Free (DRM-free) The Brothers' Lot by Kevin Holohan [Irish Historical Literary Satire]

[ATDrake]

The Brothers' Lot by Irish author Kevin Holohan is his standalone historical literary comedy novel set in mid-20th century Ireland during an unspecified period when religiously-run institutional education was still the norm, looking at the foibles, excesses, and abuses of the Catholic Church through the lens of satire, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Akashic Books, who are generously running a holiday advent calendar promotion (their books are couponable at Kobo, BTW, and they do the excellent Akashic Noir mystery anthology series).

This was a semifinalist for the 2012 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, according to the full blurb. Needless to say, this may not be to every Gentle Reader's taste, since it does tackle some fairly serious and perhaps personally sensitive subject matter in a critically humorous fashion. YMMV.

Currently free until midnight December 12th directly @ the publisher's promotional blogpost (DRM-free ePub & Mobi available worldwide), and you can read more about the book on its regular catalogue page.

You can also read an apparently unrelated online short story, also a satire set in Ireland, by the author over at the publisher's blog: Team Players in the New Economy

Description
Combining the spirit of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers’ Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meager Means, a dilapidated Dickensian institution run by an assemblage of eccentric, insane, and often nasty celibate Brothers. The school is in decline and the Brothers hunger for a miracle to move their founder, the Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly, along the path to Sainthood.

When a possible miracle presents itself, the Brothers fervently seize on it with the help of the ethically pliant Diocesan Investigator, himself hungry for a miracle to boost his career. The school simultaneously comes under threat from strange outside forces. The harder the Brothers try to defend the school, the worse things seem to get. It takes an outsider, Finbar Sullivan, a young student newly arrived at the school, to see that the source of the threat may in fact lie inside the school itself. As the miracle unravels, the Brothers’ efforts to preserve it unleash a disastrous chain of events.

Tackling a serious subject from the oblique viewpoint of satire, The Brothers’ Lot explores the culture that allowed abuses within church-run institutions in Ireland to go unchecked for decades. The novel inhabits a space where Angela’s Ashes meets the work of Flann O’Brien and Mervyn Peake, while providing a look at a regrettable era that still haunts many countries across the globe.

[Dr. Drib]

Got it.

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