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 GeldofHugely 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’s fiction has been published in forty languages. His twenty books include eleven novels, among them the million-selling Star of the Sea, Ghost Light, Shadowplay and My Father’s House, a Washington Post Book of the Year. His work has been shortlisted for the LA Times Book Award, twice for the Whitbread/Costa and twice for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and has won the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi and Premio Napoli, an American Library Association Award, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the Hennessy Writer of the Year and Hall of Fame Awards, the Eason/An Post Novel of the Year Award, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Prix Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year. He is Frank McCourt Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.