The Abode of Fancy

by Sam Coll

The Abode of Fancy tells the story of a young Dublin man, Simeon Collins – lonely and desperate for love – whose friendships with a loosely associated group of elderly, alcoholic men yield a grim picture of his own probable future life. It also tells the story of the Mad Monk, a mythical god-man, who returns to Ireland, eager to find his long-dead brother Elijah. And then there’s the lovesick hare, the ghostly skeletal bull, and the barmy banshee Maggie Nutmeg Devlin. As the stories progress, the two worlds draw closer and closer, interweaving to fuse reality and fantasy in an exhilarating extravaganza that explores the nature of loneliness, the impossibility of love, and the possible consolations of friendship.

Genres: Fiction

496 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant stuff, very entertaining read, 69 chapters and an epilogue spread over 496 compellingly written pages. This is Irish Folklore writ large as Greek Myth, melding a wonderfully imagined Fairytale populated by Old Gods, talking cows and Banshees with a modern day narrative about hilariously forlorn love-struck beer-soaked loons, the whole thing is written in purposefully purple prose which reeled me in from the start and never let go.

Typos on pages 27, 30, 212, 270 (misspelled Heaney!!!), and 287.

[Fredzed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jaw-dropping is right. This will be huge.