SOURCE: “Terror in Transition,” in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4808, May 26, 1995, p. 22.

In the following review, O'Brien discusses the inevitable outcome of McCabe's The Dead School.

Life in Patrick McCabe's The Dead School rapidly becomes terrible. Then, for a time, things appear to the protagonists to be otherwise, until fate closes its waters over their heads and throws in a few hand-grenades for good measure. If the characters have some margin for illusion, readers are never in doubt about the outcome. Cornered by the author's insinuating tones, though, most will find it hard to resist hearing his dreadful and sometimes appallingly funny story out. To say this is not to give anything away. The fascination of The Dead School lies in the details of the characters' destruction—roughly speaking, at the hands of modernity—and in the ease with which McCabe incorporates historical and cultural dimensions into the tale...