A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen

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Imagine, if you will, the time before Jack Taylor, the time before Brant & Roberts, the time before Serpent’s Tail published Rilke In Black and Her Last Call To Louis MacNeice. Picture a bar in the west of Ireland. It’s evening. Smoke hangs thick in the air. Laughter bounces from table to table. It’s the Galway Arms Bar, and there’s the young Ken Bruen, smiling and joking as he hands over a copy of his latest book to a brand new reader. That reader was one of the lucky ones.

Ken Bruen’s early works have been much sought after in the last few years, and they’ve been virtually impossible to obtain.

Until now.

You have in your hand, A Fifth Of Bruen, an omnibus edition of those early works, four short novels and two collections of short stories which Ken Bruen used to sell by hand in the bars of his home town.

The first of the novels to be published was Funeral: Tales of Irish Morbidities. Published by Terrance Publishing in 1991, it tells the story of a young Irishman who is fascinated by funerals. So much so, that his life is spent frequenting one funeral after another. What’s intriguing about this novel is that, as with most of Bruen’s very early work, it isn’t a crime novel. Oh, there are crimes, sure, but it’s a literary novel, no question. Highly contemplative, introspective, but even then, I’m glad to say, Bruen didn’t “do scenery”, and the plot has a pace to it that’s often frequently absent from the typical literary novel. And, of course, it’s full of Galway humour.

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