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| The First Verse: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Barry Mccrea
Publisher: Carroll & Graf
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 445388
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0786715138
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780786715138
ASIN: 0786715138
Publication Date: May 10, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This memorable debut novel explores Dublin's every corner, including a first-of-its-kind portrayal of its thriving gay nightlife, through the eyes of a young man seduced by a secret society's ancient reading rituals, based on the sortes virgilianae. In brilliant prose, author Barry McCrea gives readers a psychologically gripping tale set within the intertwining worlds of literature and the living. When freshman Niall Lenihan moves to Trinity College, he dives into unfamiliar social scenes, quickly becoming fascinated by a reclusive pair of students—literary "mystics" who let signs and symbols from books determine their actions. Reluctantly, they admit him to their private sessions, and what begins as an intriguing game for Niall becomes increasingly esoteric, dramatic, and addictive. As Niall discovers the true nature of the pursuits in which he has become entangled, The First Verse traces a young man's search for identity, companionship, and a cult's shadowy origins in the pages of literature and the people of a city. Fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History or Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley will be mesmerized by the strange, page-turning world of this astonishing first novel from a dazzling new literary voice.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 'The gap between life and fiction....a plurality of bottles' May 23, 2006
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
Barry McCrea steps into the ranks of the great Irish writers with this impressive debut novel, THE FIRST VERSE. Not only has he come up with a clever and fascinating idea for a story, one far more unique than many a seasoned pro, he also demonstrates that he has the gift for creating prose that rings with intelligence and brilliance of style. This young man most assuredly has a major future in literature.
Not that reading McCrea is easy: he demands (and willingly receives) the reader's full attention. Wisping off into several languages in the course of his story, not unlike his kinsman James Joyce, McCrea makes us frequently pause, back up a bit to assure we are with him, then proceeds to lift the reader into flight with a tale that encompasses so many ideas that we become part of the strange world in which he is traveling.
Niall Lenihan is a gay student entering Trinity College in Dublin, a lad with some frustrated yearnings who begins to make friends, among them Sarah and John, two fellow students whose strange bonding involves a game of 'sortes' - ask a question, then choose a random book, turn to a random page and select a random sentence to answer that question. The game results in a state of synchronicity, with much of what happens in life to every person somehow related by chance...or is it? Niall's needs lead him to embrace the casual sex of the clubs of Dublin, finding here and there potential mates, until he begins to concentrate on John and Sarah, becoming gradually more involved with their game and the vague society called Pour Mieux Vivre, and a mastermind by the name of Luis with whom Sarah communicates by email. Falling deeply into the 'synchronicity' of this obsession causes Niall to ultimately avoid a potential lover Chris, and to move away from the dorm rooms of Trinity College, finally following the now distant John and Sarah to Paris where he must make a decision about where is life is leading him.
The above summary only touches some of the peaks of the story as McCrea has woven a tale so refined and so grounded with reality yet effervescent with desired fantasy that distilling the entire range of the novel would rob the reader of the pleasure of the process of reading MY FIRST VERSE. It is enough to say that here is a book for those who love to read, for those who treasure brilliant writing, for those willing to spend time with a novel that, while at all times propulsive, is not an easy read. In Niall Lenihan we have a character who will likely become one of the memorable ones of literature: he may excite us, frustrate us with his decisions, roil our patience, but he is a character we grow to love as we see much of ourselves seeded in his vulnerable psyche.
THE FIRST VERSE is an exceptionally fine novel. For everyone who thrives on literary brilliance, this is a must read! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, May 06
 "It's our party game...our way of making decisions... that's all" January 20, 2006
21 out of 26 found this review helpful
Niall Lenihan is thrilled to have obtained a prestigious scholarship to study at the salubrious Trinity College in Dublin. A young man from the suburbs, Niall is looking forward to tasting the delights of the big city, at last able to leave his unhurried life with his parents and his innocent childhood behind. It's not that he doesn't love his mother and father; it's just that as a young gay man, the cosmopolitanism of Ireland's largest city holds such promise, exhilaration, and fun.
