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£12.99
Published
30 May 2017
Paperback Original
9781910400531
Ebook
9781910400548
Press Release
Coming soon.
 

1979. PUNK IS IN DECLINE.
ESPECIALLY THIS PUNK.

On the platform at Holyhead I approach a uniformed man with a whistle.
‘Is this the 6:55 to Auschwitz?’ I ask.
‘Enough of your cheek, lad.’
‘Arbeit Macht Frei!’
‘What?’
‘It’s Gaelic for thank you.’

March, 1979. Sid Vicious is dead, Margaret Thatcher is very much alive, and Barry has just arrived in London. Twenty years old, Irish and angry, he cons his way into a job at Sellafield, home of Britain’s military-grade plutonium. It’s the start of a hilarious and hallucinatory coming-of-age tale that ranges from sordid coal-bunker squats to the tea room at the Ritz, via the Parisian Left Bank and the blooming poppy fields of Ireland.
Here is a portrait of an artist on acid, amphetamines and PCP, who finds himself working at the heart of Britain’s nuclear industry. It pulses with stories and stories within stories, eye-watering, sexy, terrifying and poignant. A wild, hellish descent that is also a rush for the stars, A Ton of Malice is the demented love-child of Irvine Welsh, Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Groening.
And, if it matters, it’s almost all true.

Old Street Publishing A Ton of Malice: The Half-Life of an Irish Punk in London

1979. PUNK IS IN DECLINE.
ESPECIALLY THIS PUNK.

On the platform at Holyhead I approach a uniformed man with a whistle.
‘Is this the 6:55 to Auschwitz?’ I ask.
‘Enough of your cheek, lad.’
‘Arbeit Macht Frei!’
‘What?’
‘It’s Gaelic for thank you.’

March, 1979. Sid Vicious is dead, Margaret Thatcher is very much alive, and Barry has just arrived in London. Twenty years old, Irish and angry, he cons his way into a job at Sellafield, home of Britain’s military-grade plutonium. It’s the start of a hilarious and hallucinatory coming-of-age tale that ranges from sordid coal-bunker squats to the tea room at the Ritz, via the Parisian Left Bank and the blooming poppy fields of Ireland.
Here is a portrait of an artist on acid, amphetamines and PCP, who finds himself working at the heart of Britain’s nuclear industry. It pulses with stories and stories within stories, eye-watering, sexy, terrifying and poignant. A wild, hellish descent that is also a rush for the stars, A Ton of Malice is the demented love-child of Irvine Welsh, Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Groening.
And, if it matters, it’s almost all true.

 12.99
 
 

"Dazzling … the author has a way with words as slick and sudden as a flick knife… a breathtaking storyteller" —Sunday Times

 
 
  • "Wild, funny and furiously unsentimental — a fine debut" —Guardian
  • "If you want to laugh this summer — the kind of filthy guffaw that will make your sun-lounger neighbours wish they were reading what you were reading — buy A Ton of Malice, Barry McKinley's tale of sex, drugs and working at Sellafield"
    —Evening Standard
  • "McKinley is a huge talent… A Ton of Malice is a powerful, original work… There is music in the sentences, a gruff, down-at-heel, Tom Waitsy lyricism, counterpointed with staccato machine-gun bursts of inchoate rage. Occasionally the voice allows itself to flare into sunbursts of beauty… A dark, funny, gritty trip of a story that tells it like it is."
    —Irish Times
 
 

Barry McKinley's stories have twice been shortlisted for the Hennessy Literary Award. He has written for BBC Radio 4 and RTE. His stage plays include Elysium Nevada, which was nominated in 2010 for Best New Play at the Irish Theatre Awards. After narrowly failing to destroy the world in 1979, he gave up the attempt, and now restores old buildings for a living. His younger self would be horrified.