More Bread or I'll Appear

Emer Martin has written one of the most interesting and engaging books I have read in years. The book is funny and intelligent, and the characters are vivid and unique. I would highly recommend it to anyone that wants to get a glimpse of the various corners of the world visited in this book from a very hip point of view.

Having read Emer Martins first novel, Breakfast in Babylon, (which is highly recommended), I waited with baited breath for her next book. Follow up books from new authors can often be disappointing at the least, however, I was pleasantly suprised at the consistancy in Ms. Martin's talents as a young author. The story although tragic, is written with warmth and an understanding that is rarely seen in modern literature. There is greatness in this book and something for everybody.

I just got finished the novel and it's tremendous: what a cast of characters moving around the world. Reminded me of the Odyssey and Candide, that kind of book, and it's a kind of answer to Ulysses. Intensely readable and beautifully written. Also, it's a really good book on the Irish family and on the large Irish family especially: some times I thought I was reading about my own, being the oldest of 8 but not the wisest. You have tremendous talent, Emer, and the novel is a great achievement. My glass is raised to you.

it's a wonderful novel. I hope by now it has garnered some good notices, because it deserves lots of 'em. It's a big, human, exploring stretch of a story and I loved it, if in a couple of particular aspects: randomly as follows: pg. 256 'We didn't crawl out of the sea to become us. We clambered to each others waters when we were trapped in dried-up pools. We aren't seeking to evolve, but forces of environment etc. LIFE IS INFINITE WHEN PERCEIVED AS A CONTINUUM, HOLLOW AND BRUTAL WHEN WE TAKE IT IN CHUNKS.' Now, that's my kinda reflection. I also enjoyed the Japanese man's absolute fascination with Keelin, his obsessions re Aisling, and the images of that red hair and that female expansiveness, which stretched in all kinds of sexual expressions and directions. And hardly any 'womanspeak' either. I found the book's movement towards its ending rather utopian, and that's okay, because it's an utopia WITHIN and not one imposed or even imagined (I think) on and for others, if you get my drift. I loved Uncle Oscar (I was on to him from the start), and I loved Gerry. Particularly enjoyed Shawn and his bloody nests. There isn't much hope for us, collectively, is there? Or if so, then possibly only within the most miniature of human networks, tentacle to tentacle as it were, ganglion to ganglion, imagining possibilities in the gaps between nerve ends. It;s a great, energetic run of a novel and I thought it was really skilfully handled, and the dialogue was great. But dialogue is one of her great strengths. Emer Martin's bleak vision of the human race as a composite of obsessive-compulsive disordered individuals cannot fail to both charm and challenge. Despite its bleakness, this is an arresting, extremely funny, high-octane book.

Highly recommended!!I loved it from start to finish!!!Emer Martin's brilliant and sexy second novel comes only two years after she unleashed Breakfast In Babylon onto the unsuspecting literary world. The title comes from an Irish folk legend concerning madness, and the story follows the lives of a dysfunctional family plagued with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This global literary mystery is instantly compelling as we follow the adventures of Keelin, who is tracking her missing sister, Aisling, across three continents. The sensual, assertive Aisling is herself engaged in the pursuit of her African lover, Fatima. Aisling has changed everyone she has met and left a trail of shell-shocked characters in her wake. The protagonist, Keelin, is a sensitive sensible girl committed to her teaching career and her mother. Keelin is in turn transformed by her journey and begins to search out her own place in the world. This is Keelin's story not Aisling's, and like all traditional odyssey tales it is the journey itself that is the revealing factor and not the outcome. A mother who loves one child more than all the rest sets events in motion. There is sex, danger, guns, transvestites, gamblers, a wealthy business mogul who wants to be a slave, a gay priest escaping from the past, the irrepressible Gerry dying of A.I.D.S. yet controlling his lover to the last, an anorexic who begins to eat, a young woman who steals back the son she gave up for adoption. Martin's characterizations are astute and compassionate. As in Breakfast In Babylon, humor is the shield against all life's cataclysmic twists and turns. However, there is a sadness underlying the humor. Not a weepy, sentimental sadness but an almost heroic sorrow that comes from the fact that, as the Greeks knew so many centuries ago, we are all powerless, and as Uncle Oscar states, "They had all stolen a brief existence from an indifferent history, and in the end these borrowed lives would break their hearts." Their brother, Patrick, illustrates that the great forces of life are beyond our control on a more personal level. Patrick suffers from OCD and is in the words of the author "a rational person compelled to perform irrational acts." All their over-lapping, intersecting stories gallop to a close with a dazzling driving force that culminates in a stunning betrayal. More Bread Or I'll Appear is an ambitious and successful follow-up to an auspicious debut. It is a novel about family and the power of family members to wound each other casually and profoundly. We are moved when Keelin pleads "There must be other homes to be had. Safe places in the world. Safer than her own home had been." By the end of this roller coaster of a story we feel that what triumphs is the human's ability to go on in the face of outstanding odds and our unlimited capacity to love even those who have hurt us deeply.