Lorcan Roche

Loved this. I'm usually wary of first-person show-offs, but this guy's got the wit and the cred. The self-aware narrative never gets cloying. The environs, urban life in NY and contemporary America, shows up gritty, seamy and grimly cynical in all the right ways, but, believe it or not, this story is one of deep compassion, indirectly via the author's life-journey and contributing constituents (his faraway Irish homeland and family culture)and directly via his experience as a male nurse, with attitude, caring caring for the invalid.… (mehr)

Trevor now in New York after leaving Dublin under circumstances that we will eventually come to know, takes on the job as companion/carer to Ed, the wheelchair bound teenage son of a wealthy family. But don't expect The Companion to be just about the relationship between Rob and Ed, it is central to the story and dominates the closing chapters, but the is as much about Trevor and his problems, and because Trevor does not always tell it as it is a while before we really get to understand him.

I mention the above because I think I would have enjoyed this much more from the start than I did, but once over this I found it a very good read. It does make rather excessive use of swear words, which I felt unnecessary, but that aside it is very well written. It also becomes quite touching as the account draws to a conclusion and we see the changes in Trevor and his growing relationship with Ed.… (mehr)

This is a strange novel that can be best described as a variation of black humor that holds an odd assortment of characters together as they try to cope with their lives. The narrator, Trevor, is an out-of-work young man from Dublin who finds a job as a companion to a wheel-chair bound teenager in New York City. The young man, Ed, has his own suite, lined with sound equipment and well provided with CDs, LPs, videos, and porno magazines. His father, a retired judge, is holed up in his study; his grossly obese mother has not got out of bed for ten years, and the three communicate only by internal phones; only the cheerful pot-smoking cook Ellie is the least bit normal. Trevor gets the job because he has the physical strength, an upbeat personality, and apparently some previous experience at a handicapped center in Dublin.
Trevor's experiences with this family are narrated in an uneven manner and, at times during my reading, I found it somewhat difficult to maintain a focus on the story. As the novel unfolds Trevor's personal life is as important as his relationship with the family for whom he works. It is his internal story that Trevor supposedly shares with a Priest and then bits of his past life with the reader. But the best aspect of the novel is the relationship with Ed. The strain of caring for Ed demonstrates itself in strange ways. He is a handful, and the pain causes him to lash out, but he and Trevor reach an understanding, and they both become better people. Their relationship is certainly smoother than that of Trevor as narrator, for the Irishman is unreliable as Roche has him sharing details of his life and then admitting that they are lies, a narrative style that is jarring at best and sometimes just annoying. In the end I would simply describe the book as a dark smile, very dark.… (mehr)