AliCorbin reviewed The third policeman by Flann O'Brien
Review of 'The third policeman' on 'Goodreads'
A surreal book. Made even more surreal for me, because something had gone wrong in the ripping and I'd lost a chunk of the book, from the spot where the narrator returns to Mather's house after escaping from the cops to where he and Divney walk back into the police barracks. So I utterly missed the third policeman, stationed in the chinks of Mather's house, and the exposition by Divney that the narrator is actually dead, having been blown to smithereens on his first visit to Mather's house. So while I thought him walking around in a dream, he was actually walking around dead.
None of which, of course, makes any sense. Why would Joe be hanging around a dead man? Unless Joe was all that was left of the narrator. But then how could the narrator still exist to hang around Joe? And what's the point of having the …
A surreal book. Made even more surreal for me, because something had gone wrong in the ripping and I'd lost a chunk of the book, from the spot where the narrator returns to Mather's house after escaping from the cops to where he and Divney walk back into the police barracks. So I utterly missed the third policeman, stationed in the chinks of Mather's house, and the exposition by Divney that the narrator is actually dead, having been blown to smithereens on his first visit to Mather's house. So while I thought him walking around in a dream, he was actually walking around dead.
None of which, of course, makes any sense. Why would Joe be hanging around a dead man? Unless Joe was all that was left of the narrator. But then how could the narrator still exist to hang around Joe? And what's the point of having the cops take him to visit the heavenly 'eternity' if he's really in hell? Or purgatory? Or limbo? Maybe just to torment him further. Because you can foresee that he, and now Divney, are going to be going through this travail, over and over again. For eternity.
