Before this book there was nothing like it. After this book nothing like it could be done again, not as well and not the same way. This book took narrative, plot, character, theme, story, poetry and held them up and subjected them to a long and pitiless examination, then threw them down and subjected them to degradations and tortures not dissimilar to those inflicted on the author, Trellis, holding back from destruction only at the end in a moment of conscience and mercy. O'Brien pierces the drunken pretensions and tedious intellectual self-aggrandisement of the middle-class Dublin drunk but cannot in the end deny his affection for it. A brilliant, daring, anarchic novel of wit and intelligence and linguistic dexterity. There is nothing else out there like it at all all. You might even say it's yer only man.