SOURCE: A review of Carn, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. LXIV, No. 23, December 1, 1996, pp. 1694-95.

In the following review, the critic lauds McCabe's Carn.

The first U.S. publication of an early novel, [Carn] by McCabe (the acclaimed Butcher Boy, 1993, and The Dead School, 1995) once again demonstrates his unsparing, precise view of the mingled anger, sorrow, and boredom at the heart of modern Irish life.

The town of Carn is somewhere up north, near the border where Ireland ends and North Ireland begins, and it's not much of a place. A small railway junction and cattle market, it was sleepy to start with and nearly nods off altogether when the trains stop running: “It got to the stage where no one expected anything good to happen ever again.” Then a big-shot local opens a meatpacking factory that gets the place whirring. For the people of Carn—young girls like...