It doesn't take long for Niall to settle into the sacred halls of Trinity College, sampling his newfound surrounds, the lights of the big city now on his doorstep. The Dublin streets are thriving, with a gay nightlife that is teaming with erotic possibilities. Niall is immediately seduced by the potential for easy sex, "the flashing lights, and smell of aftershave, the smell of male sweat and Smirnoff Ice" and spends his nights cruising for guys and drinking in the city's various pubs, hotels, and nightclubs.
He also manages to make a few new friends along the way, especially the bubbly Fionnuala with her warm sense of companionship, and whilst he reconnects with his sturdy best friend Patrick, even ending up sharing an apartment with him, Niall mostly connects on a deeper level with Chris, a good looking Northerner, who eventually charms Niall with his clipped friendly accent, and earthy kindly ways.
However, it is to the enigmatic Sarah and John that Niall is most attracted. After saving him from a near fatal gay bashing, Niall is steadily drawn to John; it's part sexual attraction and part mystification at this cloistered, sinister world that he shares with Sarah. Both John and Sarah seek guidance from the pages of literature letting the signs and symbols, the sentences from books determine their actions in life.
Grudgingly, they admit him to their private sessions, a type of candle lit seance, where sections of books are repeated in a mantra again and again. At first, the excitable Niall treats this new pursuit as type of frivolous game, failing to take seriously this strange world of "sortes," and "synchronicities." However, soon odd coincidences begin to plague him: A strange man who knows his name sings songs at his window, and words of the song keep turning up everywhere he looks.
As Niall becomes ever more addicted and besotted, seduced by the possibility of the fullness and newness of things he doesn't know, he begins to realize that he has a strange energy that is connecting in some way with an energy of another world, a world he cannot readily see, the world in all writing and art, and perhaps also the world of the dead. The synchronicities open a channel, the domains of experience opening up a fissure where one "world" can flow into another, two mutually exclusive universes held in the balance.
Whilst Niall fanatically pulls the endless threads of meaning from tiny fragments of prose, text messages and voice mail messages from the worried Patrick and the concerned Fionnuala are left unanswered. As fits of melancholy become more deliberating, a frequent a sense of doom fills Niall, and soon he is spinning fiction - first lying to Chris, and then to his psychiatrist when he fails his first year of study. He wants to shake the sinister hold that Sarah and John have over him, but the thought of continually connecting to another more spiritual world is just too enticing for him to pass up.
Author Barry Mcrea has spun a wholly original tale of self-discovery, as he recounts with an intellectual grandeur and psychological adroitness, his young protagonist's efforts to move on, and hopefully leave the ghosts of the past behind him. Niall tries to build up a complete picture of the world that he feels is missing, but in his efforts to do so, he is in danger of alienating those who are the closest to him.
Written with layers of metaphor and meaning, and a narrative structure that is complex and multi-layered, we not only witness Niall as he transforms into a man of newly acquired confidence and worldliness, but we also witness his efforts to almost reinvent his masculinity. The First Verse is far from a coming out story - although Neill is gay, he is surprisingly comfortable with his sexuality - instead, the novel is more a trenchant study of one young man's efforts to "make an old world slowly bleed into a new one."
Littered with hip, vibrant, and, youthful characters, right on the cusp of achievement, The First Verse is a book lover's delight, a darkly ironic tribute to the world of literature, the insular world of academia, and also to the written word. Before he realizes it, Niall is plunged into a shadowy world, forced to live in a profoundly isolated nucleus, an utter disconnection from the normal outside world. Mike Leonard January 06.
the best debut in years May 19, 2005
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Barry McCrea's novel "The First Verse" is easily the best piece of new fiction I've read in years. The fantastic plot centers around Niall, a repressed young gay man in Dublin falling in line with a cult, his life being dictated by the world of literature. Amazingly, McCrea's prose has the same mysterious, dizzying, and intoxicating effect on the reader as books have on Niall. By turns eerie, sexy, witty, and thrillng, "The First Verse" is a compulsive and highly entertaining read by a young writer full of blazing intellect and imagination. This is an amazing work.
