Paul Murray’s meta-fiction trains its gaze on modern Ireland

Fiction: The Mark and the Void. By Paul Murray. Hamish Hamilton, €17.50.

Paul Murray: playing literary games to intermittently good effect. Picture: Feargal Ward
Paul Murray: playing literary games to intermittently good effect. Picture: Feargal Ward

‘In the past, a novel didn’t always need a story,” novelist-turned-conman Paul explains in The Mark and the Void, Paul Murray’s vastly ambitious new novel. “You could just make it about a day in somebody’s life. But life then meant an entirely different thing. It meant people, movement, activity. You guys in front of your screens all day long – it’s a whole ...