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    A Fairy Tale of New York
    Unavailable
    A Fairy Tale of New York
    Unavailable
    A Fairy Tale of New York
    Ebook452 pages7 hours

    A Fairy Tale of New York

    By J. P. Donleavy

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    'Outrageous ... electrically alive ... Donleavy's best book to date' – The Washington Post A Fairy Tale of New York is a funny, lusty, and sad novel of comic genius. Returning from study abroad, Cornelius Christian enters customs with his luggage and his dead wife. His first encounter in New York is with a funeral director, with whom he reluctantly takes employment to pay for the burial expenses. In the course of his duties he meets the beautiful Fanny Sourpuss over her millionaire husband's dead body. However, his over-enthusiastic handling of his first corpse lands him in court. Cornelius Christian wanders through the great sad cathedral that is New York, examining the human condition in all its comic pathos and lonely absurdity. Whether lingering in the Automat drinking from half empty coffee cups and stealing baked beans from the plates of customers who go looking for ketchup, or finding love on a street corner only to end up fighting his way out of a hooker's fists, Cornelius Christian, heroic anti-hero, sings of life's goodness in the wake of disaster. A Fairytale of New York is the novel whose title inspired the Pogues' song, cited as 'the best Christmas song ever' 'A worthy successor to Sebastion Dangerfield of The Ginger Man ... in a ribald elegy for New York' – Kansas City Star 'J.P. Donleavy's new hero is an outrageous, obscene, unprincipled, irresistible and very poignant scoundrel who boozes and brawls his bawdy way through the disaster that is New York City ... Donleavy deftly skewers everything from the American way of life and death to sex and city life, failure, success, poverty and wealth, loneliness and love ... ribald and very funny entertainment ... a fine roller-coaster ride all the way!' – Philadelphia Bulletin 'A grand triumph ... a noble book from one of our best writers!' – Cleveland Plain Dealer
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Lilliput Press
    Release dateOct 23, 2013
    ISBN9781843515791
    Unavailable
    A Fairy Tale of New York
    Author

    J. P. Donleavy

    J.P. ‘Mike’ Donleavy has written more than twenty books since The Ginger Man, including The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule, A Fairy Tale of New York, The Onion Eaters and Schultz (all available as eBooks from Lilliput), along with several works of non-fiction such as The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners. He lives along the shores of Lough Owel near Mullingar in County Westmeath.

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    Reviews for A Fairy Tale of New York

    3.5/5

    3 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      My first Donleavy....and sadly, i did not like it. It took forever to get through......a quirky story about an unfortunate fellow returning from Europe with his new wife, who tragically died en route on their ocean liner....and what then transpires is just bizarre.......weird story, odd characters, and while occasionally you cheer for poor Cornelius Christian, for the most part, i just did not like him, which obviously leads me to not give a hoot or a holler what happens to him.......YAWN!!!! Boxing, undertaking, sleeping with anything that walks, blowing every opportunity for work offered him.....blah, blah, blah.....too many juvenile escapades for my sensibilities........probably just over my head.....
    • 4/5
      I love the pathos
    • 4/5
      This is one of those books where the narrative of the protagonist (and oddly, the protagonist removed from self at times) really takes over. He's disarming, insightful and despairing...much older and more manipulative than a Holden Caufield and more jaded too. The major similarity is the fact that he sees the phoniness in people. He wants them to be better but when they aren't, he's not going to cry over swear words in an elementary school. He's simply going to move on becoming more and more apathetic and not caring how much he hurts others. At the same time, he really does care. The city (NYC) clearly gets to him much more than any woman is capable of.


      This one, this Cornelius Christian is the kind of shady character you want to try to love...you search for a redeeming sense to him just like all of the characters in his life that run into him. Donleavy puts you in their position in a way. You want to keep giving him chances even knowing he'll disappoint. He's honest about the disappointment as well. At the end, however, he can't give anyone what they'd like from him and if you were a character in this story, he's abuse you right along with the rest. I'm pretty convinced of that.


      This novel has some fantastic lines...Christian too, though his thoughts, his memories of his cruel childhood, are usually even better. At times, you get a feel for action and metaphor like few writers can usually give you. At other times, this is crude and brash but the poetic insights are worth it.



      Favorite quotes:

      pg.9 "We like to make friends with sorrow Mr. Christian. That way we come to know it."

      pg.12 "Someone else's house is more your own if it's filled with strangers"

      pg.19 "Window full of refrigerators there. Say they're giving them away for nothing, almost. Just step inside for bargains beyond belief. I feel like there's nothing around me in the world."

      pg.37 "..And my short wave says there's someone ready to jump on Fifth and Fiftieth. If the snow stays and gets deeper they'll be a lot more. They go out of the windows like pop corn off a red hot pan. Happens every time there's a blizzard."

      pg. 108 "Sadness is a private garden. With high stone walls. And I would never leave it."

      pg 164: "I am an orphaned prince."

      pg. 183: "I don't have a degree. O k. Maybe I was too distracted by human nature in college. I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own."

      pg. 216: "Without crime this city would collapse....God is what your desires are."

      pg. 256: "It taught me death is better than dying. Better than hapless Better than glee The cat's Meow in this midnight Sea"

      pg. 302: "And anytime I ever saw anything floating in the sky, even a scrap of paper, I stopped to watch till it was gone."