eBook Only
Leila Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman
eBook Only
By: J.P. Donleavy
Publication Date: 1 Sep 2013
Leila Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman by JP Donleavy
Where Darcy departing Dublin descends on his darkly decrepit desmesne, skint as a boiled bone. There to ponder his leaking, bat-ridden birthright, devilishly diverted by sexy Miss von B and readily rolled up by Ronald Rashers.
And sees Leila. Lovely, lissome Leila – who tells him no. A definite negative. So Darcy is back to Dublin and the noisome stews to dream of the one bright star in his eternal darkness …
As there’s fool’s gold at the end of every Irish rainbow, and tarnished silver linings in every cloud, so there’s a shimmer on the far horizon for this particular broth of a boy.
His future is disastrous, his present indecent, his past divine. He is Darcy Dancer, youthful squire of Andromeda Park, the great gray stone mansion inhabited by Crooks, the cross eyed butler, and the sexy, aristocratic Miss Von B. This sequel to The Destinies of Darcy Dancer by JP Donleavy, Gentleman finds our hero falling in with decidedly low company — like the dissolute Dublin poet, Foxy Slattery, and Ronald Rashers, who absconds with the family silver — before falling head over heels in love with the lissome Leila.
‘A liltingly moving piece of writing from a wonderfully fruity romancer.’ – Financial Times
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.P. ‘Mike’ Donleavy (1926–2017) wrote more than twenty books after The Ginger Man, including The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1968), A Fairy Tale of New York (1973), The Onion Eaters (1971) and Schultz (1979) (all available as eBooks from Lilliput), along with several works of non-fiction such as The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners (1975). He lived along the shores of Lough Owel near Mullingar in County Westmeath.
‘In his spectral wit, Donleavy could resemble Samuel Beckett; in his delighted lustiness, Henry Miller; in his damp and scattered wordplay, James Joyce. An American who lived most of his life in Ireland, he spoke to the past century’s intellectual and moral dislocations.’ – Praise for the author in The New York Times
Also available as an ebook
Lilliput Press –
“If you don’t already know Balthazar B., Bella Hortense, Beefy, and Elizabeth Fitzdare from other J. P. Donleavy books (whom I was appropriately introduced to while in college many years ago), Leila is probably not the place to start as Donleavy’s remarkable and infinitely romantic / emotive writing style and the depth of protagonist Darcy’s tragedy is simply too much at one time. However, if you’ve already read at least one of the others, then Leila is one that you don’t want to complete your life without having read. A remarkable story of totally unrequited love, or at least a completely unfilled but potentially deep platonic relationship, set in the context of heartbreaking corruption, physical decay, and financial dissipation amidst (pointless under the circumstances) old world upstairs / downstairs formality and manners. A great! book, I can see re-reading it about every ten years from a different life perspective …” RALPH M COX
Lilliput Press –
“Wood carvings sunk half way in an attic floor, representing sexuality, adventure, and a girl forever looking out the window on the world, for my former home, in my attic life, where I read first THE GINGER MAN, then non-sequentially almost all of his books. THE GINGER MAN in my 18th summer, childhood gone before university. It and GOODBYE, COLUMBUS. I determined, while reading them, that I was a man, granted with a horrible ear ache from childhood off and on, in a beastly hot summer, reading this most melancholy Irish (so I thought) writer and man in my closed almost to breathing landscape of melted soft summer sunlight on the broil, my immobile world gaining by averting love and excitement and sexuality were me of wood stuck half way in that attic floor, but I was going to be that jungle hearted man of ginger for sure and soon. I was tall and gawky and had the look of, if not the looks of, Terrence Stamp in the movie of THE COLLECTOR, who had the same morbid death fascination as did I. I was to be haunted “down all my days” by Donleavy’s loquacious word salads of end of summer symmetry and the knowledge on the day he made me realize in the midst of life that SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S. I would die; as in my dorm room, now cobweb festooned and unbearably alone and gone,with ghosts, seen one… in university with my long hair and bell bottoms I read his THE BEASTLY BEATITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B, especially that PLAYBOY excerpt. And cascading then THE SINGULAR MAN, MEET MY MAKER THE MAD MOLECULE, THE ONION EATERS and seasons and grades and autumns and snows and book stores, and changing the shells of you and me, used and new, and that scared man hiding in the bowels of Dublin University and that rare understanding of singular accord he was
Given
By a
Singular man.
Donleavy was having such fun with hair pin turns on worlds of giddy from the soul lyrics that rushed richly down mad fields like a wild rage of mountain river, autumn burnished, as my own skies streamed over me, un noticed, till too late. DARCY DANCER, GENTLEMAN I read when winter came for always and I admitted my life and my love were to forever be in past tense. And I in my attic on weekends where I began to see the wooden me forming. And the getting on, and admitting to nothing, being nothing. THE PLAYS OF J.P. DONLEAVY during my spatial glimpse of my years of self chagrin,. When I intended to celebrate existence, when there was just me looking out to the grape arbor, alley, the running to the hounds, painting naked, from young to ageing. And I on my hobby horse, from THE HISTORY OF THE GINGER MAN, A FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK, now with quivering hand, from boy to man and beyond, wobbly and still attic bound says, brave and bold no more, waiting to the end
Drinks are on me
WILD GINGER MAN.” JOEL HOLDEN
Lilliput Press –
“A great book. A true classic.” DAVE