Green Glowing Skull
Gavin Corbett
Fourth Estate
Green Glowing Skull is a bewildering read. Essentially, the novel follows a trio of Irish ex-pats living in New York who decide to form a tenor group. Having left Ireland under various unusual circumstances and living at the ramshackle old ‘Cha Bum Kun’ club, Rickard, Denny and Clive are each drawn into a multi-layered web of illusion, mythology and misinterpretation, developing warped relationships with both Ireland and New York. This is a novel in which the laws of physics do not apply, and nothing is as it seems.
The theme of the Irish emigrant undergoing a profound and difficult redefinition of his identity is nothing new. Indeed, critics have noted Corbett’s apprenticeship to Irish writers Joyce, Beckett and O’Brien. However, Corbett’s take on Modernity is so loose and sprawling that the reader can only grasp moments of coherence. The novel feels too close to unravelling to allow the reader to truly enter its labyrinthine world. Similarly, the characters are at such a crisis of instability that it is difficult to identify with them. Corbett’s great talent, however, is his prose. By turns prosaic and lyrical, the language is at times dazzling. If the structure of Green Glowing Skull were as carefully crafted as its syntax, it would be a masterpiece.
Words: Anna-Grace Scullion
