderly actress with a magical library who insists on investigating Orla's death, has no qualms about shaking things in the village to see what falls out and is not afraid of the danger that lurks. Shaunna is Mahony's landlady who falls in love with Mahony and will let harm befall him only over her dead body. Bridget was a friend of Orla's, and uses her knowledge and gifts to help Mahony.

Mrs Cauley directs J M Synge's The Playboy of the Western World with Mahony as the lead to conduct the investigation which sends the village into uproar. With poisoned scones, letter bombs, a hypocritical, cunning and loathsome priest, the judgemental evil Widow Farrelly, further murders, Mahony and his cohorts find themselves in danger. We find out Orla was a wayward, poverty stricken, promiscuous girl who also had the gift of seeing ghosts who passed on secrets that horrified the villagers. This made her a reviled figure, the truth was an evil not to be countenanced. To top it all, she had a child out of wedlock. The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. We have a supernatural storm that brings out rats, bats, spiders and badgers as an aid to the search for Orla's body. The truth finally emerges. Mahony who sees every ghost in town finds that the ghost of his mother eludes him until the end when he does see her.

This is a beautifully imagined novel. The writing is poetic, lyrical, artistic and sublime. The characters are rich, diverse, quixotic, eccentric, and undeniably Irish. The story is seamless, complex, endearing and funny. What more could I ask for? An exceptional and talented writer. A literary triumph. Thanks to Canongate for an ARC.

Good storyline and some fascinating characters, well described. The story was very slow moving until the last few pages and suddenly it is all over and you are left wondering exactly what happened. It was a case of filling in the gaps yourself. Shame the conclusion took away some of the enjoyment of the story.

This is the debut novel from Kidd, and I had heard nothing about it when I saw it on NetGalley, but the blurb drew me in, and I looked forward to picking this novel up. This novel isn't published until the 27th of October, but I was intrigued by the description and decided to pick it up a bit sooner.
My favourite aspect of this novel is definitely the writing style. Kidd has a wonderful way of writing, and for her debut novel this is very impressive. Her language is very descriptive and she paints a very realistic, gritty and yet beautiful picture of Ireland, and it felt very immersive. I felt fully involved and captivated by this novel and by the picture she was painting.
I also really enjoyed the mystery element of this novel. Not only was it an intriguing puzzle, it was also a unique mystery that had to be solved. It was a plot that I had never read anything like before, so I enjoyed this aspect. It also wasn't completely obvious "who-dunnit", which was really good, I actually had no idea who the killer was, there were plenty characters it could have been. Kidd also did an excellent job of keeping this element of mystery running through out the whole novel right up to the end. The only slight problem I had was that even when I reached the end of the novel I still wasn't actually sure who Mahony's father was. Maybe I'm just stupid but it wasn't obvious to me!!
This novel also has a paranormal element running through it, Mahony can see ghosts of the dead. I wondered how this would affect the novel, I don't read a lot of paranormal novels, but this one was very well handled. The ghosts didn't take over the story, it was still very much grounded in the "alive" characters in the story, and I thought this worked very well. The ghosts helped continue and move the story along, and helped give us insight into other characters personalities and backgrounds, but the novel never became a "paranormal story".
The characters were also very enjoyable to read about, and they were very well crafted and developed by the author. She created a wide array of characters, none of whom were Irish stereotypes which I appreciated. The main character is Mahony, who is a young man who wants to find his mother. He was full of Irish charm, and I did find myself falling a little bit in love with him! There are also a great group of supporting characters, a special mention to Mrs Cauley who is an elderly actress, she was dramatic and extravagant and had a very sharp wit! I enjoyed reading about her a lot, and a novel about her would be very welcome!! Another special mention goes to Shauna who is a young woman who looks after Mrs Cauley and runs the local B&B. I really liked her too, she was strong and very sure of herself, and the ending of the novel was really nice between her and Mahony, and was what I hoped would happen the whole way through!
The narrative structure of this novel is composed of chapters alternating between Mahony's search in the 1970s and his mother's experiences in the 1950s. These flashbacks were used very cleverly by Kidd to give the reader more clues towards the mystery of the novel. It meant we were given more information than the characters were, although it didn't help me to solve the mystery any quicker!!
I gave this novel 5 stars, and I highly recommend this novel. This is a well crafted and compelling debut novel and I am excited to see what comes next from this author!
My thanks to NetGalley and Canongate Books.

A mixture of supernatural and thriller, this was a really enjoyable read. Jess Kidd perfectly recreated 1970's Mayo, with hilarious use of colloquial language and highlighting the influence the Catholic Church had on small communities. The characters were well drawn out. Suspense right to the end.

