Patrick McCabe on the pain of watching your book adapted for the silver screen

In 1992, Pat McCabe was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his haunting novel, The Butcher Boy. Shortly afterwards, Hollywood came calling and his dark and bleakly funny yarn about small town Ireland was turned into a big film. Pat talks to the Editor of Boundless, Patrick Galbraith, about what it was like to see his words realised on the screen. Most of the team at Warner Bros., Pat explains, couldn't understand half of the dialogue he'd written or 'the everyday talk of rural Ireland'. A novelist might write the words but when big directors, producers, and money men come to town, that doesn't count for much.

Read Pat's Boundless feature: https://boundlesslit.substack.com/

Pre-order Goldengrove, publishing with Unbound in 2025

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.