Threshold

(Paperback)

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'A wild, sleazy, drug-filled odyssey ... Doyles maverick novel deserves the accolades coming its way' Independent 'The best work to date from a writer who gets better and better with each release' Irish Indepdendent 'A masterclass in what not to do' New Statesman 'His best book so far: riddling, irreverent, fearless' TLS Rob has spent most of his confusing adult life wandering, writing, and imbibing literature and narcotics in equally vast doses. Now, stranded between reckless youth and middle age, between exaltation and despair, his travels have acquired a de facto purpose: the immemorial quest for transcendent meaning. On a lurid pilgrimage for cheap thrills and universal truth, Doyles narrator takes us from the menacing peripheries of Paris to the drug-fuelled clubland of Berlin, from art festivals to sun-kissed islands, through metaphysical awakenings in Asia and the brink of destruction in Europe, into the shattering revelations brought on by the psychedelic DMT. A dazzling, intimate, and profound celebration of art and ageing, sex and desire, the limits of thought and the extremes of sensation, Threshold confirms Doyle as one of the most original writers in contemporary literature.

Reviews

If this blurb were a movie title it would go like this: Threshold, or, how I learned to stop worrying (about what sort of novel this is) and love the narrator, whose brilliance and humour on drugs and literature, sex and boredom and death, leave me in awe -- RACHEL KUSHNER
The funniest novel Ive read since January. Narrated by a globe-trotting Irish philosophy graduate, who muses on art and literature while high on mind-altering drugs, its unashamedly navelgazing, slyly cosmopolitan and an absolute blast * DAILY MAIL *
My favourite book so far this year is Threshold by Rob Doyle. A very modern take on memoir, there are scenes that made me think, please God, let him have made this up, let it not have happened. But most of it did. It made me laugh out loud, wince, take lengthy showers and feel that Ive barely lived -- JOHN BOYNE
Not only the best work to date from a writer who gets better and better with each release, but also a unique, engrossing and strangely thrilling way to shake this new year into existence and make it tingle with promise * IRISH INDEPENDENT *
Not many books manage to expand your mind, do your head in and set you laughing out loud. This one does, and Doyles words sing on the page * SPECTATOR *
This sly tale told against its author takes the reader on a destabilising voyage of discovery and self-disgust Each section of the book cleverly masked as a tale told against its teller blossoms critically in two or three directions Whatever else it is, Threshold is surely the record of a voyage a book of experience in some quite old-fashioned, powerful sense * GUARDIAN *
A book that casually vaporises the boundaries between autobiography, travelogue and philosophical/pharmacological exploration If you fancy some Terence McKenna adventures in consciousness expansion, or Isherwood-esque exile in the most decadent cellars of Berlin, or down and out sojourns in Paris and London, step right up * IRISH TIMES *
Dead-pan satire a cautionary tale of dissipation and drift; a masterclass in what not to do * NEW STATESMAN *
His best book so far: riddling, irreverent and fearless ... Boundary-nudging fiction * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
Threshold might be one of many things. Its certainly an original piece of work * RTE GUIDE *
A wild, sleazy, drug-filled odyssey ... Doyles maverick novel deserves the accolades coming its way * INDEPENDENT *
Dark, misanthropic, provocative; Doyles writing really goes there, and emerges triumphant * IRISH TIMES *
Threshold is dazzling. It confirms Rob Doyle's status as one of the most original and intelligent writers at work today -- DONAL RYAN
An extremely funny book, a novel that sends itself up mercilessly even as it is created. His best work to date -- KEVIN BARRY
Threshold is extraordinary, quite unlike anything Ive read before. Its intimate, a revelation in the literal sense of that world, and yet its full of curiosity ... Its fearless and challenging, inventive and compulsive, unique and utterly heartfelt. A book that will stay with me for a very long time. Masterful -- JOHN BOYNE, author of The Heart's Invisible Furies
Ecce homo! A highly original attempt to engage, formally, with Nietzsches dangerous question: "how much truth can one mind [or novel] bear -- GEOFF DYER
Threshold is Rob Doyle's best book yet, a thrilling mutation somewhere between novel, essay collection, report, travelogue and confession. Doyle is a Romantic wandering in the post-sublime, a zealot without a cause, and his is a journey you don't want to miss * CHRIS POWER *
