The Conjuring Cowboy - Connolly, Martin

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Résumé :
This is Martin Connolly's first full-length novel. And it's a dilly.

The Conjuring Cowboy is a comedic novel. No, it's a ridiculously comedic novel. The main character, a recent university graduate with more time on his hands than sense, finds an advertisement in the paper which piques his curiosity: 'MAGICIAN WANTED. NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED'. Coming face to face with the author of this curious notice marks the beginning of both a remarkable journey and an even more remarkable transformation. Before long, he will find himself spectacularly transitioned from the late 1980s in a small town in the north of Ireland to late 1800s small town America, and... in possession of the magical ability to conjure up all manner of high-quality late nineteenth century items from his fingertips.

The reader may take all this with a pinch of salt, of course, but be prepared for a journey into the Wild, Wild West, where guns shoot deadly, unfunny bullets, and the towels that hang beneath the saloon counter are splattered with all manner of unmentionable... stuff. (Note, for buffs, the book is crammed full of meticulously researched detail.) There's a lot of drinking in this novel, and a lot of gunplay, too. This novel goes to the very heart of the American Wild West, and to the heart of a man who never felt very serious about taking anything very seriously. Talking of 'hearts', be prepared for a bit of romance, too, all played out against a backdrop of stringy, twangy, bluesy, and not always quite perfectly executed, music...

There are serious aspects to all this, however. Or so you might think with reviews like this:

From Academy Professor Emeritus at Ohio State University, Morris Beja (former President of the International James Joyce Foundation):

'I thoroughly enjoyed The Conjuring Cowboy! This novel is different and original, and courageously reflective and discursive, including the narrator's dreaded linguistic tendency for repetition, even as, obviously, the narrative doesn't lack incident. Far from it! The incidents are examples of, I guess you'd call it all, magic realism, with, as in the best magical realism, more than a psychological hint hovering over everything. What an achievement!'

And, from the eminent British poet Gavin Bantock:

'You would certainly have to travel far and wide to find a novel anything like this one. The putting together of the two worlds-apart elements - modern conjured magic and the nineteenth-century Wild West, as indicated by the title The Conjuring Cowboy - sets off a chain of events that can only be described as almost impossibly eccentric. The author is without doubt a genuine real-world leprechaun with a fairly raunchy gift of the gab combined with a flamboyant flair for the poetic and the dramatic. There is perhaps something of the tinniness of substance that we find in The Wizard of Oz, a kind of mismatch of European faery folklore with the harsh and ruthless realities of the modern world. It does seem a bit unnatural to marry the settings of Stetson-wearing cowboys wielding vintage revolvers with those of the children's party magician producing rabbits and bouquets out of a top hat. But it is precisely these most unlikely juxtapositions that give Martin Connolly's novel its extraordinary if often raucous panache. Walt Disney had the same, perhaps a more assured, mastery over the interactions and blendings of these worlds - the mystical past and the comical modern..... When all these things are put together in the zany way Martin Connolly has done it, one cannot help but laugh at the sheer mad audacity of some of the doings in his book. There is no doubt that his novel does entertain. It really is a slapstick Irish stew with the punch of a poteen! If ...

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