Cassidy’s Boy

Yet another interesting debut to watch out for: Yvonne Cassidy’s THE OTHER BOY, which flashed across the CAP radar late last week. The early word is that it’s a literary psychological thriller, and the name ‘Tana French’ leaps to mind when perusing the blurb elves’ witterings below. To wit:

“‘You know that moment between sleep and waking? I read somewhere that the first thing that comes into your head is what you desire or fear the most. I don’t know if that’s fully right though because for years when I opened my eyes I used to think of Mark.’
  “I’m JP Whelan and I said that, the thing about Mark, to my shrink. He’s always trying to get me to talk about what happened all those years ago, when we were just kids.
  “I wasn’t always seeing a shrink, I wasn’t even always JP, I used to be John-Paul. Here’s where I’m supposed to tell you about all that, about my life with Katie and Abbey in London or before then, back in Dublin, with Dad, listening to the Beatles and how those were the only times I really felt safe.
  “But then I’d have to tell you about my brother Dessie and what happened with Mark.
  “But it doesn’t all fit into some neat little box, my story. I wish it did. So if you really want to know the truth, you’re going to have to find out for yourself, because even now I’m not sure what the truth is.”

  Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot of hard work to me. “If you really want to know the truth, you’re going to have to find out for yourself …”. You think James Patterson and Dan Brown got richer than Croesus by asking people to find stuff out for themselves? Eh? And it’s not like life isn’t busy enough without having to down tools during a book and go finding stuff out. Gah, grumble, rhubarb, etc. …