The Thrill of it All

Joseph O’Connor’s The Thrill of it All uses layered narrative textures with both serious skill and engaging lightness so that the core drama emerges with clarity and wit. – Colm Toibin * Observer, Books of the Year, 2014 *
Occasionally, you read a sentence that you know couldn’t be bettered: Joseph O’Connor’s new novel is jam-packed with such sentences – paragraph after paragraph of brilliance * Guardian *
O’Connor at his playful and narrative best… shot through with electricity, packed with sentences that send you spinning, full of joy and sadness and swerve. This was a book to make my tired heart soar. Of all the Irish writers working today, Joe O’Connor speaks better than anyone of what is genuine, what is necessary, and what is ennobling. A thrill indeed. – Colum McCann, winner of the US National Book Award and the Impac Award
[O’Connor] is warm without being sentimental, and he cuts effortlessly between comedy and tragedy. Music nerds will love the most satisfyingly voluminous playlists since High Fidelity – Kate Saunders * The Times *
A novel about music, family and friendship…O’Connor brilliantly evokes the 1980s… This novel is shot through with humour, patois and all the human contradictions that make the characters truly memorable. * Mail on Sunday *
Intoxicating…a love letter to rock ‘n’ roll…incredibly moving * Sunday Independent *
O’Connor writes with such passion, such precision, such beautiful sentences, with such an ear for language and with such knowledge and hilarity, that this book could only come from an extremely gifted Rock’n’Roll obsessive… A brilliant and vital document – Bob Geldof
Hugely entertaining. A vivid joy. He’s a master…Deftly and tenderly drawn…for friends and family, and always and forever, for music…That feeling has rarely been captured as exhilaratingly, and as vividly, as in The Thrill of it All * Sunday Business Post *
[A] brilliantly conceived and touching novel… You don’t have to be a music fan to love it – Deirdre O’Brien * Sunday Mirror *
This is a book for anyone who has ever dreamt of being a rock star * Daily Express *

JOSEPH O’CONNOR was born in Dublin. His books include Cowboys and Indians, Inishowen, Star of the Sea (which won the American Library Association Award, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, and the Prix Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year), Redemption Falls, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book Novel 2011), Shadowplay (Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, Costa Novel of the Year shortlist), and his Rome Escape Line Trilogy novels: My Father’s House, The Ghosts of Rome (Irish Book Awards Book of the Year), and The City of Echoes. His fiction has been translated into forty languages. He received the 2012 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature and in 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

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