Poguemahone is a wild, free-verse monologue, steeped in music and folklore, crammed with characters, both real and imagined, on a scale Patrick McCabe has never attempted before. And, finally, how all that survives now of those sex-and-drug-soaked times are Una's unspooling memories as she sits outside in the Margate sunshine, and Dan himself, whose role in the story becomes stranger and more sinister. How the squat appears to be haunted by vindictive ghosts who eat away at the sanity of all who live there. How a young and overweight Una finds herself living in a hippie squat in Kilburn in the early 1970s. How Dots, the mother, becomes a call girl in 1950s Soho. Now she sits outside in the sun as her memories unspool from Dans mouth and his own role in the tale grows ever stranger- and more sinister. Patrick McCabe Reads from His Psychedelic Novel Poguemahone From Damian Barr’s Literary Salon Podcast By Damian Barrs Literary Salon Damian Barr’s Literary Salon tempts the world’s best writers to read exclusively from their latest greatest works and share their own personal stories. As things darken there are fewer laughs, and the final pages are almost unbearably tense. Dan Fogarty, an Irishman living in England, is looking after his sister Una, now seventy and suffering from dementia in a care. The first half in particular is marvellously fresh and underwrought. How the parents are exiled from a small Irish village and end up living the hard immigrant life in England. Poguemahone is, in content and execution, frequently astonishing, and galloping through a very long novel at the rate of three pages per minute is an exhilarating sensory experience.

From Dan's anarchic account, we gradually piece together the story of the Fogarty family. Dan Fogarty, an Irishman living in England, is looking after his sister Una, now seventy and suffering from dementia in a care home in Margate.

Pogue mahone patrick mccabe