SOURCE: A review of The Butcher Boy, in America, Vol. 170, No. 15, April 30, 1994, pp. 22-23.

In the following excerpt, Feeney lauds the prose in McCabe's The Butcher Boy and asserts that the novel offers “unforgettable insight into a victim's pain.”

Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy and Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha are neither political nor mythic, but they probe deeply and cannily into the consciousness of two boys and are spun with Irish word-skill. The Butcher Boy is the more painful, its tone set by the first sentence: “When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.” That “done on Mrs. Nugent” is determinative, as it evokes suspense, menace, even a swaggering boast. It also establishes a distinctive voice, through which Francie...