There is a sector of opinion which considers this Flann O'Brien's finest novel, and certainly it is a big advance in cohesion and unity on its lively but garrulous predecessor, At Swim-Two-Birds. As is well known by now, it was rejected by English publishers and Brian O'Nolan (as he was in real life) pretended defensively that he had lost the manuscript in a taxi. Its almost surreal strangeness has a sinister humour, in spite of the prosy (and prosaic) characters who inhabit it, with their banal talk and parish-pump outlook. The influence of Kafka seems plain enough at times, and perhaps too that of the Capek Brothers whose "Insect Play" O'Nolan had translated or adapted for the Dublin stage. I continue to prefer Myles na Gopaleen to Flann O'Brien, but in an era which produced relatively few Irish novels which have lasted, this odd, original, rather "black" book occupies a firm, though isolated niche entirely its own.
By Brian Fallon