Normal Sheeple
AuthorPaul Howard
IllustratorAlan Clarke
Cover artistAlan Clarke
CountryRepublic of Ireland
LanguageEnglish
SeriesRoss O'Carroll-Kelly
GenreComic novel, satire
Set inDublin and County Kerry, 2018
Published19 August 2021, Sandycove
Media typePrint: paperback
Pages416
ISBN9781844885497
823.92
Preceded byBraywatch 
Followed byOnce Upon a Time in… Donnybrook 

Normal Sheeple is a 2021 book by Irish playwright and author Paul Howard and is the twenty-first novel in the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly series.[1][2]

The title refers to the Sally Rooney novel Normal People and its TV adaptation (Ross' relationship with Marianne is written in a parody of Rooney's style),[3] and to the phrase "sheeple", used to refer to people who show herd behaviour, but also perhaps referring to Kerry people as "sheep people."[4]

Plot

Charles is Taoiseach, and Sorcha is appointed to his cabinet. Honor attends a Gaeltacht summer college, making her first rugby-playing boyfriend, and Ross takes up Gaelic football, playing for An Ghaeltacht GAA in County Kerry.[5][6]

Reviews

In The Irish Times, Eugene O'Brien wrote that "Howard’s satire is as sharp as ever, with a parallel Ireland existing more concretely in this latest book, which sheds interesting lights on the real Ireland […] Howard keeps the reader off balance by developing seemingly flat characters into whole new levels of complexity."[3]

In The Stinging Fly, Kevin Power wrote "Our rulers serve themselves: the books remind us of this fact repeatedly. They gratify overtly our secret contempt for the powerful. On the other hand, Ross is a “beloved character”. There he sits, at the heart of our popular culture, reminding us that our society is unjust; that our elites are shallow and self-serving; and that materialist greed is a hollow pursuit. We love him. We think he’s great. And his family and friends, that nest of vipers: we love them, too. Should we? Of course we should. That’s how class works. The Ross books enable us safely both to love and to fear our rulers; to envy their wealth and to disapprove of their behaviour; to experience naked capitalist ambition and sheer class hatred at one and the same time and without contradiction; to map the shifting landscapes of an increasingly unstable world." He also noted that "Ross books are masterpieces of denotative realism. A century from now, an interested cultural historian will be able to reconstruct a near-total catalogue of contemporary upper-middle-class lifestyle accoutrements from Howard’s pages: the clothes, drinks, food, make-up, coffee machines, music, movies, actors and actresses."[7]

References

  1. ↑ O'Carroll-Kelly, Ross (19 August 2021). Normal Sheeple. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 9781844885510 – via Google Books.
  2. ↑ O'Carroll-Kelly, Ross (5 May 2022). Normal Sheeple. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  3. 1 2 "Normal Sheeple review: Latest in Ross O'Carroll Kelly series is as sharp as ever". The Irish Times.
  4. ↑ "New Ross O'Carroll Kelly instalment has the perfect title to sum up 2020". Extra.ie. 22 June 2021.
  5. ↑ "Geansaí chumann Gaeltachta le feiceáil ar chlúdach an leabhair is déanaí ag Ross O'Carroll-Kelly". Tuairisc.ie. 21 June 2021.
  6. ↑ "Ross O'Carroll-Kelly le himirt do CLG An Ghaeltacht?". 21 June 2021.
  7. ↑ "Normal Sheeple". The Stinging Fly.


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