To be fair to Claire Kilroy, it must be daunting to try and convey the delusional beliefs shared by the masters of business who abandoned all business sense and hoped the irrational exuberance would last forever. But, if I’d left it down half-way through, I’m not sure I would have cared enough to pick it up again. Ultimately, however, I found myself reading into the night and wanting to know how it all ends, so I did fall under the spell of the novel.
While the satire is well-directed and truthful, the experience of reading the book is initially not particularly compelling as you don’t really feel connected to any of the characters. The tone of the novel is comic, and the setting is much more cartoon than reality.
The Devil I Know by Claire Kilroy (UK/IRL cover)Īll the familiar types are at play: the hard-drinking chancer with the gift of the gab, the crooked politician, the greedy bankers, the aloof patriarch, the immoral Euro-trash, and the passive protagonist, smart enough to recognize the madness, but without the strength of character to stop himself going along with the crowd.
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