Oasis - Softcover

Canning, the central character of Oasis, is very much a product of his time - an anti-hero who, groping through the existential malaise of recent decades, is aware, of the big questions but can find no big answers to go with them. Living in a brothel on an oasis with a deformed boy he has befriended, he is as much a prisoner of his besotted obsessions as of the memories of his Irish childhood, the supposed genesis of his decline.
Attempting to break the impasse of his situation he explores the surrounding desert with Cu-cu, a priest, Namon, an alcoholic doctor and the haunting figure of the boy. From oasis to oasis he looks for some exit, some solution, realising there can be none only mirage and shifting sand, the uncertain prose of his life.
This young writer is about his prober business... the rendering of the external world in the right words and with the right tunes. It is in order for an ageing writer to essay a prophecy about Irish letters. Mr. Rooney will, I think, be a credit to them.