Books

Book review: Declan Toohey’s complex, charming portrayal of a world of academic paranoia

Patience will be rewarded in the reading of this experimental, strangely compelling debut novel from Declan Toohey

Declan Toohey’s much anticipated novel centres on a doctoral student’s quest to find a subject. Picture: John McSweeney

Heralded as one of 2023’s most anticipated new titles, Declan Toohey’s debut Perpetual Comedown is the hilarious, chaotic and confounding story of a doctoral student’s search for a topic.

Scottish-born and Kildare-raised, Toohey has already won both the IWC Novel Fair and the Maeve Binchy Travel Award. He has also been previously published in Channel and Soft Punk magazines as well as the anthology Queer Love.

Darren Walton, lovable, intelligent and seemingly unreliable, charts what ...