Green Glowing Skull

By: Gavin Corbett

Narrated by: Adam Moore

Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

A breathtakingly original, darkly comic, surprisingly contemporary, and deeply surreal tale from the author of This Is the Way, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.

After fleeing his dying parents and the drudgery of work in Dublin for the Manhattan of his imagination - a place of romance and opulence; dark, old concert halls; and mellow front parlours quieted by the hiss of the phonograph cylinder - Rickard Velily hopes to be reborn as an Irish tenor and to one day be reunited with the love of his life.

At the very peculiar Cha Bum Kun Club, a masonic-style refuge for immigrants who can't quite cut it in New York City, he meets Denny Kennedy-Logan and Clive Sullis, and a plan is enacted: to revive the art songs and ballads of another time for a hip, young city in thrall to technology and money.

But that is without reckoning on meddlesome sprites, the phantoms of the past - and more malignant forces who plot to subjugate the human race.

Green Glowing Skull is a half-crazed brain shunt of a trip around the spirit world, the cyber world, and a woozily recognisable real world - a darkly comic tale of mythologies, machines, and the metaphysical swirl.

©2015 Gavin Corbett (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Critic reviews

Praise for This Is the Way:

"A curious and delightful confection.... A sly and lovely humour dominates.... Anthony Sonaghan and Uncle Arthur will linger a long while with readers.... A memorable work from a gifted writer whose next moves we should await with very keen interest.” (Kevin Barry, Guardian)
“This fresh and funny novel is a devastating love story - one that comes upon you by stealth and stays with you long after you've finished reading.” (Claire Lowdon, New Statesman)
“Within a couple of pages, I had fallen into the rhythm of a unique and extraordinary voice.” (Kate Saunders, Daily Mail)
“Corbett creates a memorable voice to explore the power that heritage wields over an outsider struggling to find his place in the world.” (Sunday Times)
“The triumph is in the telling. Anthony's voice, once heard, is hard to forget; its rhythms, its repetitions, its sly humour - all strike the reader as genuinely original. It's a timely reminder that while fiction may not change things in the real world, it does offer us new ways to dream.” (Irish Times)
”A troubling, mysterious, demanding and beautiful book, narrated in a voice unlike any I have encountered in fiction. Corbett knows what he's doing: every sentence throbs with power.” Emma Donoghue, author of Room)
“A writer with the rigorous introspection of James Kelman, mediated by the compassion of Raymond Carver and the visceral imagination of Alan Warner. Yes, and a hearty measure of Flann O'Brien besides. But the hell with the antecedents: the man is an original, with a bridge to the world of first things he's fashioned for himself.” (James Meek, author of The People's Act of Love)
“A wonderful new voice.” (Joseph O'Neill, author of Netherland)
“The voice is brilliant. It is tender and true, arcane and elevated. It holds the past and present in a single visionary gaze. This is not only a wonderful book, it is a book about wonders.” (Eoin McNamee, author of Resurrection Man and The Blue Tango)