A Must For Literature Lovers May 2, 2006
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Niall Lenihan is entering his first year at Trinity Dublin, as one of two Beckett Scholars. He's somewhat young for his age - bookish and inexperienced; not yet out of the closet to anyone and still nursing an unrequited crush on Patrick, a popular, athletic, and decidedly straight, school chum. As Niall is settling into his rooms at university, a mysterious young man calls him by name from the courtyard below his window and serenades him with the first verse of a traditional song, "Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of Saint Clements." The stranger introduces himself as Pablo Virgomare and then promptly runs off. Thus begins Barry McCrea's brilliant and mysterious novel, THE FIRST VERSE. Throughout the first chapter, Niall (and the reader) will notice a series small of incidents - coincidences - that seem to echo, or reflect, the first words of the rhyme. Most significant of these occurs when he briefly meets an eccentric older student, Sarah, who asks him to choose a passage at random from a book she is carrying and, to his shock, it is the very same line Pablo Virgomare recited to him but an hour earlier.
Soon Niall finds himself pursuing Sarah and her cohort John, in order to gain entree into a mysterious cult they belong to where the members base all their actions and/or decisions on randomly chosen passages from randomly chosen books. This allows them to live seemingly as if guided by the fates, without having to make any conscience choices of their own, without having to take responsibility for their actions. This lifestyle is very seductive to a timid young man who largely does what is expected of him and shies away from making bold, decisive moves (such as declaring his love for Patrick or coming out). At first they reject him but, by using their own methods against them, Niall chases them down and forces his way into their exclusive circle. Their nightly meetings are like supernatural seances that last until dawn, fueled by the ritual, repetitive chanting of book passages and the drinking of large quantities of Southern Comfort. As Niall's life begins to spin out of control, the book becomes a story of addiction and attempted recovery. Soon he is unable to make the simplest decision or, as with drugs or alcohol, to even feel normal without first consulting the books.
THE FIRST VERSE can definitely be classified as literary fiction of the highest order, yet it's never difficult, dry or cumbersome to read. On the contrary, the writing is incredibly brisk and tight. The reader gets the impression that every passage, every word has been carefully chosen to fit into a larger, yet-to-be-revealed picture. Every quote, character name or book title mentioned offhandedly is not without a larger significance. Yet beneath the artistry of the writing and the relevance of its themes, this is, first and foremost, a compulsively readable story. It's very much a mystery, a bit of a thriller and even includes a compelling little love story. Above all, it struck me as an intricately wrought puzzle, and not until the last piece was in place did it all make sense. Anyone who can relate to the idea of being seduced by the written word will love this book and the believable, flesh-and-blood protagonist at its heart will have the reader rooting for him until the very last page.
I firmly believe that, if Niall was straight, this book would have been a major bestseller. Personally, I recommend it to any lover of literature - straight or gay.
Simply put, Read This Book! September 15, 2005
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
As I write this, proper words are completely escaping me to convey how accomplished this debut is, on nearly every level. Mr. McCrea never misses a beat in making sure that he's keeping enough of the plot secret, while teasing and satisfying the reader with enough information and emotion to force the turning of the page. I'm now reading my third novel since "The First Verse" and I wish I were reading it again for the first time. Also, although the main character is gay, this is NOT a "gay" novel, and anyone passing over it for that reason is missing out on an incredibly rich and entertaining read that (possibly) surpasses "The Secret History" as my favorite novel. It's obviously one of Mr. McCrea's favorites too, as he pays homage to it in both obvious and subtle ways.
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