Bob Geldof has endorsed Joseph O’Connor’s latest novel, The Thrill of it All, which charts the lives of the members of a rock band through the decades.
"O'Connor writes with such passion, such precision, such beautiful sentences, with such an ear for language and with such knowledge and hilarity that this book could only come from an extremely gifted Rock 'n' Roll obsessive," writes Geldof on O’Connor’s website.
“This is the story of a Ziggy O'Stardust and his less talented more vulnerable sidekick and their two mates," The Boomtown Rats frontman continues.
“At a time when the low art of Rock 'n Roll music has lost its central relevance to the culture and being superseded by something not yet quite identifiable, O'Connor's book will serve as a brilliant and vital document in either reminding earlier generations, or instructing current and future ones why it was, and precisely how, young boys and girls committed their whole selves and entire beings, regardless of all, to the visceral need to make this music."
Geldof concludes his enthusiastic paean with the following words: “Once again Joseph O'Connor proves that along with Banville, Tóibín, Doyle and the others of that golden Irish generation, he's right up there alongside them."
The Thrill of It All is receiving rave reviews from critics, and was shorlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Novel of the Year 2014.
The eventual winner of that prize - announced on May 19 - was Edward St Aubyn whose novel Lost for Words itself satirises the shenanigans and pretensions surrounding a much-coveted literary prize.
St Aubyn won some generous helpings of champagne, a set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection, and a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, to be named after his winning novel.
