School is almost out for the summer. My daughter, my oldest kid, is graduating from high school in a week. If there's a connection to this book, it was unconsciously made.
The Dead School was written by Patrick McCabe, an Irishman. He wrote so that you could easily hear the Irish accent in your head. The story took an alarming turn to insanity, leaving me to feel that we are all on the edge of mental collapse. The characters moved me. And scared me.
The first quote shows the lilt of the language. The second is an illustration of the insanity.
Page 25: When The Canon heard this he did not quite know whether to fall about the place laughing or just draw out there and then and hit her a skelp of his walking stick. He just couldn't understand it. He could not for the life of him understand what was the matter with her. Fortunately for her in the end he just sighed and said "Ah, daughter, will you come on now. Stop your cod-acting like a good girl and put him into the holy water, I have confessions at eight."
Page 248: Anyway, when he had first noticed that Setanta wasn't moving and was probably dead, it had occurred to him to bury the animal. But then he went and forgot all about it and by the time he did remember, it was already too late, for what had once been a grand old cat growing old gracefully was nothing so much as a pile of mucky goo and moving maggots lying beneath the kitchen window.