Rob Doyle has outdone himself. I was buzzing after reading Threshold: it's the kind of work you have to come down from playful, potent, lurid, moving and fearless. I'm sure it'll be bouncing around my head for a long time yet -- LISA McINERNEY, Baileys Womens prize-winning author of The Glorious Heresies
This is the type of brilliant, maverick achievement that sets a (young) writer apart. Wonderfully readable and with a skein of black comedy running through it that serves to highlight the seriousness of Doyles intent -- MIKE McCORMACK, author of the Booker Prize-longlisted, Goldsmiths Prize-winning Solar Bones
A portrait of the artist as a youngish man, filtered through a sieve of refined prose A modern-day odyssey of the roving mind -- TEDDY WAYNE
PRAISE FOR ROB DOYLE: Im quite overwhelmed ... tremendous theres a formidable quality to the writing ... the ability to generate the shock that rare work gives the reader, not only in the pleasure and gratitude it engenders, but the serious business of the lines and engines of your own life finding answer and echo in anothers art -- SEBASTIAN BARRY
These bleak, brilliant stories maintain the tradition of Swift and Joyce... Compelling * SUNDAY TIMES *
Im tempted to quote Nietzsche back at Rob Doyle: hes not a writer he is dynamite! Except like Nietzsche hes a tremendous writer too. And I have a suspicion that the author of this provocative and thrilling collection is going to get even better * GEOFF DYER *
Doyle plumbs the bleaker aspects of literary life with startling precision and candour * NEW YORK TIMES *
A tremendous talent. Every page fizzes with vitality -- KEVIN BARRY
Full of booze, books, sex and despair yet, despite the bleakness of its stories, skewered as they are on broken hearts and broken artistic dreams, Doyles cocky passion proves irresistible. He writes with the confidence of a literary giant A series of heartening and humane interior struggles. Doyle is as good as everyone from John Boyne to Colm Toibin says he is * DAILY MAIL *
Doyles fiction deals with lifes major themes: sex, death, guilt, shame, the meaning of existence Doyles storytelling is compelling and engaging, suffused with wit, honesty and emotional intelligence * IRISH TIMES *
The mutinous fragments of Rob Doyles fictions are bilious, provocative and unnervingly compelling -- COLIN BARRETT
A world-class writer -- JOANNA WALSH
Doyle displays a ludic sensibility The stories are gleefully nihilistic He has a gift for evoking the base and unpleasant aspects of life in vivid and visceral detail It creates an almost hypnotic effect; a miasmic fictional space into which the reader slips * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
A compelling read -- TARA FLYNN * IRISH TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR *
A fine debut. A rollicking good read. God may be dead, but a new literary star is born * SUNDAY TIMES *
For sheer bravery and for style, for its integrity of vision and for its uncompromising tone -- COLM TOIBIN
A powerful, passionate and electrifying novel. Many writers try to recreate the traumas and anxieties of teenage years in fiction but very few manage it with as much conviction as Rob Doyle. The language is unflinching, the story uncompromising ... easily the most honest account of young Irish people for many years -- JOHN BOYNE
A lament for the blank generation, the literary equivalent of the song from which it takes its name, Joy Divisions Decades. A powerful debut, maybe the first novel since Kevin Powers Bad Day in Blackrock to interrogate the dark side of the young Irish males psyche * IRISH TIMES *
A portrait of a jilted generation a brilliant Dublin novel and an exercise in honesty * IRISH SUNDAY TIMES *
Narrated with an appealing blend of wide-eyed curiosity and no-bullshit scepticism * OBSERVER *

Author Bio

Rob Doyle was born in Dublin. His first novel, Here Are the Young Men, was published in 2014. It was chosen as a book of the year by the Sunday Times, Irish Times and Independent, and was among Hot Press magazines 20 Greatest Irish Novels 1916-2016. Doyle has adapted it for film with director Eoin Macken. Doyles collection of short stories, This is the Ritual, was published by Bloomsbury in 2016. Doyle is the editor of the The Other Irish Tradition (Dalkey Archive Press), and In This Skull Hotel Where I Never Sleep (Broken Dimanche Press). His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Vice, TLS, Dublin Review, and many other publications, and he writes a weekly books column for the Irish Times. He teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, and lives the rest of the year in Berlin. robdoyle.net / Twitter: @RobDoyle1 / Instagram: skullhotel