Seamus Boyne is a broth of a boy. Middle-aged and at the height of his popularity as a painter, he decides to fake his own funeral to escape the notoriety of his fame. So off from New York to Ireland with him in order to set up a stage-Irish wake and hooley, complete with a drunken orgy, cases of mistaken identity and a kidnapping that rapidly turns into farce. More or less taking over where J.P.
Donleavy left off, Dick Wimmer paints a fantastical picture of an Ireland of off-the-wall eccentrics, dilapidated castles, drink-sodden ascendancy types and sexual awakenings on the grand scale. Does such a place exist? Lead me to it, if so.