The villagers in Mulderrig do not take kindly to new faces. So when dark, brooding stranger Mahony arrives, everyone is suspicious - but Mahony is no stranger. He is the abandoned son of Orla Sweeney, once legendary in Mulderrig for troublemaking. Mahony is determined to find out what happened to his mother, but nobody (living or dead) - is as forthcoming with information as he had hoped. Mahony finds unlikely allies in some of the villagers - and they are only too delighted when they realise that once again, Mulderrig will be the ruination of itself as it begins to spit out its secrets.

Set in Ireland in the 1950s and 1970s, dark humour reigns in this debut novel full of sharp wit and great characters. Mahony is a very likeable protagonist, and the story is a delight. Jess Kidd is a name to watch!

Mahony Sweeny returns to rural Mulderrig in search of what really happened to his mother. His arrival sets off more than a ripple of disquiet as the community attempt to close ranks against the outsider and resist his investigation. But Mahony is not without his allies, and with the help of an ageing actress and a bevy of ladies prepared to watch his back, he begins to stir things a whole lot more. It is likely things are not going to end well.
Himself has been likened to Under Milk Wood. The comparison is not surprising, except that Jess Kidd is able to express herself with a robust energy that Dylan Thomas, writing in times of heavy censorship, could only dream of.
There is no doubt from the brilliant use of words, which thrill from their ingenuity, that this is a literary novel. But the author has also managed to weave in the paranormal and crime in a way that has the power to engage an audience who would normally run a mile from the usual heavy burden that a literary novel can often place on its reader.
This book rocks back and forth between mirth and the chilling reality of the murder of Mahony’s mother. It is a modern fairytale cum whodunit as mesmerizing as Mahony Himself’s scruffy but charming anti-hero and romantic lead, who can see the dead and engage in a dialogue with them.
The characters are the archetypal Irish representations of a tight-knit rural community, but the author paints them with such vigour and stunning description, they feel fresh and exciting.
I reviewed this as an e-book courtesy of Canongate through NetGalley, but this is something I will rush out to buy, because it’s one of those volumes which will always be a companion capable of transporting me to a magical place in times of need.

Mayo, the setting for Jess Kidd’s Himself, has been having a lot of literary coverage of late.

Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone deals with John Lennon’s visit to Mayo to visit his island on Clew Bay. Colin Barrett’s short story collection Young Skins lets us into the lives, stubborn but often unfulfilled, of young or youngish people in small-town Mayo. Mike McCormack’s magnificent one-sentence Solar Bones provides a dead man with the opportunity to relate his life as an engineer in Mayo.

Long before that, there was the wildness and extravagant, poetic language of John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. Himself recalls that spirited approach.

But unlike the setting of the Playboy, Himself’s town of Mulderrig can be a very dangerous place and has nasty secrets - “a place like no other”.

Hero of Himself is Mahony, born in Mulderrig to an unmarried mother and brought up in a Dublin orphanage. He returns to discover what happened to his mother. As well as being irascible to women, Mahony is blessed or cursed with constant sight of the dead. Having had my fill of magical realism during a past binge of South American novels, I was relieved to find that the dead are mainly charming or amusing, though with crucial roles occasionally.

Beginning with a brutal murder in the past, the book then moves to 1976, the year of most of the action. The bleak beginning slides into a compelling, darkly humorous tale, until a short return to brutality and a happy resolution of sorts. Author Jess Kidd has a sure skill in keeping the story flowing, with the living and dead, past and present all being brought into play.

The cast of characters, built up as the book progresses, cover the full spectrum, from the kindness of Mrs Cauley, the no-holds-barred, semi-bedridden, heavy drinking old actress, to the brutal evil of…let’s not give away anything. To be fair to Mulderrig, Mahony encounters sympathy as well as malevolence. While the evil widow and scheming priest thwart him, Shauna (his landlady) overcomes his fear of commitment and takes a gamble.

Mrs Cauley has put on amateur productions regularly in Mulderrig. Her final one is a production of The Playboy of the Western World, with Mahony as male lead, to provide a context for conducting the investigation into what happened to his mother. The casting sessions provide a setting for encounters with as weird as you’ll meet in any Mayo village.

The main pleasure of this book, though, is the writing style, far from “normal”, but totally entrancing and, occasionally, there are interludes of poetic description, reminiscent of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.

This is a charming ,atmospheric and magical book .It tells a story of a tall dark handsome stranger called Mahoney who comes back to Mulderrig in Ireland ,having been brought up in an orphanage ,in search of his Mother .The characters are brilliant ,I really felt I knew them ,I also found the dialogue funny at times and so wonderfully written. There is a suspected murder ,deception secrets and the supernatural what's not to like !!!