The Brooklyn Book of the Dead

Meet a dysfunctional family with a difference: the Coole's of Brooklyn.

Returnning to their clapped-out former neighbourhood on the night of their father's wake, the Cooles assemble around the casket to mourn Crazy Jack, a customs inspector from the West of Ireland, who not so much reared as terrorised his children. Gathered together, they look back ovewr the collective and on-going nightmare of their own lives: a legacy of substance abuse, violence, petty crime and despair--and that's just for starters.

Angry, as well as funny and tender, The Brooklyn Book of the Dead is already ranked as a contender for the Great Irish-American novel. Stephens, who writes like a fallen angel, uses explosively rich language and a superb sense of pace to deliver a harrowing, yet strangely beautiful long day's journey into a night of the Brooklyn dead. The unforgettable 'family album' that emerges is one of the most sustained and devastating assaults ever on the American Dream.