For sheer bravery and for style, for its integrity of vision and for its uncompromising tone, I also admired Rob Doyle's Here Are The Young Men * Colm Toibin, Irish Times Books of the Year *
A powerful, passionate and electrifying novel. Many writers try to recreate the traumas and anxieties of teenage years in fiction but very few manage it with as much conviction as Rob Doyle * John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas *
A fine debut. It shines a light into a relatively unexplored region: the psyches of youth adrift in a world where old verities no longer exist ... A rollicking good read. God may be dead, but a new literary star is born * Sunday Times *
The language is unflinching, the story uncompromising ... A powerful and provocative novel and easily the most honest account of young Irish people for many years * Guardian *
A dark and intoxicating debut * Irish Independent *
A lament for the blank generation, the literary equivalent of the song from which it takes its name, Joy Division's Decades ... a powerful debut, maybe the first novel since Kevin Power's Bad Day in Blackrock to interrogate the dark side of the young Irish male's psyche * Irish Times *
A portrait of a jilted generation ... a brilliant Dublin novel and an exercise in honesty * Sunday Times *
Matthew, the angsty Dublin protagonist of this impressive debut, exemplifies a teenage malaise of worry, hedonism and burgeoning sexual inadequacy ... Doyle is excellent at depicting the dangers of drugs on young minds and the ways first-person video games, internet porn, snuff films and booze can fertilise latent personality disorders * Metro *
It's been dubbed the Irish Trainspotting, making a statement about disillusioned and disaffected young people. A new voice to watch * Woman's Way *
Unblinking depiction of male desperation * James Kidd, Independent Debuts of the Year *
